Travel, Work, Animal Sitting, and Photo Taking

The last 3-4 weeks have been incredibly stressful at work, but after tomorrow the main source of my stress will be gone and I will be happy. Then, on Friday I’ll be flying out to Colorado for my company’s annual Owner’s meeting. I’ll be there until Wednesday. Then I’ll probably be shutting myself in a room for a week and not coming out.

This last weekend was spent house/animal sitting for Michael and Lori, which was fun. They have a literal menagerie of animals who vie constantly for attention. We sat around, watched movies and chilled out in general.

Saturday and Sunday brought wonderful monsoon storms to Arizona, so I trotted off north to Sedona to shoot the weather. I recently got my remote switch, and I’ve started auto bracketing scenes with a lot of dynamic range. I like shooting with a remote switch and a tripod. It makes it a little bit easier when waiting for light. Here’s a couple of shots from the weekend: Soldier's Pass Sedona Storm Two Trees.jpg

This trip once again emphasized my need for a longer lens. Which is good, because yesterday I got my Sigma 70-200 2.8. It’s a 2.75 pound ox of a lens. It also costs around $900. One might ask why I would buy a Sigma lens for only $240 less than the Canon equivalent. Besides the 25% price difference, it actually performs better than the Canon. And, it’s not bright “steal me” white. That is a good thing.

In portrait work, this lens is pretty much necessary. I was noticing some pretty bad perspective issues from my last shoot, and really wished I would have had this lens. The 2.8 aperture does a nice job of throwing things out of focus, and the 100mm-160mm sweet spot for perspective.

I’m going to get some awesome results from this lens, but I fear lugging this thing around. Maybe it’s time to get a carbon fiber tripod to offset the weight.

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