Sure I’m posting this a day late, but I just wanted to share some photos here. These were all shot with my old recovered Nikon D40 which is my current back-up body, and the Nikon 55-200 VR lens. This is equipment that can be found on Craigslist or eBay relatively inexpensively, but still enables you to make great photos!

I use this camera as a family camera, for things like going to the beach or day trips – it’s very light but allows you the freedom to enjoy the moment instead of trying to perfectly capture the moment technically like you would with a more professional body. I shot these all as jpegs and did minimal processing in Lightroom as there was not much room for it in these 6MP files.

It’s not a weather sealed camera or lens, it gets it’s fair share of sea-spray and sand, but wiping it down immediately and using some common sense has kept this camera in my life for many years now. The 55-200 lens is such a fantastic performer on this camera. Check this out:

If I didn’t tell you that that was a D40 with a budget lens, not many people would assume it.

The secret to photography is simple at its core. Have an interesting subject matter, find some quality light, and the technical stuff becomes terribly easy after that. Sure, what’s an interesting subject is quite subjective, and finding quality light involves manufacturing it on many occasions. Don’t even get me started on composition! And the technical stuff constantly evolves and changes – but you still can’t trust the camera to get it right 100% of the time so you need to understand the basics of exposure, which can take years of practice to fully understand and execute in real-life situations that require split-second reaction time from you.

STOP!

The moment is more important than anything else.

This moment captures the day perfectly for me because it was a happy Father’s Day: