I looked at the D3 on the B & H web site yesterday afternoon and saw it was listed as “out of stock” so however many they received from Nikon were blown out the door in something like 24 hours. Not surprising. Buyer's remorse? Not really. The last two lenses I've bought (from B & H) were designed for the D3. They work just fine with the D2X level cameras that I currently own, but they're duplicates, really, of lenses I currently use with the existing cameras. So obviously I'd made my decision some months ago when I bought that first lens. I promised myself I'd use the money that unexpectedly came to me when I sold my old www.nbbc.com domain to General Electric to buy camera gear I'd probably not otherwise even consider. And that seems to be what I've done.

Although I walked to breakfast this morning, I don't consider that I get any real exercise since it's less than a mile each way to the café, so later this afternoon I set out for lunch thinking there's a Whole Foods store more than a mile away not all that far from an intersection where they're building a monstrous new church that I've photographed from time to time as it's been taking shape. Walking over to photograph the church and then cutting over to Whole Foods for lunch (I believe Sherri, for good reason, calls it Whole Paycheck) would be a forty minute uninterrupted walk; about right. So that's what I did.

The photograph of the young woman up top was a gift as she happened to pass by on the sidewalk in front of the store with her dog on a leash, flashing her fashionably tattooed ankles and smoking a cigarette while I was sitting out in front of the store at a table finishing my lunch. When she sat down at the table next to me (and next to the young man her age sitting at a table next to the both of us) I asked her if I could take her picture and she shook her head “no”, so I smiled and said “that's fine”, putting down the camera. She was evidently thinking (what's this guy up to?) before she said “sure, go ahead” (because it had occurred to her I could be that famous New York fashion photographer who discovers her in front of a Whole Foods store every night in her dreams and puts her on the road to stardom) and so that's what I did.

The two behind the logo were modified in Photoshop from the same photograph, the digital color of the one on the left modified by a PhotoShop plug-in created by a company called Dx0. It allows you to select from a pull down list of color and black and white films, make modifications once the film type has been selected and then convert the photograph to look as if it had been shot with the film of your choice. Which is kind of neat. The black and white photograph on the right is supposed to have the grain structure and feel of Kodak TRI-X and I think it does a bit. I'd forgotten I had it (they make another stand alone software product I'm more familiar with) and now, retired, with some time on my hands, I think I'll add it to my procrastination list. Pretty good, don't you think? For the first day of a week that's just started?