In The Beginning…
A New Camera
SUNY Potsdam
Denise was at studying music at SUNY Potsdam at the Crane School of Music in 2001. Graduation was imminent, so it seemed appropriate to join the world of digital photography so we wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of film when we recorded the event for posterity.
One of the parameters I took into account when choosing the camera was the concept that given a good enough camera I’d be able to indulge the hobby that I’d toyed with for decades but had always balked precisely because of the potential costs of film and processing of what was obviously a hit or miss process.
And so, I picked out the Olympus C2100UZ with its 10:1 zoom and its then state-of-the-art 1600 x 1200 2-megapixel images. Given the screen sizes of computers at that time, these images seemed plenty large enough.
We had a visit scheduled in mid-April, so I took along the camera. I didn’t only take bird photos. We did some sight-seeing and I marked the occasion with this shot of the ceremonial main entrance to fhe college.
First Bird Photos
A day or so before our trip to Potsdam, I took a walk around the local area to try out the camera on whatever birds took my fancy. It’s no surprise that the first two photos I took were of a Canada goose and a couple of ducks, one of which was a male Mallard while the other is an escaped domestic duck derived from a Mallard.
Upstate NY Photos
On our way to Potsdam, we noticed a nature reserve at Newcomb, NY, in the Adirondacks a few miles east of Long Lake on what had become our favored route when we had visited Denise at college over the previous three years. We made a point of returning by the same route and stopping to explore the reserve. At a feeder table we had our first sighting of a Black-capped Chickadee and a Red-breasted Nuthatch.
