I finally have worked my way back in time in my Lightroom catalog to the beginning of my "serious" digital era: 2008 and 2009.
I had been using consumer point-and-shoot digital cameras for family snapshots and travel mementos since they first appeared on the market―my brother was working for Fujifilm in that era and he kept me supplied with their evolving product line, purchased with his employee discount―but it was only after I acquired a Nikon D40 DSLR that it dawned on me that I could use a digital camera the way I had used a 35mm camera during my youth. (I also shot medium format and 4x5 film with borrowed cameras when I was in high school and college. But after I started working, I had neither the time nor the space to set up a darkroom―and I certainly didn't have the money to pay a lab to process film and make prints for me.)
We all tend to say that the camera is the least important contribution to making good photographs, but that 6 Mpx D40 was the inducement that made me resume trying to make pictures that might be interesting to viewers other than myself and my family. It was also small enough and light enough to carry when my wife and I were traveling, which we did
on a shoestring in those days since we were saving as much as we could in anticipation of retirement.
OK, enough backstory. The attached images:
(1)
Erin at Five, Washington, D.C., 2008;
(2)
Blue Door, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2008;
(3)
Monticello South Pavilion from Dome Room, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009;
(4)
Purple Parasol, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2009.