Five year anniversary.

June 15, 2009

I am ridiculously inaccurate when I try to describe time in years off the cuff… but great at remembering things in relation to other influences in my life. Today, minus five years, is the time when a mommy-blogger-with-a-camera influenced a decision that would in turn influence the direction of my career.

I was talking with some other photographers recently about people who inspire us. I asked them to give me the name of one person who has influenced them the most lately, and Tomme mentioned that the work of Tanja Lippert is the reason she switched from Canon to Nikon equipment.

Her statement took me instantly back to the time when I was finishing up grad school in Pasadena, California and made a somewhat spontaneous decision to upgrade my camera. At the time I was shooting obsessively and acting like a professional with one of those fujifilm point and shoot cameras that makes you think you have a “real camera” but really isn’t that great (for laughs, see: my first “photo shoot” march 2002!). I was researching a good starter camera and had decided on the Canon Rebel. The day before I was going out to make my big purchase, I read a post by one of my favorite bloggers, dooce, who had just gotten her first DSLR. Dooce is hilarious and descriptive which, scarily, made me trust her judgment, so without reading much more than her blog post about the camera [link] and a quick price comparison, I decided on the Nikon D70.  Dooce and I purchased our cameras within days of one another, and have both come a LONG way with photography and life since June 2004, and it makes me laugh to think that she had so much influence over the first major decision in what became my full-time photography career.

When friends and acquaintances are shopping for cameras, they often ask which cameras I’d recommend. I’m still a big fan of the Nikon D90 (the love child of the D70 and D80) but also appreciate the compact size and indie feel of my husband’s Ricoh point and shoot.

Thinking back to my Dooce-induced purchase exactly five years ago makes me nostalgic. I shot my first event with the camera about two weeks later… a July 4 wedding in Malibu. This past April I was back in LA for a real wedding booking, and Ali and I drove past the site from that first wedding, where Sunset Blvd hits the ocean, and I was thankful for all of the people who have come into my life since that time.

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