Category : blog

 

Give me a minute…….I would like to tell you why “I” believe we need to be thankful!  We live in a society that is focused on everything bad, evil and corrupt about this country.  I will give you that there is plenty of that in the world we live in, but that is not the whole story.  Sometimes the best way to see our country is let someone, not from here, give us a report card!

 

This summer millions of people from all over the world have visited our shores for the World Cup Soccer.  There evaluations of our country sounds nothing like what you would think if you watched just the major media of the U.S. or the world for that matter!  Most were warned that they would find American and Americans. dangerous, unfriendly and hostile to them….  the very opposite has been the ringing endorsement of us!  They rave about the people, the police, the stadiums, the spirit of Americans!  They can’t believe our highway system, our economy!  They openly claim that they have never seen anything like Costco, Walmart and Buc-ee’s in the countries!   

 

We’ve welcomed them, cheered for them and made friends of many people that were frankly concerned about coming here in the first place.  While some Americans don’t love this country, don’t like our flag, or have no tolerance for celebrating our 250th birthday, I often wonder why they stay here, anyone has the right and ability to leave this place if it’s so bad for them!  You can think anything you want about America, but I’m proud and happy to be here, I love my country and I’m thankful too!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

 

Have a great weekend!!!!!!!

 

The Pilgrim

 

 

You fly into New Orleans,  pick up your rental car and drive to the hotel down near Bourbon Street, check in and crash from a long travel day!  Then before your head hits the pillow you call and leave a wake up call!  Wait……. that’s not the kind of wake-up call I was talking about!

 

My four favorite movies are;

The 1951 Version of a Christmas Carol.

Ground Hog Day.

Disney’s The Kid with Bruce Willis

& the entire 9 Seasons of the TV Series Suits

What do all four of these movies have in common?  They are all about a man whose life was changed and turned around after they got a wake-up call!

 

Alastair Simm as Ebinezer Scrooge, the crusty old mizer addicted to the accumulation of money and caring about little else, Bill Murray as Phil Conner the Pittsburg Weather man who is a self centered jerk who doesn’t care about his affect on his co-workers, Bruce Willis as Russ Durretts in The Kid, is re-introduced to his 8 year old self to discover how his life went wrong and made him a miserable man and finally Harvey Specter, ( Gabriel Macht), a high power New York Attorney who prides himself on not caring about anyone, learns that may be all that matters!  

 

All these characters found redemption and their journey is highly entertaining and wonderfully satisfying!  All these films are about how wrong things can go for our lives if we loose sight of the one thing Christ asks of us, “Love your neighbor as yourself!”  When it seems life is not what you would like it to be, try bringing joy and love into the lives of those around you,  you may be surprised how much better things get!  Here is an idea, make time when you can to re-watch these great films!

 

Blessings,

 

 

the pilgrim

 

We all want life filled with purpose, great relationships with those we love and peace with others!

 

 

 

 

If you’ve come here before, you’ve no doubt seen some gear posts!  This year is my 56th year of being a serious photographer.  I’ve been super serious from the day I started, thus the Nikon, Nikkormat FTN above!  I was a high school teacher and football coach and decided I had always wanted a “real” camera so I went out and bought one, how was I to know that would change my life!  For the next 38 years I was mostly a Nikon shooter!  I had some flings with large format (4X5) Medium format cameras (Mamiya TwinLens Reflex and RB-67 and Pentax 645),  a short affair with Konica, but mostly a long happy marriage with Nikon!  The reason was simple; for almost all those years Nikon dominated the pro market and that is what I fancied myself as being, a Pro!  Nikon was reliable, had one of the very best lines of lenses,  both in diversity and quality and I learned on that system, was used to it and loved it!  I even ended up joining Nikon as a Pro Market Tech Rep and NPS (Nikon Professional Services) Rep for the Southern United States.

While working for Nikon I developed a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder that required surgery.  The full recovery took a couple years and I found it very difficult to carry Nikon’s full frame cameras and big lenses.  I needed a small, but high quality, camera to use while I got my strength back in my shoulder.  While at the Photo East  show in New York I slipped around to all the camera companies booths looking for what might work for that task!  Remember I’m working for Nikon, so had to be careful about this!  I found a very nice, very compact camera from Fujifilm and ordered one from B&H at the show!  Planning to keep it secret!

 

 

 

I fell in love with this little camera, it had everything I needed f0r the situation and I kept it a secret but learned a lot more about Fujifilm and really fell in love with what they were doing with their new camera line.  I was retiring from Nikon that summer and so I quietly started to invest in some more bodies and lenses from them.  The X10 caused me to simplify my photography and I produced some of the best images had made in years which led to more fascination with their system.  After retiring from my Nikon position I fully moved over to Fujifilm and have used it to this very day.  Two years ago had some dramatic health issues and sought, once again, a lighter smaller system, I invested in a bunch of Micro 4/3rds gear but have recently sold it off and  returned to using Fujifilm for all my work!

So that’s the history lesson, what have learned?!

 

1.  After a careful review of 56 years of my work I have come to the conclusion that mega pixels don’t matter as much as what we thought!  Some of my best images are from cameras from Fujifilm and Nikons with only 16 mega pixels or less!
2. Trading a complete systems is very costly, an seldom worth the trouble.
3. The best Nikon camera I ever used (based on close inspection of images in my files) is the D700 which had only 12 megapixels!
4. All quality made lenses,  if shot around f 8 are plenty sharp enough if shot off a quality, steady tripod!
5. If used properly, (great technique),  Even Micro 4/3rds works fine!
6. Are there advantages to full frame sensors, yes, but not as much as we are led to believe!
7. All of these are my opinions and you’re milage may vary!

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

Jack Graham – Fujifilm 18-55 Kit lens!

 

Nikon D700 –  200-400 Zoom

 

Fujifilm XE-1  –  18-55 Kit lens

 

Why we do this, the joy of making a photograph!