First, some good news. I spent the day out shooting with Mauro, expecting to see disappointing smudges throughout my collection of shots upon downloading them to the computer. To my surprise, the smudges show up in only the odd photo. Most appear to be smudge free. Not sure why. Don’t really care. I’ll be buying a new camera within the next week or two.

As for this photo, it’s from today’s outing. The Canadian Malting Company silos are located on the waterfront in Toronto — hence the water in the shot. As you can see, it’s smudge free. Yay! Anyway, I’ve got a ton of photos to edit from this weekend. And a ton more from the previous few weekends. Sucks to be me right now. Plus, I’ve got an Oscars celebration to watch.

Well I just got in from my second long day out and about taking photos. This time it was with my friend Mauro. We hiked around downtown again, stopping for a nice lunch of course, and I think we got some nice shots. I’m about to upload them now so I won’t know how they came out for a while. As you know, my camera is now officially toast, but like they say, when all you’ve got is toast you make lemonade, right? I’ll post my first photo from today a bit later, but for now here’s s another photo from yesterday’s outing. As you can see, the smudge issue is not present in all the photos. This one was taken down where the Gardiner Expressway meets the Don Valley Parkway. Hope you like it.

Smudges clearly visible in photos of the sky. I dialled up the contrast to show them better.

As you can see, there are smudges in this photo (the most visible smudge it just above the bird’s right wing). When I wrote about them last night I assumed they were on the lens, but after a thorough cleaning (I even ran the camera through the dishwasher–kidding) the smudges are still present. Verdict: My camera is broken. Those smudges must be on the sensor, likely caused when I dropped it. Looks like I’ll be getting a new camera sooner than I thought. It’s a drag, though, because I was hoping to keep this camera as a spare for times when I didn’t want to take out the big DSLR. I’m going to hit the camera store downtown today and see if there’s any chance of a quick fix, but it’s very unlikely. Oh well. Crying over spilt milk won’t get it back into the bottle, right.

Okay, here’s a more serious photo from today’s outing. I really like this photo because the dad and his boys on the beach give some perspective to the size of the bluffs. This was taken in the late afternoon, as the sun was setting. Sure doesn’t look like a winter photo, does it. Hope you like it.

Camera tragedy today! I dropped my camera and watched it bounce along the pavement. Yikes! But all was well, thank baby jebus. However, upon arrive home after a long afternoon of photography, I discover that my lens must have gotten dirt on it, even though I did check it. With most of the photos it’s not noticeable, but I tried my hand at tracking seagulls over water and in those shots you can clearly see the smudges. Oh well, it was bound to happen someday, right? I think this is my first time getting caught with serious, photo ruining lens smudges.

So I spent most of the afternoon downtown with Diane, my dearest bestus friend. We went for lunch and walked around enjoying the beautiful albeit somewhat windy day. Afterwards I headed out to the Scarborough Bluffs (Bluffers Park, to be exact) and snapped off a bunch of landscape/nature shots, which I have to admit is really not my strongest style. But I did get some nice shots at both locales. And of course y’all kn ow I’m only joking with this photo caption, right?

As for the photo, I think a certain swan spent a little too long chatting up some cute swan hotty at the local watering hole and he’s now in the dog house, or would that be swan house? I don’t know. This isn’t my best photo of the day, but it’s certainly the funniest.

Vincent Van Gogh had it made. Act all freakin’ crazy, cut off your ear, get committed to an asylum, and then paint like a mo’fo. He wasn’t worried about selling his art– heck, it never occurred to him. He painted for the sake of the art, for self-expression, and just because he just HAD to. Passion, pure and simple.

OK, so I’m oversimplifying, and as for poor VVG, the guy led a tortured life. I’d like to skip the asylum and missing ear part. I’d also like to sell my art before I die.

But as I get into the marketing side of my photography, I’m learning that creating great art isn’t even a start. There’s so much to learn about online selling… banner ads, cost-per-click, bounce rates, email opt-in, social networking… aaaargh! And that’s just the web stuff.

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