Downtown Roanoke

Welcome and Happy New Year to you! You're not going to find any resolutions here. Don't believe in them. Am only going to break them, so why bother? For those regular readers of this blog you may have noticed I've really slacked off with my posts over the last couple of months. Oh, I've got reasons and excuses, but today's not the day to talk about them. Instead, I'd prefer to think of the first day of this year as motivation for the remaining days of the year to get me moving again by igniting and keeping lit my creativity fuse. What better/easier way than with photos?

For Christmas my lovely daughter picked out a new camera for me. I had a couple of "must-have" feature requests such as a long optical zoom, fancy-schmancy effects, easy to use, something small enough to fit in my bicycle pouch, and one that would be comfortable in my ever crippling hands and cheap enough that when I dropped it I wouldn't freak out. She found exactly what I was asking for in the form of an Olympus Stylus SZ-15. In another post I will review it after using it for more than one day.

Yesterday she and I went downtown and it was the first time I was able to explore a little with it. So, without further adieu, here are a couple of shots of my hometown of Roanoke...

The Taubman Museum using the sparkle filter.

This was taken using the optical zoom at its max 24x which I believe is equal to 600mm. Notice the quality has not deteriorated. When I took it I didn't notice the birds on top of the sign.

Fragmented effect

Original shot of Taubman using no effects

Using the Reflection effect. First time I've had a camera with one.

Same position, same subject, same effect, totally different outcome. So far this is my favorite effect.

Again, same subject, different effect.

 

Unfortunately we had to leave downtown quickly or I would have experimented with many more settings and subjects. I foresee many cool pictures in my future, and some really unique book covers too...