Why Filters are Nice

A few evenings ago I was running, wearing my camera backpack, to a Mississippi River bridge from which I hoped to find a sweet angle of a rainbow and some storm clouds. About halfway there I heard the sound of an opening zipper followed by the normally cool sound of shattering glass.

I’d probably left my camera pack partially unzipped, or perhaps the weight of the second body in the little outside pocket wrenched the panel open, but either way, there was my 70-200mm lying in a pile of broken glass and mud along with my D300 in a rainwater puddle.

Luckily the puddle was shallow and the camera fine and although the lens looked gruesome, the damage was limited to the filter that took the brunt of a fall like an optical hero.

A similar thing happened a couple years ago right after I bought the lens—running (to a bus that time), interrupted by CRASH! I’d cut the broken filter ring out, but the lens threads were bent so fitting a new filter on was very difficult. Actually, until the drop, for the last couple of months I’d been trying to unscrew it to clean off some smudges, but had been unable to budge the sucker.

Lo and behold after this latest disaster (after the shattered filter was cut away) I nervously picked up a new one and it fit right in—the threads were straightened by the latest fall. A case of ironic fortune I hope never to test again.

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Introduction

This little blog will, I hope, document my de-piping of a dream to do nature photography and writing for a living. I guess if the aforementioned hope bottoms out until the chassis rips off, it might be interesting all the same.

While reading about those who are doing or have done what I aspire toward, there are generally two types: 1) the ones who say the gist of, “I just started showing my work around and never had to look back,” and 2) the ones like Galen Rowell who said something to the effect that he found himself with boundless energy to send stories and photos and receive piles of rejection letters, or Tom Till who said in an interview he could have wallpapered his living room with rejections.

I like the latter for the drive and persistence it took those guys to get from doing what they wanted, to doing what they wanted for pay.

The first step was I quit my newspaper job (a chain of little weeklies) in March and hit the road. Spent a month in Arizona and Utah. Overall, 5,000 miles by car, 200 by foot, and 10,000 photos.

Here are a three of my favorites.

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