My introduction to digital photography was probably a bit more dramatic than most people's. To get the full picture – so to speak – let's travel back in time to the salad days of my life as a fledgling photographer: six years ago! Although digital cameras were available even then, they had as yet to come into their own, or rather into my hands. Naturally enough, this meant that I was still lugging around my film SLR – that's single lens reflex to all those out there who're sitting around scratching their heads. Anyway, along with my trusty camera, which I had spent a fortune to get by the way, I was also lugging around everything else that I needed along with it. Spare lenses, extra film, batteries, filters, basically the whole works. Having said that, even though I'm now almost fully digital through and through I still do carry most of the same things. The only thing that's radically different is the lack of film rolls. I now don't carry with me rolls and rolls of film, and I don't need to wait eternally to reload the camera either. Instead I have learned to do a quick change of my memory cards even under the direst of weather circumstances. Speaking of dire weather conditions it was on one of these days that I was introduced to digital cameras. There I was in the middle of nowhere as I like to call it, (other people prefer the term countryside), when I was suddenly beset by what was tantamount to a flash flood but in storm conditions not flood conditions. Naturally being in the middle of nowhere with not a house in sight and no car in sight either – I had parked about five miles away – I decided to make a break for the nearest road, where I was sure there were bound to be tons of cars. Well, my assumption was right, there were close to half a ton of cars on the road, unfortunately for me, I never got to it. With my usual impeccable sense of direction and timing I headed away from the road which was quite nearby, and also away from where my own car was parked. I could give you poor excuses as to why I forgot all about the map and the compass I had with me, but I won't bother. I didn't have a GPS with me at the time, but that's still no excuse for forgetting about the rest since I do periodically get lost on occasion. However, the fact that it was pouring down that I could barely see ten feet in front of me and that there was lightning crashing down around me at the time all contributed, and that's all I'm going to say on that matter!
