The perfect picture

I'm always on the lookout for the perfect picture. I can't really say I'm that good at photography, but I find it interesting and I have enough invested in it that it's probably more than a hobby.

When Zachary was born, I parlayed his arrival into a new digital SLR, namely, a Nikon D70. It only made sense, since I had a decent sized investment in Nikon equipment. Since that time, I've taken over 5,000 pictures, probably 90% of them are of our little prince. And while I still take pictures with traditional slide film, especially on my Nikon F3HP, the beauty of digital is I get immediate feedback as well as the freedom to shoot at will and discard whatever I dislike.

Well, I had one of those Ansel Adams moments recently. It was on a Saturday evening behind our house, so we had the nice evening light. I just started taking a number of pictures of Zachary as he patrolled around our patio. And one of them just came out perfectly.

I did not do anything in Photoshop with this. I just thought the exposure, depth of field, white balance, and subject just came out perfectly. I have to admit - I did use a light meter (my Sekonic L-358), but I don't view that as cheating. It just helped me nail this one.