I started working part-time job at a portrait studio. It’s actually the perfect part time job for me, besides the fact that I can only work for about three months before I leave. They knew that hiring me, though, so I don’t feel terrible about it. I’ve been training all week, learning how to use the fancy equipment (by photographing adorable stuffed animals on baby pillows) and memorizing all the package prices. It’s fun to utilize my burgeoning photography skills into a money making situation and to learn a little bit about portrait photography in the process.

Using fancy DSLR’s all day, however, was making me more and more sad that I hadn’t been able to buy my own DSLR that I’d been lusting after since July, especially now that I’m making money (and got a sweet tax refund), which had been my excuse for not buying a camera for the past two months. That mild sadness and frustration then combined with stress over my TFA readings (which are alternately making me feel mildly prepaerd and unbelievably unprepared) and the occasional lonliness of being at home with only  my parents to hang out with, thus making me super fun these past few days. After being sick of the funk, I  instigated many, many mildly tense conversations with my parents about how I’d really like to use my money to get this thing I’ve been wanting to get for months and months as a small reward for working hard, graduating early, and living at home to save money. I somehow convinced them it was a sound idea, found a way to finance it  and today, I went to Best Buy and got myself……

A BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, NIKON D90!!!! SUPERPHOTOEXCITEMENTWOOHOOO!!!!!

I, of course, came home, waited impatiently for my battery to charge, breezed through the user’s manuel, and started snapping photos of my only available subjects:

My mom’s uber cute, super tiny dog, Sookie.

My dad – who happily posed for a ridiculous amount of photos.

And of course, myself, in the obligatory mirror shot to show off myself and my beautiful new toy. (There was one where I looked way more exicted, but I figured I’d attempt to look cool for a brief moment.)

Hopefully, I’m now offcially snapped out of the funk. This week I’m finishing training at work and will hopefully be moving on to photographing actual children soon. Next Sunday, I’m meeting Jillian in New York to see Sleepwalk with Me (more on that soon), then a week from Tuesday, I’m heading back to LA for a week!

For now, though, I’m going to go take pictures of snow.

Now, on to the task at hand: This summer has not been great for a number (read: a ridiculous amount) of reasons. To help get myself through, I have spent hours online thinking about all the things I could buy myself if my job paid me $200 dollars an hour instead of $10. Sometimes it’s purses. Sometimes it’s shoes. But most of the time, it’s electronics. I blame all you bloggy people with your iPhone google readers, and your twitterberry, and your damn beautiful pictures on your lovely DSLR cameras! Damn you all! *breathes*

So here, for all of you to see and possibly buy me, are the things I most desire: 

1) The iPhone. (Yes, I’m that original. Deal with it.)

First of, it’s sooo pretttttyyyyy. All smooth and sleek and touchscreeny. Who wouldn’t want to spend hours sitting out in the sun, browsing the internet with your fingers? Plus, it would be one less thing to throw into my ever expanding purse! And the fast texting, and the IMing: I could be in touch with everyone I’m so bad at keeping in touch with! Not the mention the constant twittering, blogging from exotic and exciting locals, and maybe even reading the paper on the subway without hitting the people next to me in the face as I attempt to turn the pages and fold the paper all at once. And did I mention….so pretty! But alas, it is still midly expensive AND I would have to switch to ATT+T which I’m so not about. Which leads me to…

2) The Blackberry!

The ultimate LA status symbol: I never really thought about getting one until I sat in bars while “abroad”, multiple times, as the only one who didn’t have her Blackberry out on the table, waiting for someone to BBM me. I felt like such a nerd when I pulled not my silver flip phone with no discernibly cool features. Again, it has all the perks of fast texting, browsing the internet on the go, and again, the status symbol thing. While not as pretty as the iPhone, I’m sure I could manage. 

3) The one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (and probably the reason I wrote an entire paper this morning, two days before it’s due instead of on Wednesday or Thursday as I’d originally planned): A DSLR Camera – or more specifically, the Canon Rebel XSI. 

While I’ve been wanting to be awesome at photography for quite some time (in addition to my desire to be a great painter slash drawer, which will never EVER happen), I’ve always been discouraged by how my pictures come out looking ordinary and boring. After learning the basics of photography in my video production class last year (as filming is just photography with movement), I realized it was probably my camera that was holding me back from really improving. I upgraded to a new Canon Powershot, which is really an awesome camera in terms of point-and-shoot cameras. Then while on my trip to Israel, my friend Jessica had her DLSR camera and was taking RIDICULOUSLY amazing pictures. No matter what I did, mine still didn’t compare. (See also, my shots of Provincetown this past weekend. Even with Photoshop tweeking, they don’t measure up. I tried to take about eight shots of my friends walking down the street at night, and each one came out worse than the last. “IF ONLY I COULD OPEN MY APERATURE! DAMN YOU HIGH ISO NOISE!”)

Adding to these growing frustrations was my reading the live blog from the Building Traffic through Content and Community session at BlogHer, which suggests getting a DSLR to add some personality to your blog. I realized how much I’d been wanting to do this, but couldn’t, because I never have pictures I feel are worth sharing. (One day I tried to take pictures of my walk to work, which is really a beautiful walk, but they were nothing like I wanted them to be, so they are sitting on my computer doing nothing instead of here, as part of the witty and stunning post I’ve composed in my mind.) I realized some of my favorite bloggers are my favorites because of their photography. I then started getting obsessed with looking at these lovely ladies’ photographs, again getting jealous and wishing I could capture my life in the ridiculously beautiful way they capture theirs. 

Basically, what this leads to is the past week of my life, researching cameras, having my friend Jen take me to Best Buy (where she works) to show me the camera I’ve been thinking about (said Canon XSI) and me taking better pictures of her standing in the store on this camera than I have ever taken with any of my point-and-shoot cameras. I obviously have to have one. 

If only I got paid $200 an hour, it would only take me five hours to earn one. 

In the meantime, I am taking a photography class this fall, where we shoot on 35mm film cameras and develop the photos ourselves. (I may or may not be a little too excited to spend time in a dark room.) I figure if my thoughts are correct, if with the right tools I can take some quality pictures, I’ll attempt to upgrade to the DSLR with some money (maybe birthday money?) to be stolen found at a later date. 

I was going to write about how if I got a new DSLR camera I could clearly need a new Macbook Pro to handle all the RAW pictures I’d be uploading and editing, which my computer now clearly could not handle as Safari “unexpectedly quit” twice while I was writing this entry, but I think if my parents read this, they will have a heart attack, so I’ll stop now.