Picture This

Buy a Nice Camera

For several decades the eyes of the world were forcibly closed whenever they tried to look at China.  After WWII China had turned in on itself, and turned its back on the world.  During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese were kept busy erasing all remnants of the past and eradicating anything resembling Western thoughts or ideas.  This of course included keeping as many foreigners away as possible.  A lot of things have changed since then.  China continues to look ahead to the future, but they now celebrate their past and have restored and salvaged whatever survived the Cultural Revolution.  Today, foreigners are welcomed here with open arms, and the eyes of the world can finally see when we cast our gaze in China’s direction.  Considering that China is poised to potentially become the next global super power, a lot of us want to get a better look.

I am one of those people, and I love to take in as much of this mesmerizing country as I can while I am here.  But I want to capture these moments that have meant so much to me.  I want to share them.  I want to be able to revisit them in the future.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but if it’s a shit picture, it’s probably only worth a few words at best.  While in China I’ve seen some incredible things, things that would take me thousands upon thousands of words to accurately describe.  A picture is certainly more efficient, but only if it’s good enough. 

Whenever I looked at the pictures my little camera had taken and compared them with the images of the memories I had stored in my head, one thing always stood out to me: my camera simply wasn’t cutting it.  I realized it was time to spend a little money on a camera that could take some truly priceless shots. 

I bought a Nikon D7000 and it has been money well spent.  I just wish the instruction manual were in English.  And I wish I knew more about photography in general.  Thankfully, there are easy solutions to those problems, and thankfully the automatic settings on the camera are great and make up for a lot of my shortcomings as a photographer. 

Helpful hint: When you buy a nice, expensive camera and plan on taking it with you on a trip to Guilin and the Lijiang rice terraces, make sure you are using a memory card that works.  The last thing you want to happen is to have fantastic vacation and a camera full of roughly 800 breathtaking pictures only to find out that the files are all corrupt and won’t load onto your computer.  I speak from experience.