Regarding photography, the highlight of December was getting my new Nikon D40. I knew it was coming so had been doing a lot of reading to be ready to make the most of my new tool. If you look at my LibraryThing profile, you will see that I was pillaging the shelves of my local libraries for their books on photography (as well as my normal eclectic range of other reading material).

Although I knew it was coming, the rules of the game were that I wasn’t allowed to start using until after I opened it on Christmas Day. If you look on Flickr at the pictures I have taken with the new camera you will see that I got busy straight away.

I have to say that I am very pleased with the results. While there is a lot more to capturing effective images than a good camera, having better tools can help. I was particularly happy with this shot, taken at RHS Wisley. The point of focus and the shallow depth of field were in just the right place; furthermore, this is straight out of the camera with no post-processing.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it was my best picture of the year. My plan is to give it some stiff competition in 2007. I will probably try and pick a favourite at the end of each month as I suspect I may have too many photos to wade through by the end of the year!

What about you? Would you have picked this shot as the best from my pick of the month set? Or was there another one I passed over entirely?

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december 2006

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