This is not a tiger. Trust me.

Just recently my wise and beautiful fiancé bought me a camera.  She may ultimately regret this.  Having only used an iPhone camera before, I was, quite frankly, stunned at the results.  Even without any discernible aptitude I was able to take some pretty great photos with it.  I'm currently learning how to work the multitude of buttons.  It's a Canon T3i with a couple of lenses.  I'm taking RAW images and messing about with them in Adobe Lightroom.  Meet Alley, one of our two cats.  She's my test subject.

I was hiding around the corner taking pictures of her as she stalked some dandelions.  The weather is just becoming very pleasant here and the cats (and the people) are thrilled to be outside again.  They think they're tigers in the tall grass (the cats, not the people).  My fiancé is poking and prodding the plants and murdering the weeds with bloodthirsty zeal.  I'm wandering around the yard enjoying life through a viewfinder.  This camera is very complex.  Or, at least, it can be.  It is also user-friendly and rather automatic, when you let it.  Until I acquire the skills to use it effectively I will just use the automatic setting.  It's fascinating to me how the autofocus works.  I know it's old hat to most people these days, but it still seems so amazing to me.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  -Arthur C. Clarke

Having this camera has caused an irrepressible urge to photo document  everything in my life.  It's going to be difficult to limit myself.  The initial idea behind this blog was to create a forum for sharing my process of creating a workshop here at home and then to move on into my woodworking projects.  But as I start to actually do it I see that this is going to be about creating a life.  A life here in Lunenburg, a life with my fiancé, who will be my wife in a month's time, and a household.  A homestead. The clinical process of work becomes the organic process of existence.  It's a fallacy to think I could separate the two.  Or that I would want to.

So I'm just going to write.  About anything at all, since I believe I'll find my focus as I go.  I'll take some pictures.  Cut some dovetails.  Enjoy this town.  You know, stuff.  We'll see how it goes.  Good night.