The Cherry Bean, or: the Crabapple

I took this picture last November, in a place called Partridge Run.  It’s somewhere in Berne – I can’t remember if it’s East Berne or West Berne or slightly Berne – would that make it the town of Singe?

At the time, I was messing around with depth of field exposures – putting some objects in tack-sharp focus while blurring out the background.  And as I wandered through the woods at Partridge Run, I came across this small crabapple, as it grew from the tiniest point on the end of a branch.  Almost as if the timeline from the tree to the branch ended in a big, red, fruity punctuation mark.

Nice.  Got the shot.  Maybe I’ll enter it in competition in 2014.  And like most pictures, once I’m satisfied with how they turned out, I post them on my flickr site.

This one, however, has a very special meaning to me.

This photo symbolizes the last picture I will ever take with my Nikon D700 camera.

I’ll wait a couple of minutes while you go find some paper towels, so that you can clean up the coffee you just spit all over your monitor when you saw the words “last picture I will ever take with my Nikon D700 camera.”

Monitor clean?  Okay.  Let me tell this story.

Although I have several different film cameras, as well as a couple of “point-and-shoot” cameras, there will always be an unbroken chain among my top-of-the-line camera gear.  I started in the late 90’s with a Nikon CoolPix 800 camera, and used it until I could use it no more.  Then I bought my first digital SLR, the Nikon D70.  And I used that until I could use it no more.

In July of 2009, I purchased my Nikon D700 camera.  It was a refurbished unit that I acquired at B&H PhotoVideo in New York City.  How long ago did I get it?  I blogged about it – from my original pre-Times Union blogspot.com portal.  And from the first time I used it – photographing the 2009 Independence Day fireworks show at the Empire State Plaza – I fell in love with that camera.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=138195

The D700 did things my D70 could never imagine.  And it allowed me to experiment with photography in ways I had never previously considered – including polar panoramas, star trails, HDR shots, and cinemagraphs.

I captured a meteor on Christmas Day with that camera.

I captured a butterfly as it noshed on some citrus fruit.

I captured the stony-eyed gaze of an Icelandic Sheep.

I captured the ethereal heavens of Thacher Park, as seen from the Helderberg Escarpment.

I captured the curiosity of a young llama.

I captured the beckoning wish request of a stone-built wishing well.

I captured an autumn shot along the Massachusetts Turnpike.

I captured a reflection in the rocky shoreline of Nova Scotia.

I captured the glazy, dreamy shot in Troy, hidden in the Mt. Ida falls.

I captured Hazel the dog before she licked my 180-degree Kenko lens.

I captured a shot of the Trinity Church from the air, just before its final demolition.

I captured my favorite “Polar Panorama” photo, with my favorite puppy.

I captured my first cinemagraph.

I captured a final moment with one of the great playground ballers, “The franchise” John Strickland. He’s on the right.

And thousands of other photos, thousands of other moments in four and a half years of photography.

Now it’s time to upgrade. Time to move to a new digital camera. The D700 has done all that it could for me. All that I could ever imagine.  All that I could ever want.

And the only way that I can convince myself that it’s time to upgrade…

… is to give up my D700.  And on a chilly Sunday morning, on my New York City vacation, I brought the camera back to the place where I first purchased it.  B&H PhotoVideo.

See, B&H has a program where you can trade in your old cameras and lenses and photo equipment for store credit or for cash.  I chose store credit.  The counterperson looked over my D700.  He initially graded it at a “9”.  Then he saw the tiny ding in the corner on the back of the camera – a ding that came from the time I nearly fell into the Atlantic Ocean while trying to photograph the lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove – and re-graded the camera to an “8”.  I also traded in my 85mm f/1.8 lens – a lens I bought back in 2006 for photographing Albany Patroons basketball contests.  Figured that would sweeten the deal a bit.

It did.  The counterperson printed a credit slip for me.

And just like that, a 4 1/2 year relationship ended.  No teary goodbyes, no heartfelt moments, none of that.  The camera will most likely be refurbished and become the new weapon of choice for another up-and-coming photographer, and it will continue to take amazing photographs.

This camera did everything I could ask of it.  It never failed, it never seized up, and it took some of the greatest photos in my catalog.

Now I need to move in a different direction.  A new direction with a new camera.

And I’ll get that camera someday.  Because I won’t have that crutch of saying, “Well, I still have this D700, there’s no reason for me to upgrade.”

Well… now there is.

And just like that cherry bean, that crabapple, that little fruit on the end of that tree branch…

It’s time for me to grow.  For me to bloom.  For me to achieve.

To take the next step and truly Define myself.