Winning Big

So I totally finished Nanowrimo on time.  At about one in the afternoon on the last day of November in fact, after having lunch with my family and with three hundred words to go.  I ended it while my parents were watching the making of Downton Abbey, and with very little fanfare.  And I thought - ain't no thing.

Yes, it was difficult.  I slept at two or three every morning, with work the next day and two extra projects weighing on my head.  I actually kept my word count up on holidays even if I was nodding over the keyboard in a hotel room.  I had loads of writer's block.  Loads.  I swear that at least half the story is incoherent.  But it was easier than I thought soldiering on, not turning back.  Sometimes you just need to do something to know it can be done.  I feel now like I need to put my 50,000 American Typewriter font words in a drawer for a little while and work on what I've been hungering for this whole time - short stories.  Knowing that I can write the equivalent of a short story in two days now is a powerful tool.  It doesn't need to be good to start with.  It just needs to be there.

I haven't won Nanowrimo officially or anything.  I didn't even sign up on the website because I was so doubtful of my ability to commit (turns out it exists).  There is no one now to certify that it wasn't just all gibberish or the same word repeated umpteen times.  It's cool.  I know I did it.  (And my parents, who were subjected to reading scraps and pieces).

Lots of my friends finished too, and I'm very proud of them!  It was a great refresher course.  From here on out, the writing can start again, work or no.

So, I did what you do when you finish a project.  My brother HS and I went out, and I did some serious damage.  I bought Big.

I have been wanting a DSLR camera for a long time.  At least four years to be specific.  But I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to get the fanciest tools to motivate myself to learn something at the start.  It embarrasses me and makes me feel spoiled.  I didn't want to be one of those kids toting a huge gadget and only being able to shoot in automatic.  Instead, I waffled for several months about getting a camera with manual settings and settled for a Canon G11 back in 2009.

I'm not a photography fanatic.  I wouldn't even say I'm good at it.  I don't think my photos are fantastically composed or coloured, but I'm not fussed.  I just enjoy documenting the things I see and live and I thought it would be nice if I could take better pictures than the flat, unfocused ones on the teensy Panasonic Lumix my father had bought.

I went to Barcelona with that camera, for example, and I couldn't even get the sky to look blue.  So I blew $800 on a Canon G11 with manual controls.  One of the best investments I've ever made.  I taught myself to shoot in manual and learned about the holy trifecta of shutter speed, aperture and ISO.  (I'm still slightly clueless, but I tried to get the basics down.)  I read up on contrast and the ever elusive depth-of-field and different types of lenses.  I spoke with all the professional news photographers I used to work with and some of them even let me play around with their massive Nikon D3s.

There was no way I was going to buy a camera to put it in a friggin' drawer.  I took pictures of my surroundings at least three times a week, if not every day.

That G11 followed me everywhere.  London, Warwick, Oxford, Dublin, Paris, Wales, Thailand, The United States.  It went on boats and planes and trains and in hostels and hotels and on airport floors and out in the freezing cold and rain and snow.  I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my friends and myself and food and the English countryside and documented everything I did so that I could email pictures to my parents.  A couple of the pictures even got published in the newspaper when I was working as a journalist.  And finally, finally I felt like I had earned the right to carry a DSLR, so Big came home to meet Little.

The Canon 600D (or as it's known in Europe, the Rebel T3i, which I prefer) cost me less than $1,000 from, don't laugh, Mustafa.  And it came with a tripod and bag.  And a whole lot more to learn.  Once again, as with anything new, I'm out of my depth.  I have to learn even more about light and focusing and controlling my depth of field.  I have to figure out how to best use lenses, how to shoot around the weight of the new guy and how to make the most of the equipment I can afford.  I'm not getting rid of Little, of course.  He'll follow me on holidays and to music festivals and when I just don't think I can manage carrying a massive bag.

Sure, I'm not an expert, nor do I think I'll ever be.  I'm just one step closer to documenting life the way I think I see it.  And that really excites me.  When the man at Mustafa's Canon counter, Raja, was ringing up my purchase, he said, "Make sure you use your camera okay?"

"Of course, Uncle.  Why would I pay so much for something not to use it?"

A little sadly, "I know a lot of customers like that.  They take it out one, two times, and say it's too heavy.  Then they stop.  Three months later they take out and try to shoot.  Got fungus already."

I shook my head.  "I promise not to do that, Uncle.  I'll be back to see you soon."

And do you know, with all I've learned, and all there is to learn, I probably will be.