I took a walk with some friends in the Fletcher Garden in the fall of 2022 and came out inspired to paint a gingko tree.

The young gingko tree, having shed most of its leaves, did not look as impressive as some big mature gingko trees I’ve seen elsewhere. That day I was shooting with my brand-new Nikon Coolpix1000 camera, but instead of using its pre-set mode - i.e., point and shoot - I was trying to use its manual mode setting like as if it was my DSLR Z9 or D850. Looking at the pictures from that day I realized that the pre-set mode was perfect for a walk in the woods and talking with friends rather than making ‘serious’ award-winning pictures. Well did I regret ignoring the small young gingko tree. (This tree in the foreground in this picture is not a gingko tree.) To console myself I painted an abstract of gingko branch and leaves in acrylic on canvas.

I began learning to use the Aperture, Speed and Manual modes with higher end Nikon camera in 2007. Going into it from the point and shoot camera took years of constantly shooting and learning from mistakes. A break now and then during the learning years isn’t such a bad thing as one comes back and do a little revision and there it is, quite user friendly after all. Perhaps that’s how one learns to fly a plane…or a rocket. Just saying. Each year the upgraded cameras are equipped with upgraded features as brands compete for better business medals. Who’s not to benefit by their best effort at selling their cameras? By the time I was comfortable using the manual mode to shoot birds at flight a few years ago, I had forgotten about the convenience of the point and shoot. Crossing back to life-simplifying convenience was not as easy as I thought, especially when I failed to read about the new camera before the walk. I thought I’d already absorbed all I could learn about how cameras work. In truth I should’ve just parked my manual-setting brain at home when using the convenient mode. Technology has sped away in the last ten years so that most people are using their iPhone camera to good effects. No thinking needed, no fumbling for buttons and juxtaposing exposure, white balance and brightness, all the fanciful buttons that camera diehards like to press. I agree with friends who say that the iPhone is all one needs for a camera, an all-in-one; but I still took this light-weight Coolpix1000 besides my iPhone on a writing workshop trip to Scotland in November 2023. What a good decision. This camera is not just a point and shoot camera but a point and shoot of consummate performance. iPhone camera is perfect for instant capture and send. But when I want to shoot some sheep grazing in a distant hill slope the Coolpix1000 zooms in to do a better job. Some people said they’d shot great pictures of the moon with it. I haven’t tried that yet. As for bird at flight photo trip I will have to bring something else from my arsenal: the heavy-duty heavy weight Nikon Z9 with the 200-500mm long lens.