At the beginning of December, I bought a new digital SLR. I've been waiting to buy something for a while, but knew that buying a new dSLR body would ultimately mean buying a whole bunch of expensive gadgets and lenses to go along with it. Almost everyone I know owns Nikon, and having done a bit of research, would have probably bought a Nikon myself, however, my brother-in-law, who's a professional photographer, and my brother both landed up in the Canon camp. I've always owned Canon point-and-shoots, so decided to stay with the Canon brand, and bought a 50D. I was originally looking at the 5D Mark II, but there was no availability in December, and it was priced at almost double what the 50D retailed for, just body alone.

In the end, it doesn't really matter whether it's Nikon, Canon, Olympus, or Pentax, though Nikon and Canon are the biggest brands by far. As most things go, it's what you do with the tool that matters, more so than what it can do.

So in all my spare time, away from work I've been quietly studying and reading about lighting, composition, gadgetry and actually making an effort to get out and take some photos. To that end, I started posting and sharing photos on flickr and at Anthony's suggestion, joined a group called 52 Weeks of Pix. It's a group based around the idea of taking a themed picture every week and submitting it to the group for sharing.

This week's theme was green. In these parts, unfortunately, there isn't much green around. The idea of a golf green with plush green grass came to mind, until I realized that there was no green grass, only a washed out shade of brown. That's where Photoshop comes in. A few digital brush strokes, and the grass looks greener than the middle of summer. The two pictures show the as shot original unaltered image, and the modified version with much purdier grass.