Look, photography was never quite my forte. It seemed like an expensive hobby and I just did not think I would ever get good at it. Still, I had my blog and I needed to include some photographs and images on it. For the first few months I wrote about concerts and comedy shows, places I went and foods I ate, and everyone loved what I was saying but felt the complete lack visual pizazz was holding me back from a wider audience. I shrugged them off but eventually relented taking a photo of a particularly delicious Criff Dog for a post about artisinal hot dog culture in New York. The photo of course was junk because I took it with my Black Berry, a device not known for it's photography strength. Some folks were psyched about this incremental step, still more said it was worse to have a terrible looking photo than no photo at all.

After a while my friends had had enough. For my birthday two separate friends got me the best Nikon cameras, well maybe not the best but practical ones that worked well. I entered into the fray not sure at all of how to work the things. Luckily it turns out using a digital SLR camera is fairly intuitive, especially to someone taking clunky looking photos on a Black Berry for several months. I felt good the first time I put up a post about a concert from the band Times New Viking complete with a fantastic photo of them rocking out in fury. Sure it took about thirty shots to get one that was usable, but I got one and was on my way to be a functional photographer for my own blog.

Over the next several weeks I lived with my Nikon SLR. It became an extension of my own hands and eyes. I took photographs of everything never knowing what might seem worth writing about later. In fact having these visual directories of the events and occurrences in my life actually made me a better writer. Suddenly the details of the scene were not some hazy recreation. Now things were starting to come together.

Not coincidentally as soon as SLR cameras came into my life my readership spiked. It seemed once paired with a visual component even of an amateur but not junk quality my writing could really speak to people. I was so thrilled by the increase in traffic that my confidence was buoyed. It became impossible to even consider my world without my camera. It and my writing had become one.