I'm taking yet another class from Ann Cutting, one of my favorite photographers even before I started at Art Center. I sent her fan mail once. Well, twice, actually. She's one of those people who just seems effortlessly creative, all the time. She snaps a picture and it comes out art. She's also wicked smart. And really really nice. I hope she doesn't read this, I'll get embarrassed. Anyway.

She gives some one word assignments, mostly because it seems like a lot of editorial and stock uses need metaphorical images to represent a relatively simple concept in a new way. Last term I agonized through "connection" and came out with some plug people. This time, it's "potential". Does this say potential to you?

I shot this digital, like the last one, and I have to say, the Nikon 990/995 sucks. The camera probably has the worst UI of anything I've ever used, and really bad gradient banding I fought with (mostly unsuccessfully, as you can probably tell). I spent a lot of time adding noise and switching back and forth into LAB color mode. Not happy. I also had to reshoot the whole thing because I couldn't tell on the tiny LCD back if anything was in focus. It wasn't. Michael was a very, very patient head. I still like the fact I could shoot it and then open it on my computer 5 minutes later, but I am fantasizing about the day that we are suddenly presented with digital cameras that pop out 80MB files and act just like regular cameras. Using that Nikon gives me the same feeling I had futzing with my Apple II. It's so cool, but I know there's gotta be something better coming really soon. I just hope it'll be less than $20k.