iconography

By now the entire free world has heard the news -- King of Pop Michael Jackson has died. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that he was probably one of the most significant individuals of the 20th century... who else can you name besides religious figures, world leaders and tyrants who are recognized worldwide and had such a huge impact on society, culture, and of course music? For those of you who grew up the same time as I did, who doesn't remember listening to Billie Jean or Beat It, and trying to moonwalk like MJ?



For sure MJ was a controversial figure, ever since he grew up and stopped being the cute kid singer from the Jackson 5. His clothes were wild, his songs filled with shrieks and grunts, and his videos broke the mold of what music videos were expected to be. And of course there's countless things that could be said of his oddly changing appearance and the scandals involving him and children. However, society tends to try to focus on the positive aspects of an individual after they have passed on, and in my mind there is clearly a wealth of phenomenal music, pop culture influence, and humanitarianism that MJ left behind for us to remember him by. MJ we'll miss you, but because you were so prolific you left so much for us to enjoy and so in a sense, you live on in our hearts and minds.

Here are a few of my favorite MJ videos for you to enjoy.

Rock With You

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Never Can Say Goodbye

Beat It

Billie Jean

longshot

Long exposure shot, taken one night after work.

flashback

My dad's Nikon 35mm camera, taken with Nikon D60.

Over 30 years ago, my dad bought a Nikon SLR 35mm film camera and started carrying it around to take photos of our family and our travels. It was pretty big and heavy, and I remember one time as a kid we were in Las Vegas and somehow I got smacked in the face with the camera hanging from my dad's shoulder, giving me a bloody nose. After I got over the initial pain and commotion, my dad had me pick out numbers for Keno, saying that my bloody nose was "lucky". Ah, such a wonderful childhood...

Fast forward to present day, and I find myself retracing my father's footsteps. I started getting more into photography as of late, partly due to some work that involved digital camera technology, and decided to get an dSLR. After much research and deliberation, I decided on a Nikon D60... ordered it on Amazon and started clicking away. As far as entry-level dSLRs go the D60 is not the top of the line model (that honor goes to the Nikon D90), but I thought it would be plenty enough for me to learn with. When my dad found out I bought a new Nikon, he offered to give me the old Nikon body and lens. I probably won't use the body to shoot film, but the 50mm prime lens he had is in reasonably good condition (for being 30+ years old) and can be used with modern Nikon SLRs in manual mode.

Well, after nearly 30 days of shooting with it I decided to return the D60... and get a Nikon D5000 instead. In the last month I've tried to rationalize not getting the D90... after all it's over double the price of the D60. But Nikon just came out with the D5000 which has nearly all the features of the D90 crammed into a D60 sized body. Upgrading from the D60 to the D5000 gets me better auto-focusing abilities (11 vs. 3 AF points), slightly more megapixels (12 vs. 10 MP), a LiveView function, the ability to record HD 720p video clips, and a swiveling LCD display. I don't think I need the few additional features that the D90 offers (support for much older autofocus lenses and a better high-res LCD display) for several hundred dollars more, hopefully that money would be better spent on getting better lenses and other accessories.

My dad's 50mm f/1.4 prime lens should work fine with the D5000 in manual mode as well but as it totally predates autofocus technology, it has to be manually focused. I'm going to keep trying to use it and hopefully the LiveView with magnification will make manually focusing it on distant objects easier. Here is a photo I took with the D60 and my dad's 50mm lens, stay tuned for more when I get the D5000 in. I've also got some extra batteries and a tripod on the way, and eventually I'll start shopping for more lenses... at the moment I'm considering either the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens or the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens ... wow isn't that a mouthful.