Some days I have personal victories, some days I have work victories. Today was just a good day. Through an interesting confluence of events I had two firsts today.

Today I had my first photo published in a national (international?) magazine. The photo was used to advertise the Rhode Island Flower Show in Frommer's Budget Travel Magazine. It's a small placement to be sure, but hey - I'll take it. In my work I used to hand off the photography to my colleagues, but starting just about two years ago I was enchanted by photography. Just about 1 year ago, I took that photo with a Hasselblad by existing light in a rather dark room. I blogged about it then too.

To give a little background, I was hired to cover the event with the understanding that it wasn't a big budget event. They hadn't had professional photographs taken of the event before and as a relative newbie to professional photography work, I used it as an experience and portfolio builder. It was a great experience and a great show.

On a different note, we (our business, not PhotographyRI) had our first video played on the largest screen at the Providence Place Mall Theatres (which has to be one of the largest in Rhode Island). We do a lot of smaller screen work, so seeing our work screen tested on the big screen was exciting. Saturday is the big kick off event that the video is for - everything ought to go swimmingly.

Exciting times. Small victories in the grand scheme of things, but everybody has a first time if they're lucky. Today was mine. Thanks everyone for checking this site out and contacting me along the way as I document my experiences.

How many people started with digital and switched to film? Probably not many, but I'm one of the few I suppose. I was never serious about photography until a couple of years after I had purchased my DLSR. That isn't to say I wasn't taking photos until then - just that I was more likely to use auto settings and not understand what I was doing.

I've been shooting more and more with Digital again, especially since I upgraded to the Fuji S5 Pro. So much so that I just started another website dedicated to the S5 Pro and Fujichrome film: DSLRHOUSE.com. If you've been to Japan, and you're a Nikon user, you've probably been to Nikon House in Ginza (AKA Sukiya Camera). Now I'm starting my own Camera House - so some posts will be doubled on this site and that site.

I'm just back from a trip to Japan (where I visited the Nikon Salon and many cool places) and I have some inside knowledge of good places to go for camera goods. If you need it; hit me up and I will post about it.

My goals for this trip were myriad, but of note: I didn't take a 35mm film camera. Instead I took a tripod and the Hasselblad as my primary photographic mission camera. The theory being that I could cut out of the center of a Hasselblad slide the equivalent of a 300mm lens on 35mm and still be only slightly smaller than actually shooting 300mm on 35mm film. But I would still have that amazing 160lpp/mm resolution going on from the Zeiss lens. On top of which I would be using that iridescent fujichrome film. All tops for me.

Or so the theory goes, but in the end I used the Fuji S5 extensively as well. The big experiment was shooting Konica/Minolta film that I had never heard of until the day before the trip. Centuria Pro 400, 220 format. It was cheap - really cheap. So, I bulked up on it and about 10 other kinds of film and headed off to the far east. I used 12 rolls of film, compared to the 40 or so I took - so not quite what I was aiming for - but I never felt short of film. The one problem with slide film is that it is so damn slow. It just can't hold a candle to 1600+iso on the Fuji. But, on the other hand the Konica film had such "presence" and film quality that I couldn't be happier. It was the right mix. I forgot just how much information is contained in a slide when compared to a DSLR image. The S5 pumps out interpolated 12MP images. In decent light the Hasselblad gives me easily over 16MP of real data - and that may only be half of the real resolution of the film.

Different purposes for the two cameras - Hasselblad and film for rocking out on resolution and dramatic tone (Fortia, Velvia, Astia, and Konica Centuria). The Fuji S5 for shooting people and complex mixed lighting situations where the latitude of the film wouldn't match the variance of the scene.

More photos to come - and check out DSLRHOUSE to see even more.