While we were in Ottawa a couple weeks ago my D70 camera started having problems.. the main control dial stopped responding! I had to send my camera by overnight courier for service and was suddenly without a good means of taking pictures. It’s like taking a painters brush away, stripping a musician of his instruments, breaking the thumbs of a clay sculptor!! Ok, melodramatic, but you get the picture (no pun intended). I called a service rep at Nikon and told them about my camera, that I had a wedding to do photography for in two weeks and a trip to the Maritimes after that. The service rep wasn’t really sympathetic. He told me that they would look at the camera when it arrives and would call me within five weekdays to tell me how much it would cost to fix. After that it may take 4-6 weeks for the parts to come in, depending on the problem. GAH!!

I had a few frantic days trying to find an alternative camera for the wedding, wondering if it might be better to purchase a new camera than pay to fix a three year old one, etc, etc.. After 10 days I called Nikon to find out what was up, and they told me that they had just got the camera from their receiving department. My hopes fell for getting it back for my vacation.

The next day a box arrived from Nikon. I was shocked.. thinking that they must have sent it back without doing anything for some reason. But I opened the box, pulled out my fully functional camera and an invoice for $0. Dunno why, not gonna ask as the camera was beyond warrenty. Just thankful to have it back, especially in time for the wedding! Let the picture taking resume!

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In other photographic news I recently posted some photos of a strong storm on my flickr page. Normally my photos get a few views from friends and occasionally others who happen by them. Most of my photos have less than 50 views and the highest was around 260. I was therefore very surprised to check a few hours later and discover that the three storm photos were up over 250 views and climbing by about 5 a minute. By the end of the day they had reached 600.

Turns out a weather web site (http://natures-wrath.blogspot.com/) had discovered them and linked to my photos.

(click on an image for a larger view)

Dark Storm

Alberta Storm – This storm front moved in quickly from the mountains. I could see it coming for quite awhile and once it got close I was overwhelmed with it’s size and power. I had never seen such a clearly defined storm front before. It hit hard with thunder, lightning, hail and heavy rain. And then it was over as quick as it began..

Storm Front

Dark Line in the Sky