That's a really nice picture of Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. It's from my extensive collection of Disneyland photographs that have been taken over the years. I didn't take that picture. Mrs. DisneylandTraveler did. She takes nice pictures. I carry the camera.
Of course I take pictures too but I stink at it. I don't completely suck when it comes to taking pictures, just mostly suck. Of all the pictures I have taken over the years (well, since the advent of digital photography) I probably like less than 5% of my total picture taking output. But I try. And try. I really, really want to take good pictures but my efforts often fall short. I admire people who can take a good picture. Mrs. DLT can take a good picture most of the time. Me? Well... I'm handicapped. Literally to a certain extent.
I had a great Mom. She passed many great things on to me I would like to think. And she passed one not so great thing on to me as well. My mom had a tremor in her hands. It's called benign familial tremor. Her hands trembled. She passed that gene on to me so my hands tremble. Oh, it's not bad. I'm fully functional with my hands but they do shake a bit including when I hold a camera. You also may not want to get too close to me in a buffet food line. So there ultimately is the struggle with my picture taking at Disneyland. Pictures are not always razor sharp. In fact, rarely are. I probably have to take twice as many pictures as the next guy simply because so many will be deleted because of poor quality. Darn it. Oh, by the way, my mom was a waitress, shaking hands and all.
I try and blame the camera for a lot of this. Maybe if I have that perfect camera, then I can take magical pictures. In the years we have been married, I think Mrs. DLT and I have gone through 4 or 5 digital cameras. Sometimes they eventually break. Sometimes there are "accidents" as Mrs. DLT learned that it is not such a good idea to have a camera tethered around your neck when you walk into a swimming pool. But sometimes, I'm just looking for that camera that will say to me "just leave it to me Mr. picture taker, let me do the work, your hands are not a problem".
I really think I would enjoy photography as a hobby. Goodness know I need something to get me out of the house. Why not go take some pictures? The local Fry's Electronics is selling a Canon T3 DSLR camera this week for $379 (it was almost $800 when it first came out). The good people at Fry's send me an email every week suggesting things I might like to buy. This week they put the camera on sale that I could drool over. The Canon T3 is an outstanding piece of photographic equipment by almost all accounts. Could this be the camera that allows me to take that perfect Disneyland picture or pushes me out my chair on a Sunday morning to go take some pictures of, well, anything? I don't know. It's nice to dream about it.
Stupid hands.... Oh, by the way, whatever I wrote a photographs above, it also applies to videos. Probably more so.
Here are a couple of videos of Ol' Mr. Shakey in action. The first one is kind of short. Nice shot if the camera was still...
The next one is a longer video from a few years ago. I didn't take all of the snippets but the ones I did aren't hard to find.
