Spring has sprung and one of my favorite things to do is in full effect. Rid­ing. I’ve been rid­ing for slightly over a year now — though it’s some­thing I’ve always wanted to do — I should have lis­tened to the lit­tle voices in my head back in col­lege. It’s an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence to be out in the ele­ments… feel­ing the wind, smelling the scents (good and bad) and hear­ing your exhaust roar — yes, mine roars :)) Even bet­ter when you are out shar­ing that excite­ment with good friends.

In my rid­ing adven­tures I’m usu­ally find­ing new roads — places I’d never drive around aim­lessly to find in my car. Yes, motor­cy­clists do that from time to time. There are many routes to dis­cover and a fun way to do it is to ride out and when you are ready to head back home… turn on your GPS and hit “go home.” You do have to be mind­ful though not to end up three states away before you are ready to hit that “go home” button.

In all of this explor­ing, whether near or far, on my bike or in the car, I’m con­stantly pulling out my iPhone to shoot things I wouldn’t nor­mally shoot. The iPhone has been and still is an incred­i­ble source of cre­ative stim­u­la­tion — call it a form of ther­apy if you’d like. The draw­back is that it’s not the quick­est draw while rid­ing. I need it to be safe but also want it to be acces­si­ble. In addi­tion, while the iPhone is an awe­some lit­tle gad­get, the qual­ity of the images are cer­tainly not stock wor­thy. As a pho­tog­ra­pher I don’t want to miss those many stock oppor­tu­ni­ties I’m rid­ing by. Yes, what a pain. LOL. Now there’s the GF1. A cam­era I would never had con­sid­ered look­ing at. Why? Well the brand for one thing. Sorry Pana­sonic but you make nose trim­mers. LOL. Ok, ok, so you also make a pretty kick ass point and shoot. Thank you for that ;) Check out the specs for your­self on DP Review. Small enough to stuff in a pocket (slightly big pocket), inter­change­able lenses, man­ual expo­sure, nice size images and the RAW for­mat… all of this gives me enough to go out and fully enjoy myself being “care­lessly cre­ative” with­out lug­ging my huge pro cam on my back and wor­ry­ing about it… AND my back. And lastly for now, because it’s a point and shoot I can take it just about any­where. Walk­ing around the city, peo­ple ignore you if you are car­ry­ing a lit­tle cam­era vs the 5D Mark II. It’s not intim­i­dat­ing to peo­ple and you can use it fairly eas­ily with­out being asked “what are you shoot­ing with that camera.”

Some shots I would not have taken otherwise:

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