The past month has been extremely busy, what with the holidays to be celebrated and projects at work to be completed.  I haven’t had a chance to shoot as much as I would like, and now the weather has turned dark and cold.  Here’s hoping that the next few weeks will offer lots of opportunities to get back into the groove with the Nikon.

Santa brought me a new 50mm F/1.8 lens prime lens for Christmas.  It’s an auto-focus lens, but it doesn’t have a built-in motor.  Since my D5000 doesn’t have the auto-focus motor built-in, I’m having to learn to manually focus again.  Very frustrating when trying to capture pictures of the cat, but I think it will be okay when shooting landscapes.

On the processing front, I’m still learning my way around the Topaz suite of software, and still loving it.  Tonight, just for grins, I went back through some photos from last year and pulled this one out of the archives.  I think it’s a great shot of “getting back in the groove”!

This shot was taken at last year’s Glendale Jazz and Blue’s Festival.  I took the JPG and ran it through Topaz Adjust and pulled out a lot of detail in the fabric stage backdrop as well as the musician’s jeans and braids.

To all my fellow photogs, Happy Shooting!! Have a great 2011, and I’m looking forward to seeing all those great shots that give me so much inspiration!

Check out my Flickr feed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/suzannehight/ to see more of the shots that I’ve posted.