Zooming in

As the card hints, I got a cool thing (among many) for my birthday this year:

Paul surprised me with this lens for my camera. At first, I turned my nose up to this--what am I going to do with a telephoto zoom lens? I'm mostly interested in portraits and isn't this lens of sport fanatics and stalkers? But at Paul's urging, I tried it out and I have to confess, I was pleased with the pictures I got. I took Velina and Lindsay to the pool and got this one poolside as I was sitting in my chair:

And then I got this one sitting 30 feet away in the shade:

If you're wondering if she was swimming in a vat of psychedelic Kool-Aid, I'll confess that I was playing around in Photoshop and really pumped the Saturation. Note to self: dial it down from 11 on the Saturation.

The downside is that with this telephoto zoom lens on, the camera looks like this:

Even though I'm female, taking pictures of 8 year-old-girls at the pool with this setup, I felt a greasy comb-over short of looking like Uncle Pervy.

But beyond that, I'm looking forward to using this lens a lot more. Because of the aperture, I aim to use it a lot outside but 5 feet or more and this baby can give me some pretty sweet candid portraits.

So to my man and girl, I do like this present--thank you!