First, the camera melt down. For the past few years, I have been using a trust Nikon D300. This has been a workhorse of a camera and has taken many great pictures in all genre's that I have shot. For the past few months though, once in a while, the shutter has started to stick and it's annoying as it would take ages to unstick, despite turning the camera off and on, and hitting the shooting button. On the recent Southwest inaugural that I did to Montego Bay, it got decidedly worse and worse during the day, so much so that I switched back to my D200 to complete the weekend. After calling around some repair places, it was finally established that it needed a new shutter - it had in it's life taken just under 110,000 pictures. However, the cost of the shutter repair was excessive, so instead, I invested in a used D300S with only 3,000 shots on the shutter and am finally working with that. In between, my D200 stood up well to the task - it still has a lot of use in it, so a great backup camera.
So, what has happened in the past year. In February, we had our annual aviation photographer convention at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, that allowed me to get some new previously unshot subjects.
Firstly, Miami
Then Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale's weather has been not the best all year - ther heat haze has been amazing, the rains have been persistent and as we got towards summer, fewer and fewer shooting days were available. However, there were some great days once in a while to get some great shots of new stuff.
As noted before, British Airways inaugurated service to Fort Lauderdale from Gatwick and that was a special day to enjoy.
And then there has been the ever search for special schemes, the one I really wanted, the new JetBlue NYPD dedication aircraft, which finally happened lately.
So, as I get more adjusted to the new camera, hopefully, there will be more and more new shots from behind the camera lens...
