Photography+Dinner Plans

I started my photography class today. It was great! Despite the fact that my camera is AWOL somewhere out there in air-mail land, I was able to use someone else's (he has two) for the photo-shooting segment. It was interesting to use a D-SLR for the first time, and I got really into it. There is something very peaceful about the repetitive shooting of photos, and I just kept taking one after the other, barely noticing the ISO and the F-Stop (although that could also be because I'm really inexperienced with D-SLRs). One of the women in the class commented, "You're so quiet when you take pictures." I was definitely 'in the zone'--no pun intended (lame photography joke to anybody who's ever heard of this).

But besides feeling great because I had a real camera with an SLR lens back in my hands, I was also shocked, because the teacher--a published, freelance photographer--looked at some of the quick snapshots I'd taken in the class, and seemed really impressed. He exclaimed several times over strangely blurry photos (I couldn't figure out how to work the focus. I'm old-school!), and said he liked my composition. Then he asked me to bring in some samples of my older work for next week. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. I'm also quite pleased that everyone in my class is very friendly and encouraging, despite my halting German and my need to sometimes have things clarified in English. In fact, I didn't ask anyone to clarify in English--a few nice people offered to do this for me, if I needed it, themselves. Everyone is enthusiastic and ready to take pictures. Yet another example that, if one looks hard enough, one can find small remnants of "home" anywhere.

The second part of this post's title has to do with the dinner I am planning on making myself either tomorrow or Thursday. Spinach miso soup (from miso packages purchased at a Japanese grocery store in Düsseldorf), with the remains of the spicy tofu from last weekend thrown in. I might fry some onions for it, as well. We'll see.