The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

I had two choices. An upgrade for my ipad 1 or a camera. Since I am having back problems and couldn’t carry a camera backpack with 2 bodies and few lenses anymore (when traveling in and out of the country)  the answer was pretty simple.

I took some test shots and this is one of them. I used my father-in-law’s own reproduced painting of Johannes Vermeer. Light sources were coming from all directions AND I set the ISO at 3200 instead of 100! (read later why) ….hence this isn’t really a ‘justified’ presentation of the painting. One of my favorites among my father-in-law’s work. I tell you he’s got a lot. Quality work by someone who did not have any training but used solely his fantasy when painting.

I chose this point and shoot camera relying solely on reviews I read online. I am keeping my fingers crossed hopefully this is the P&S camera I have been searching for to use daily and who knows..even on vacations. One important thing I must do first before I get back to doing photography at full speed..gotta visit the optometrist because my vision is really poor at near distances, I miss doing macrophotography :(

source:

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch pronunciation: [vərˈmɪər]; baptized in Delft on 31 October 1632 as Joannis, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.[4]

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken’s major source book on 17th century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.[5][6] In the 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.[2] Since that time Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

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