I have the composer and assorted parts. a great little rig especially when I am trying to shoot a nature shot and the normal lens do not capture what I want. Also great to get you out of a funk when shooting

If you have CS5 try the "content aware fill" , I tried on your pic and it did a very nice job of removing the pole

Very Nice, that clouds really came out strong, not over done.

may I have permission to adjust photo and post

Enjoy the new camera. possible we will run across each other taking in NH beauty.

Have to agree Lightroom is much more then a cataloging program and then photoshop/elements for heavy lifting

yes

Then you want some really good glass to zoom in as close as you can or some good sneakers to get your body as close as possible

Here is a quick process to bring more detail out, used nik silver effects pro then over layed with softblend also took the sand with a layer mask back to B&W. spent 1 minute on it so not close to being a good selection. I might have tried a much lower angle as far as composition having the camera almost in the sand.

are you uploading a jpg?

Here we go again :), Both camera brands (nikon/canon) are very good. since you do not have any lens already then you can make the decision this way. Either buy the brand your friends have so you can tryout their lens when you want to add or buy what the local camera store sells so you can go in and tryout the lens you want to buy. Third option join the local camera club make friends and see what most of them are shooting that way you can tryout and learn from them.

It should also the higher mp camera will allow a larger enlargement or more cropping to take place before the quality of the image degrades, the only other variable certain models and brands have less noise at higher iso settings.

I guess you did not see what happen to the stuff in safe deposit boxes in New Orleans. Also what makes you think dvds and cd will last 5 years. :D

My back up is multi. first a Drobo which is expandable and allows ready access, then a cloud backup carbonite. Here are the reason cd even gold fail easily and breakdown. Hard drive that are not spun up often or then can fail. Cloud storage if you research the different ones that use multi redundant systems are logical choice. So if you put all your images in one method you could easy become disappointed with a lost. Fire, flood and environmental catastrophe can happen without a redundant on and off site storage your images might survive.

I used geniune fractracl which was then taken over by alienskin, It is amazing take a 72 dpi thumbnail from the net and make a decent printable 8 x 10 in 30 seconds with some time make a great print