My friend, Diana, is the one who first put a digital camera into my hands. Literally. She'd been after me for a while to switch from film to digital and I was willing, eager, really, right up until I got to the store and quickly vanished beneath waves of words like macro and megapixels and digital doom zoom.

So Diana took pity, asked for a budget and my credit card number, then went online and bought my first digital camera for me. A lovely little Olympus which fit into the palm of my hand and, once I translated the mangled English of the manual, rarely left my side. It finally died and I boldly bought a new camera all by myself.

Life was good. But then Diana started telling me about the joys of the digital SLR, how when you press the shutter, the camera takes the photo at that very instant, so the shot of the dog catching the ball is actually of the dog catching the ball, and not a photo of the dog's ass flying by a second after the dog caught the ball. Imagine.

And then Diana upgraded to a Canon 5D and I became the delighted and besotted owner of her 10D with a 28-135 mm zoom (see how I can talk the lingo) and life was very, very good. Which is all a very long digression (sorry) on the way to telling you that last time Diana was here, we went for a walk with my 10D and she saw this succulent with the sunlight turning it all sorts of soft and juicy colors and she dropped down on the dirt and click-click, just like that, got this lovely shot.