Originally I was going to use this blog to post photos from a trip that my husband, son, and I took last summer. It was a 5 week trip that took us 8000 miles through a lot of the US. Unfortunately, though we took about 5000 photos, there never seemed to be enough time to edit them and post them on the blog. At this point, I have decided to retool this blog to be about my photos in general.
I have been in love with photography ever since I got my first Brownie Starmite camera when I was about 9 years old. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, really, but I did know that I did not want to just take snap shots of friends and family. I wanted to take "art" shots, whatever that was. Even in those days, I loved to take pictures of my dolls, or an empty stroller, a stack of records, etc. Of course, they weren't very good and they usually didn't turn out the way that I had envisioned them in my mind.
Flash forward about 16 years to my college graduation. My parents got me an Olympus OM-1 SLR which I instantly fell in love with. I was now able to take more controlled pictures since I could adjust the aperature, f-stop, ISO of the film, etc. This was much more fun. The problem here was that film and developing were so expensive that I had to be choosy about what pictures I took. In addition, the developing process took long enough, that often the picture I wanted was no longer feasible if the first ones did not turn out. I have to say, though, some of the pictures that I took with this camera are still my favorites.
Then came the advent of the digital camera. I have decided that I was made for the digital camera. My first digital was a small palm sized Canon Powershot, which I loved. It allowed me to take pictures that better approximated what I saw in my head. The big benefits, though, were that I was able to see the results of the pictures in real time and re-shoot while the subject was still available and I could take hundreds of shots without worrying about the cost of the film or the developing. The downside was the ability to adjust settings. While the camera did/does have a manual mode, adjusting the settings was more frustrating than I was able to deal with. What this camera did, though, was to refuel my love of taking photos, and to allow me to learn more about natural light, setting up the frame, and other aspects of photography without having to worry about the settings.
My current camera is a Canon EOS Rebel DSLR that can either be shot in automatic mode, or can be fully manual. It is definitely the best of both worlds as it works well when I need to take a quick shot on auto, and equally well when I am playing around, taking numerous shots of the same thing, adjusting everything that I can think of, and just seeing what results.
