My First Post!

I was so excited when I started opening all of the packages from Amazon on Saturday morning. All the photography jargon on each of the boxes was almost too much to handle. When I held the camera in my hands, I realized the object of my months-long coveting, was finally mine. 

I have been reading photography blogs for months, learning about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I know what each of them mean and that they work together. I haven't had the hands-on practice to really GET IT though. I understand other rules of photography too, like the rule of thirds, no limb-chopping, etc. In some of my favorite photos I've taken with my regular digital camera, I can sometimes see that I unknowingly did follow them. 

But I've sabotaged myself in many new hobbies, even my career at times, by learning as much as I can, then getting frustrated and giving up because my execution is not perfect right out of the gate. 

I am not going to do that with photography and this camera. I am going to give it a chance. I am going to suffer through not being good at it for awhile. I'm not even going to expect exponential improvement. I am going to go with the flow, learning and trying and not beating myself. This is my documentation of the good, the bad, and the ugly of my journey.

Once I had everything out of boxes and put together, I took a picture of a mug on my coffee table, aiming to get the mug in focus and everything behind it blurry, while also getting the lighting right. 

I was actually really happy with this! I played around with the ISO only, which gave me lighter and darker images. I felt like I was executing what I'd learned. Great! I had to meet family for lunch, so I put the camera battery on the charger, and off I went. 

The next day I was nervous about failing, but wanted to get started on my new life in photography. So we went for a drive along the Cape. It was an overcast day, which I've heard is good for picture-taking. But as I stood at the ocean, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to take a picture of. So I tried some waves, with a little rock jetty. Tried to get the jetty only in focus by using a small aperture. Figured the ISO should be low because I was outside. Not sure if I even thought about the shutter speed, or looked at my ticker to see if the three landed it at zero. I got:

Whoa, that's a lot of white! I didn't know what to change, but I knew I had to change something. I didn't think I should raise the ISO because that would let more light in. I still was aiming for the jetty to be the only focus so I didn't change the aperture. I lowered the shutter speed. And I got:

I mean atleast I can see it now right? Just for fun, I lowered the shutter speed more, assuming it would get darker: 

I was so uncomfortable just standing there taking pictures of the same thing over and over, but looking back, I wish I would have raised the aperture, getting the whole thing in focus, and seeing what else could be tweaked, and how it changed the image. But when I look at the LCD screen in the moment, I cannot see the subtle differences, so I felt silly literally taking 11 pictures of the same thing. But obviously I have to. *First aha moment of the blog. 

I really like the one small detail in focus and the background blurry thing, probably because that's the only thing I'm really confident in, so I did some more of that:

We then went to my favorite place, a harbor where seals frequent. My lens is not a zoom, so I was not able to really capture them. But for fun: 

No one was around so I felt more comfortable being creative and practicing. I ended up with these two, one I think is too light and one I think is too dark:

I can't remember if I was really paying attention to the ticker, but again, I should have played around more with the settings even thought I couldn't tell on the LCD screen the differences. 

I also thought this was cute:

And my favorite picture of the day:

It kind of follows the rule of thirds, and I wanted mostly the shell and the tip of the water in the focus. But it seems a little light and devoid of color. It also was cloudy and March, so we'll see as time goes on what happens.

Thus ends my first post, but begins my blogging and photography journey!