This past Christmas, my wife and I decided to buy a nice camera. The reason was two-fold. One, I’ve often talked about wanting to try my hand at photography in our 25 years of marriage, but never took the initiative to do anything about it. I wouldn’t say it’s a passion of mine, but definitely an interest. I took a couple of photography classes in school, but have long since forgotten what I learned there. Early on in our marriage we bought a small 35mm camera to take pictures of the kids and family outings. However, film and processing could get expensive. Storing all the photos became a pain. We got a low-end digital camera when those became a thing, but after a while it seemed much more convenient to just take pictures on a decent smart phone. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.
The other reason for investing in a nice camera was the number of trips we have scheduled for 2020 with the big one being our first trip to Hawaii later this year! As we get older and are handling our finances better, the reality of traveling to see more parts of the world is taking shape. Two years ago, we went to Vancouver and found so many great photo opportunities. We have all those memories recorded, but have realized that our Samsung Galaxy phone cameras really did not do it justice. So, we’re stepping up a bit.
We have some photographer friends. I follow some photography blogs. And we understood that DSLR cameras were the way to go if you want to take some stellar pictures. We bought a Canon EOS Rebel T6 (found a killer deal on a bundle because the T7 is out now.) Like just about everything else new in my life, I’m starting off slow. I’m the guy that reads the whole manual first, buys the “Beginner’s Guide to…” and the “… for Dummies” books before jumping in. I figure in most cases, more information up front leads to less frustration on the back end.
I played around with the camera a bit the week after Christmas. New Year’s Day we took a trip to The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert, CA. This would be my first real opportunity to see what this thing could do. I took a bunch of shots and a few of them I’m pretty pleased with. That’s the beauty of digital photography: take as many shots as you like and you can just sort them out and get rid of what you don’t like later. Here are a few of my favorites. These are unedited. I haven’t gotten into the photo editing software yet.
I noticed that most of the photos I see on photography blogs, have some imprint on them. I’m guessing that’s to prevent someone from stealing the photos or whatever. I don’t know how to do that yet. I’m an amateur! I just want to have a space to share my interests and now, some of my experiences captured through a camera lens. Enjoy!