I suppose I should have tracked this better but I never planned on this new obsession in photography to have such a hold on me.  It has been just a little over a year since I began this journey.  Last summer I was starting to think about an upcoming trip to Walt Disney World (and yes it was still 6 months away when I started to think about it) and I wanted to learn how to use my camera better.  The flood gates opened and here I sit enjoying photography every day.  It has changed my life.

My camera at the start of this journey was a Sony Cybershot DSC-H20, a nice little point & shoot that I was very happy with snapping pictures of the family or during vacations.  It wasn’t until I started looking at some popular Disney photographers’ blogs/websites that I realized my take away pictures just didn’t capture what I was seeing and/or feeling.    I decided it was time to read the manual and learn what the camera was capable of doing.  Obviously, I should have done that when I bought the camera but who needs to read the manual, its simple, turn it on, point, click and you have yourself a picture.

I started experimenting with the camera.  I began by using the manual mode rather than automatic or scene modes.  Manual mode was very limiting, based on the amount of zoom there was only two apertures to choose from and they didn’t correspond to normal readings.  Still I was learning how to use the different settings to create the image I wanted.  I was fascinated by clouds at first.  This is the first picture I took after learning there was more to my camera.

Morning Clouds
Sony DSC-H20, 1/500s, 9.9mm, f4, ISO 80

I played around with the camera for a few weeks.  I spent one weekend at my in-laws farm taking pictures but after that weekend I knew I needed to learn more about photography.  I found online at Tom Bricker’s a book he recommended everyone should read.  It was Bryan Peterson’s .  It was definitely an eye opening book for me.  It helped me understand what I could control and how I could use those settings to create the image I wanted.  The book explained more than just exposure, there was composition info, various types of photography, but most of all there was a book full of beautiful pictures that latched on to me.  The obsession begins…

Just about the same time as my new interest in photography begins I received an invite to join Google+.  I’m curious, I’m tired of FB and Twitter, so I start to poke around this new system a little.  I honestly don’t remember which photographer I found first, but wow did everything explode after that.  I started following all these great photographers and each new addition to my circle brought even more opportunities to follow more.  I was still just a stalker, too timid to post much of anything myself and still too unsure of my pictures.

Eventually I found the daily themes.  Now that was something that caught my interest.  It was like giving myself an assignment each day, challenge myself to find images in my wandering that I could use for these themes.  They gave me a little more structure in my experimenting and putting the pictures out into the stream for others to view allowed me to determine if I was growing.  One of my favorite early themes was Ministract Monday by Tom McLaughlin.

Rail Grind
Sony DSC-H20, 1/125s, 9.8mm, f4, ISO 200

Eventually I tried working through a 365 project. This is where you take one picture a day for a year. It started out OK, and then I worked up to a pretty good string of images and then started to feel like a weight. I didn’t think I was growing, I was more concerned with getting any picture for my daily post than I was about taking pictures for me. I ended up stopping after 91 days. My initial thought was to take a break and come back to the project after a short hiatus. That never worked out. Here are a few of my favorites from my 365 project:

Apple Field

Snow Leaf

Cold Morning

Finally, in early March I purchased my DSLR camera. I had been debating for over a month which camera to purchase. I couldn’t decide. At one point or another I was planning on purchasing the Canon T3i, Sony NEX-5N, or Sony A55 but eventually settled on the Nikon D5100. I knew that I had an affinity to capturing landscapes so I decided to purchase the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 wide angle macro lens and also purchased the Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 telephoto. They have both served me well as I continue to learn. My first picture posted from the new camera:

Morning Light
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/30s, 70mm, f5.6, ISO 400

There will be more to this story, but for now I’m going out with the camera…