Photographobby!

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, and as you can tell by all the pictures on our blog, I have a new hobby! When I was planning our wedding, I looked at lots and lots of photography websites for wedding day inspiration. The more and more I looked, the more intrigued and inspired I became with all of the beautiful photographs. Before I knew it, I was dreaming of a dSLR camera, hoping that one day I might be able to take some beautiful pictures of my own.

Recently, many of you have asked what camera I use to take all the pictures on the blog. Well, Raul made my dSLR dream become reality when he gave me my Canon Rebel T1i on our wedding day. From Day 1 (well actually Day 3 when we were on our honeymoon), I was in love! While it’s a rather basic dSLR, I think it’s a great camera to learn from.

I have spent countless hours reading and watching and shooting, trying to learn as much as I can about photography. I aspire to one day actually have someone willing to pay me to take pictures, but I know that day is a long way off (if ever). I have sooooooo much more to learn and equipment to play with, but I feel like I’ve come a long way since September.

When I first started trying to learn about photography in the fall, I had no clue where to start. There are so many resources on the Internet—it’s rather overwhelming. I researched photography classes in Chicago, but decided that $400-$500 on an 8-week course that only meets for a couple hours once a week just wasn’t worth it nor was it something I could afford. So what did I do to get started?

1. Learned Some Photography Basics: I feel fortunate to have stumbled upon a website for an online digital photography course thru CreativeTechs. I took John Greengo’s “Digital Photography” 10-week course for $55. It was so worth the money. I learned so much from the course, and to Raul’s dismay and amusement, I developed a bit of a crush on John Greengo himself (see right).
2. Learned My Camera: I read the Canon Rebel T1i for Dummies book to learn about my camera. There are so many buttons, and I had no clue what they did. I was too afraid to press any of them, so I just shot in one of the automatic modes. This book helped to familiarize me with my camera and get me a bit more comfortable to play around.
3. Found Inspiration: If you don’t know about Google Reader, you are missing out! It allows you to subscribe to any website with RSS feeds, and it puts all of those articles/blog posts on one webpage for you to read. You can even subscribe to our blog (see that button over there to the right near the top?)! I subscribe to about a million photography blogs (and about a million other non-photography related blogs) so that I can find inspiration and learn new photography techniques.  I'm always learning!

Since getting the basics down, I have done a few other things to enhance my skills such as taking an in-person lighting class, abandoning my kit lens for a 50mm/f1.8, using different filters, and learning Photoshop Elements.  Still with all of that, I have so much more learning to do.

One thing I do want to say is that if you ever have the privilege of owning a dSLR, please take the time to LEARN how to use it. Yes, it will take "nice" pictures in automatic, but you can get so much more out of it by learning to shoot Manual, which is what I do solely now, setting my ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed for each picture (as well as White Balance, Focus Points, etc).  For those of you who may be interested in learning more about photography, one of my favorite websites is The Pioneer Woman. Ree has WONDERFUL, straightforward, no-nonsense posts about photography. The rest of her blog is wonderful too. In fact, you may have seen her on Good Morning America yesterday—she’s that awesome! I aspire to be her one day (minus the whole ranch thing).

I have loads and loads of other photography resources I’m willing to share if anyone is interested! And whether you like it or not, I'll be sharing loads more photos as I experiment and learn along the way!

Hope that everyone has a great weekend!