On An Adventure

When my kids were little, I used to take them on long rides to various places. On occasion I would find myself in unchartered territory (or lost). At those times, I would simply say to them ......"we are on an adventure!" which would excite them. Adventures still excite me today.

Now that they are grown-ups, I have time for my own "adventures", and that's what I'll be writing about in this blog.

When I was about 7 years old, mom and dad bought me my first camera. At that time it was all black and white film and they spent a small fortune keeping up with my delight at snapping pictures of everything and anything. Most of the photo's were rubbish but they loved me and encouraged my creativity, even if the shot was of a leaf or fence post!

I've had various cameras throughout my life, including a manual 35 mm and have always enjoyed the fun of photography, but never fully understanding all that was involved. I even had a go at black and white darkroom development, which was amazing! I learned to restore some of my grandparents very old and tattered photo's and brought them back in sepia, much to their delight.

A few years back my husband bought me a Nikon Coolpix 885, which I never really mastered, until now, as most of the time I had the camera set to auto and preset controls. I thought I'd better get a handle on it as he's just suprised me and said I could upgrade to an SLR; and so the adventure begins! I've made the conscious decision to know everything there is to know about my current camera before getting a new one.

There is a great little website called Lynda.com. that's chock full of valuable information about photography and Photoshop and all things digital. I've just completed a teaching video called "Introduction to Digital Photography" by Taz Tally. He has his own website called Taz Tally's Seminars and is the author of several books.

The presentation was concise, clear and easy to understand, taking the mystery out of many things that as a novice photographer I wasn't clear on. One of the things he talked about was what to look for in my next camera and even where to go to compare cameras - Digital Photography Review. This will be of great help, after my head stops spinning, to finding my next camera.

I suspect that there are tons of people out there that have taken this journey before, so please feel free if you have any suggestions or recommendations for great cameras or better yet, cameras to stay clear of.

Tags: Photography, Taz Tally, lynda.com, Digital Photography Review