A year in review through the eye of my camera

So I've noticed that it seems to be my thing to post to this every couple of years or so. I've certainly enjoyed scrolling back through the old posts to see the state of mind I've been in for the last several years. 

So after years and years and years and years of school/residency, except for a worthy addiction to Final Fantasy XI (yes shocking I know, a closet video game addict!) I really had no time for any hobbies outside of... work... Even now I joke with colleagues that I only know how to get from home to the office and in between but in regards to the general geography of this area I couldn't tell you the difference between being in Bel Air vs the Inner Harbor despite living here for almost 4 years.

And then I made the worst mistake you could ever make... I decided for Christmas a year ago I wanted a DSLR. Because I needed a hobby. And because zomg getting a super awesome expensive fancy camera with detachable lenses would make it easy for me to take awesome pictures that all look like they belong in a magazine right?? (The zomg is in homage to my video gaming days, sorry!)

First of all this is not by any means a cheap hobby. It becomes only a matter of time before you become obsessed with lenses, flashes, bags, memory cards, tripods, off camera flash set up, etc. All of this rapidly adds up, especially when you start drooling over L lenses such as the new 24-70 f2.8 II that comes in at a humble price tag of.... $2300. Oh and lets not forget about the new Macbook I *needed* so I could run Lightroom and Photoshop to edit all the awesome pictures I was taking! Let's just say that in the last year I spent a small fortune on anything photography related... and don't even get me started on the photography classes and workshops I've taken as well.

So have I made progress? I can definitely say yes! I feel very comfortable taking my camera off auto mode into full manual. The technical aspects of photography make sense to me. Raising my shutter speed to decrease motion blur, opening up my aperture to blur out my background, bumping up my ISO to increase my exposure, all of that makes sense. I still need quite a bit of work on my artistic side unfortunately but luckily I have years ahead of me of making my children into test monkeys.

Of course I can't post about the fact that I've finally undertaken a hobby without getting to post any pictures! So here we go...

12/6/2011 Early Christmas present to me comes in the mail, I take it out, set it on auto, whip out the pop up flash and SNAP! Say whhhaaattt?!? Why is my awesome new camera taking blurry out of focus pictures??

 Ok that didn't turn out as expected. Alright lemme google/youtube some tutorials. And now that I'm so awesome we'll even take our family Christmas photos on a tripod with timer and yes, the pop up flash again!

Getting a little better now. Wish my boys didn't always look like they were in pain in my pictures but oh well it'll do, at least I looked good lol.

End of December I found www.clickinmoms.com. And it took my obsession to a whole new level.
One of my first photos in manual mode. Notice my soft focus, white balance issue, and skin tone issues.

After taking my first Clickinmom class. Better color representation. Evan is in focus, Lucas however was not. Needed to learn that shooting everything at f1.8 is not the way to go.

Lucky for me my sister was preggers and a willing model for me to practice some maternity shots.

A beautiful venue for a baby shower for the above sister

And of course taking pictures of baby!

My brother in law got married (finally) to his beautiful wife

We had family fun

I even got to shoot some senior photos for a friend's son

Enjoying the seasons!

And of course capturing my beautiful family

So despite being time consuming and oh so expensive it has definitely become a worthwhile hobby and one I plan on enjoying for the rest of my life!