Humble Beginnings...

The world of photography is already, really, a saturated medium. There are thousands of amazing blogs and tutorials on how to take good photographs that I'm amazed there aren't actually more people taking pictures out there. Personally, photography has always connected to me as a medium. I'll find myself perusing through picasa's featured photos, looking at beautiful art that people seem to make out of every day life. It's many times breathtaking, alluring, and i know it's cliché, but tends to really say more than a thousand words in one photo. in 2009 I decided that it was time for me to join the ranks as an aspiring photographer.I went out and bought the Nikon 60d, got a 50mm, 1.8f/ lens from the 70's that was all manual, and a quantaray 70-300 4.5-5.6f/ lens for telephoto shooting.

Though my aspirations were high, I quickly let life overtake me, and for most of my Nikon's existence it has sat on my shelf at home gathering dust (which is the worst for cameras, as I'm finding out). Fast forward to spring of 2011. I'm working as a part time staffer for Wheaton College shooting videos for their website, a pretty good gig all things considered. We had been borrowing a sony hf-10 HD camera from the campus media resources, but the images that I was looking for wasn't quite up to par with what I had been wanting to shoot, so I went looking for alternatives. After a while of searching I realized that most of professional shooting short of buying a 3 thousand dollar camera was to buy a DSLR and use its video capabilities. After talking it over with my boss we decided to go with the Canon 7D and, well, it kind of changed everything.

I shot a bunch of really small video projects here and there, and just really liked the overall look that I was getting. I started researching more into what would give me a better look and feel for the 7d. Working that closely with DSLR's, I probably shouldn't have been surprised when I started becoming more and more fascinated with taking still shots again, and I spent several days this summer walking around the city with friends taking pictures.

In the late summer I really felt like I needed to step up in life, and that meant shaving off things in my life that weren't what I wanted to do more professionally and start investing in things that I actually wanted to get better in. So, after the sale of my xbox, tv, and two computers I broke down and bought the Canon 60d with the Canon 50mm 1.8/f autofocus lens.

So i'm pretty much starting at the beginning. My hope is that this blog will be able to well chronicle my time spent in digital photography, as well as posting some pictures that I've taken and some advice that I've found. Hopefully this will be as fun and enjoyable to read as it will be to shoot. So until next time, keep shooting!

~Josh