New Beginnings

For years, I have owned a DSLR camera. It's only a Canon T6i Rebel, nonetheless, but still. I mainly purchased it so that I could do video recording for a Drum Corps I was working with, but in the back of my mind I thought I would use it for photography as well. As a kid, I was always interested in photography, but didn't really have the resources or drive to do much about it.

After I stopped working with that Drum Corps, my DSLR sat on a self for a year. I would take it out during the fall to take pictures of my Marching Band Program so that I could have images for our end of the year banquet, or when I traveled I might take it with me with grand plans for photography, but never really did much once I actually got to where I was going.

Fast forward to 2020, and things are very different. I'm stuck at home during a global pandemic. I have more free time than I've probably ever had in my lifetime, and it drove me crazy. That was when I looked up on my bookshelf and saw my Canon sitting there. 4 years old, with a shutter count of 2,000. I picked it up, dusted it off, and turned it on. I looked out my window at the world I hadn't participated in since March. It was that day, (May 14th to be exact) that I decided I would start to take photography more seriously.

I went downtown to my city (Fayetteville, NC) and decided I'd do some nighttime photography. It was pretty a failure. I came back with 2 or 3 usable images. What did I expect, I knew nothing about photography other than what images I liked when I looked at them, and while that's important to know your style, it doesn't do very much for your style. So I spent the next 2 weeks sucking up knowledge. Youtube video tutorials, master classes, books - I felt like I was studying in college again. And I loved every second of it.

And guess what? I still know nothing about photography. Sure I can spit off some facts about aperture, and ISO, and focal lengths. I can even explain how the camera works pretty well. But that doesn't make you a photographer. I've since gone out to a few state parks and had moderate success. (I think I kept around 40 images from two days and over taken images, lol) But I can feel myself getting better at it. Does that mean that I was laying on the ground in a swamp in 88 degree weather? Sure. But I'm challenging myself and it is a great feeling.

With that great feeling came a desire to keep a record of sorts of my progress. "You don't know where you're going until you know where you've been" type thing. So with that, I'll consider this a successful first blog. I haven't decided if I will update daily, or just when I go out and shoot, or...what. But I'm forcing myself to keep it semi-regular. And as always, if you want to see my progress, visit my Flickr!

Until next time.