Entry number 6 (Ramblings of an amature photographer)

While we wait for more adventure tales from the birthday party I thought I'd share my big news.

It's actually pretty exciting stuff for an amature photographer. 

I've been published!  Not in a magazine, but on the morning news and the internet.  I submitted a photo to the local TV station for their Photo of the Day and it was used! On the morning news! And their website!

I. am. so. excited.  !!!

I bought my first SLR camera in the early 80's. (Side note: SLR stands for single-lens reflex. A fancy way of saying that I see the same thing the film is seeing as opposed to looking through a viewfinder.) Back then I had to worry about what speed film I bought and using it up before I needed a different speed for a different event.  I also couldn't see what I'd done wrong until weeks after taking a photo...and by then it was too late to capture the moment and I'd forgotten how I had the camera set up.  So it was very frustrating to learn.  My most frequent mistake was forgetting to change the shutter speed when I used a flash--so half the picture would be brightly lit; the other half would be dark.  Argh!

I set it aside when I bought my first digital point-and-shoot camera many years ago. It was instant gratification to see the photo. It did most of the thinking for me. I couldn't change much on the camera, though.  Then years later I bought a "better" (and lighter weight) point-and-shoot camera. It had a few preset scene settings I could use.  It was nice, but I still missed my SLR.

But about 11 months ago I bought my first Digital SLR.  OH, what fun that beautiful camera is!  It is so much nicer to instantly see the picture and make necessary adjustments. Not only that, but it records all the settings so I can go back and see how I had the camera set up for each photo.  Very geeky stuff, I'm tellin' ya!  And it's right up my alley.

Alas, life has been bumpy this year and I haven't had the opportunity to record happy moments like I thought I would. But there have been happy moments.  Like the day I walked out onto my porch to water the mums and found a Praying Mantis perched on top of them.  Not only did he stay there while I grabbed my camera, he posed!  And this is the photo I submitted for Photo of the Day:

And here is a picture that I took of the Super Moon back in June:

Now, if I've done this right, you should be able to click on the photos to see the larger image in case you want to use it for a desktop background.  

And if I haven't: OOPS!


P.S. Once this was posted I went back and checked on the photos. Yes, clicking on them shows a larger image, but Blogger only allows just so big of a file so they aren't as large as they could be.