The Beginning

I have always had an interest in photography, and writing, so this blog on my photography site only seems to make sense.

I remember taking up photography in High School, although I never pursued it with vigor. I did take my father’s old camera down to college with me and, while there (and because I had my Dad’s camera), I took a photography class. To be honest none of it stuck though.

Once I started my career in business I took up many hobbies and to a limited degree photography was one of them. I remember buying my first digital camera, a Nikon D40, and thinking “ok, now I have the tool to do photography right.” What I lacked, despite my couple of classes, was the most important tool in the tool box - knowledge.

Life’s path is one of opportunity though, at least in my experience, and as a person of faith I have a strong belief that God tends to wink at me fairly frequently though. Photography has consistently been one of those winks where I often think he wonders if I’m just not getting the hint.

So our path lead us to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2009 the summer between our daughter’s Junior and Senior year. As a Senior our daughter had to have Senior pictures and Sheryl reached out to a local photographer to get that taken care of. We also got some family pics. And we really connected with the photographer and his wife, so we kept in touch socially. As Christmas came around Sheryl became aware that Michael, the photographer, was upgrading his equipment and was selling his old camera body. We were headed to Cabo San Lucas for Christmas break and Sheryl thought his camera would be the perfect gift.

The camera was a Canon 5DMKII, I still have it today. Michael’s advice once Sheryl gave me the camera was to “buy good lenses” and so I went to B&H photo and did just that. And this is likely where the narrative changed for me and my photography journey.

The camera was amazing, as were the lenses, but I still lacked any real knowledge of photography. Still, I started capturing images that for me at least I could tell were noticeably better than images I had taken in the past. The flame had been lit, that burn to learn more.

All of that lead to beginning to actually learn.

I started with just searching the web. Buying some books. The normal stuff.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a class in Digital Photography School’s website that things really did begin to change. The course “31 days to better photography” was a structured class with lessons to learn the basics of photography from aperture, to shutter speed, to ISO and on to composition and post processing.

The fundamentals had been set. And to this day that is largely what has gotten me to where I am at today. Almost all the images I’ve taken have the foundation of this class, and I have much to be thankful for that.

The thing is, deep down, I know there’s more. More for me to know, and better images for me to take. And what I hadn’t realized until recently is that I hadn’t really allowed myself to think outside of the basics.

And that’s what this blog is all about, is my journey. I’ll probably get into more detail about some early stuff with my journey, or maybe some of the basics that I’ve begun to think differently about, but it’ll also just be about the transformation of my mind and how I’m seeing things. And I fully intend to share my mistakes and how I’ve troubleshot them. Because there are two important things there: the lesson learned, but also how to think about troubleshooting your own problems. Heck, writing about it will teach me more about how I troubleshoot on my own.

Before I close out this first blog I will say this. As mentioned, I have many, many hobbies. One of them is smoking meat. Several years ago I read a book about smoking meat and it really opened my eyes to the art and detail of learning how to really smoke. From the types of wood, to the types of smokers. To the different tastes of smoking styles. To the difference between smoke with a flame and a smoldering smoke. How small degrees of temperature make a difference as does the humidity level of the wood you use. And I learned a few things. Primary was that I needed to go beyond throwing a slab of meat on the smoker with some chips in the box and hoping things turned out, even though they generally turned out ok. I also learned that the real path to smoking good meat is to both learn all that you can, but also develop your own style. Your own thing. Learn all the conventional knowledge, learn as much unconventional knowledge as you can, learn as much about the equipment as you can, and then LEARN YOUR WAY.

And that’s where I am at today, right now, with my photography. Still learning. I am in that phase of knowing I have to really learn and dig into the details. Along that way, I am also on the path of learning my own way.

I look forward to the future. I look forward to sharing it. And I am hopeful that you might learn a little too.