Photography

I’m an amateur photographer, no more no less. I don’t always get a good photo, and I miss opportunities sometimes, but I do enjoy taking photos when I can. I tend to lose interest at times. After a while there’s only so many photos of the lawn and flower and pavement and other things  that you can take. Traveling out and photography should really go together. Sometimes you just need to get out and find a new perspective to look at things.

I remember when I was younger my parents had an old Minolta 35mm film camera. It wasn’t anything fancy but I remember my mom saying it was a good camera. And it was, but it was an automatic and at that age your parents aren’t to happy if you start wasting film taking photos of everything in site. Thankfully the digital age has allowed people to take an enormous amount of photos. The nice thing is you can try different techniques and ideas and get instant feedback which is an incredible learning tool. But, you have to learn from them. Spray and pray photography doesn’t work in the long run and learning on a good manual or a fully digital manual can help you learn some of the basics.

I started taking photography more seriously when I got my first real digital camera. It was a canon powershot with two megapixels and I went crazy taking photos and experimenting. I got some great photos and soon became the photographer for my friends. I upgraded the camera after a few years and kept on that pattern before i got into my first Digital SLR and my life changed all over. I got a Pentax K100D Super, an excellent camera that was perfect for me and had key features that I really liked. Built in image stabilization, AA batteries, backwards compatible with any lens Pentax has made, better price to performance ratio etc…

I love SLR’s, or I should say I love a quality camera with the flexibility and full control with amazing lens choices. Not to mention having a real depth of field to work with that makes your photos stand out. Having a photo tack sharp is great, but not all the time. I read through a few books and one that does help in explaining some basics is Understanding Exposure. You can find it at any online book store, but I recommend reading it two to three times. One time straight through, a second after trying some of the tips out, and a third time to really soak in some of the concepts.

My Photography Equipment:

• Pentax white K-x
  
• Pentax K1000
• Panasonic Lumix TS3
• Metz 58 Af -2 Flash
  
• SMC Pentax-FA 1:1.4 50mm
• SMC Pentax DA L 1:3.5 18-55mm
• SMC Pentax M 1:2 50mm
• Takumar ( Bayonet) 1:2.5 135mm
• Quantarray 1:4-5.6 70-200mm Macro
• Vivitar 1:3.8 75-205mm Macro
• Phoenix 1:8 500mm
• Rayonex 150 & 250 macro adapter lenses
• Wide angle and Telephoto adapter lenses
• Canon Elph 780IS

By the way, here’s how I took the shot above. Perspective is very powerful…