One of my main intentions with this website is to provide photographic guidance: tips and advice, gear talk, how-to guides, that sort of thing. I’m writing this in the depths of the Great Pandemic of 2020, during which the world is largely on hold and holding its breath. What better time to get started?
The Road To Now
I thought I’d give a quick overview of my own photographic journey, and then list some topics I hope to cover here in the future. Feel free to suggest or request more!
Having kids is what really got me behind the lens. When my first daughter arrived in 2004, the digital-photography revolution was well underway, but all we had was a couple of cheap digital point-and-shoot cameras. Between the image quality and horrendous shutter lag, I was not pleased with the results. So I invested in my first digital SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XT. At that time, the choice was really between Canon and Nikon, and I went with Canon mainly for their lens selection. (I found out later that the Canon EF mount is also suited to the usage of a range of obsolete lenses, but that will be a post unto itself!)
So over the next few years I shot my kids a lot, and I tinkered and learned and played with nature and landscape photography, and of course I came to adore travel photography. I also started acquiring new gear–lenses, speedlights, etc.–which is not cheap! So to help pay for those new toys, I began putting my gear to work doing paid sessions: families, engagements, maternity/newborn, and even some weddings. I never made it a full-time thing, but for a few years it did help provide a nice little side income.
The Path From Here
I don’t do much paid work these days, and to be honest I don’t do nearly as much photography as I used to–or would like to. That’s where this website comes in! I hope to do more travel photography (and photography in general), and if this site can be a place to share it while also passing along some knowledge, it’s a win-win! This year we’re also picking up and moving to a new city, so there will be much exploration to document.
So here we’ll talk gear, we’ll talk techniques, we’ll go through some exercises together, that sort of thing. Some specific topics I have in mind:
- Travel photography tips
- Macro photography and focus stacking
- High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography
- Post-processing tutorials and tips
- Using old manual-focus lenses
- Camera settings and tips
- Cell phone photography
And if there’s anything else that comes up, that’s fair game as well. I hope this might be a good journey for me, and for anyone else traveling their own photographic path.
And we’ll call it all Shutterbuggery. Because it sounds fun that way!