I have been taking photographs since I was 18 years old. My dad had bought a Nikon SLR which he loved to drive around in the car but never did take any pictures with it. For years it was the camera I was not to touch. It was expensive you know! After I turned 18 my dad recognized my interest in photography and began allowing me to use his Nikon SLR camera. Finally the camera was going to actually shoot some photos! Totally untrained and having no real idea how to use this big expensive camera I began my journey. Along the way I have taken some terrible photographs! In the earlewy days it was pure luck if a shot turned out how I wanted it to, but that didn't stop me from playing with the camera. It took me a full two years to start really experimenting with the camera, changing settings, manually focusing etc... Then the unthinkable happened! I dropped it, I droped my most prize posession, I dropped it onto a cement floor, my baby. I broke the door, my film popped out onto the floor, and my heart sank. Surprisingly I was able to sell the camera for about $1500 broken! At the time SLR cameras were still very expensive, I had just move out on my own and could not afford the luxury of replacing it, so I was forced for years to take photos with crappy disposable cameras.
For my birthday my beautiful, sweet, loving, caring partner desided to buy me a new camera. The best birthday gift I had ever recieved! I was thrilled. It was dead cold the day we went to pick it out, we walked into the store picked up a Canon Rebel, a bunch of film and in my jeans and sweater I drove down to the lake and began shooting. On that cold ass January day I took the best photo I have ever taken! I felt like a kid inside, I was out in the winter on a cold day for hours playing with my new toy. The picture at the top of the page of the snow drift was taken on that day. I have won awards for that photo and it is by far the best shot I have taken to date.
Still with no formal training my camera goes everywhere I do, and still I get pictures back that are totally not what I had seen through the viewfinder when I snapped the shot. There are still features on the camera that I don't know how to work. However, I have so much fun figuring it out. It feels like I won the lottery whenever I master a different function on the camera. When I get a shot I just KNOW is going to be amazing. One day I may take some classes, just to really understand how everything works but for now I am having a blast just playing with it and figuring it out myself.
My girlfriend is an amazing womanshe can have no idea how much this gift means to me. She has given me so much happiness in so many ways they cant be counted. The mere fact that she recognized my passion for photography and struggled to come up with the finances to afford me a gift to help nurture that passion means more to me than she will ever know. My love and apreciation for her is behind ever shot I take and every photographic image I have. I feel so very blessed in my life, to have a passion and someone to share it with makes me an extreamly fortunate woman.
I have been taking photographs since I was 18 years old. My dad had bought a Nikon SLR which he loved to drive around in the car but never did take any pictures with it. For years it was the camera I was not to touch. It was expensive you know! After I turned 18 my dad recognized my interest in photography and began allowing me to use his Nikon SLR camera. Finally the camera was going to actually shoot some photos! Totally untrained and having no real idea how to use this big expensive camera I began my journey. Along the way I have taken some terrible photographs! In the earlewy days it was pure luck if a shot turned out how I wanted it to, but that didn't stop me from playing with the camera. It took me a full two years to start really experimenting with the camera, changing settings, manually focusing etc... Then the unthinkable happened! I dropped it, I droped my most prize posession, I dropped it onto a cement floor, my baby. I broke the door, my film popped out onto the floor, and my heart sank. Surprisingly I was able to sell the camera for about $1500 broken! At the time SLR cameras were still very expensive, I had just move out on my own and could not afford the luxury of replacing it, so I was forced for years to take photos with crappy disposable cameras.
For my birthday my beautiful, sweet, loving, caring partner desided to buy me a new camera. The best birthday gift I had ever recieved! I was thrilled. It was dead cold the day we went to pick it out, we walked into the store picked up a Canon Rebel, a bunch of film and in my jeans and sweater I drove down to the lake and began shooting. On that cold ass January day I took the best photo I have ever taken! I felt like a kid inside, I was out in the winter on a cold day for hours playing with my new toy. The picture at the top of the page of the snow drift was taken on that day. I have won awards for that photo and it is by far the best shot I have taken to date.
Still with no formal training my camera goes everywhere I do, and still I get pictures back that are totally not what I had seen through the viewfinder when I snapped the shot. There are still features on the camera that I don't know how to work. However, I have so much fun figuring it out. It feels like I won the lottery whenever I master a different function on the camera. When I get a shot I just KNOW is going to be amazing. One day I may take some classes, just to really understand how everything works but for now I am having a blast just playing with it and figuring it out myself.
My girlfriend is an amazing womanshe can have no idea how much this gift means to me. She has given me so much happiness in so many ways they cant be counted. The mere fact that she recognized my passion for photography and struggled to come up with the finances to afford me a gift to help nurture that passion means more to me than she will ever know. My love and apreciation for her is behind ever shot I take and every photographic image I have. I feel so very blessed in my life, to have a passion and someone to share it with makes me an extreamly fortunate woman.
