Missing Link

About 8 or 9 months ago I bought myself a digital camera.   I’d wanted one for a few years by this point, but had never broken down and bought one.   For a long period of time I didn’t WANT to be photographed (I wish I could remember the reasoning for that).  Part of me likely didn’t realize that later on in life I would want memories of my (mis)adventures.  That started to occur to me back in college as I had friends who had some great pictures of their college days and I had few.   I knew that a digital camera would allow me to take a lot of pictures without having to worry about buying film, etc.  I also knew that they took some pretty nice pictures.

The camera I got,  a Sony Cybershot DSC-W100 8.1 megapixel camera, is pretty nice for a starter.  It’s got some nice preset  modes that take decent pictures, but also has a manual mode that lets you change a bunch of settings on the camera and setup your shots better.  I rather like it, and for the price you get a good amount of features.   For someone like me who is a complete n00b to photography it provides me with a platform that can easily do point and click photography but also gives me the tools to learn and explore a little bit for some more experimental shots.

For a while I experimented a little – but not a lot.  I took some photos periodically, but largely they were just the typical “hey let me take a picture of !”.   My first real “experimental” shot was the shot I used for the top banner of Fredthefrog.net ( I’m going to start updating that again soon, I promise! ) and it actually turned out a lot better than I expected.

Recently, as in last week, while chilling out by  the pond in my back yard, I noticed a frog sitting up on the waterfall.  I managed to get pretty close without him moving, so I went inside to grab my camera to try for a picture.   I got close again but as soon as I brought the camera up for the picture he got spooked and ran/hopped/swam away.  I took some pictures of the pond anyways, just not the frog.  Last night when I got home from work, before I went to my friends apartment I decided to see if I could get any photos of frogs in or around the pond.  I saw one in the water with just his head sticking out and was able to snap a few interesting shots.   It’s a start.

I’m somewhat surprised at myself, though, in that I honestly enjoy doing this stuff.   It really is fun to setup and take pictures – much more so than I initially would have thought.   I think sometime I’d like to get a better, more “professional” digital camera that can use different lenses / filters for different effects.  Who would have thought photography would be something I love doing?
As usual, click any of the images in this post for the larger version.   Best viewed live from my website,  though I’m sure a lot of you are seeing this through facebook,  livejournal or a newsfeed agregator.   More pictures are available in the gallery on my website.

[tags] nature, photography, digital photography, hobbys [/tags]