For me the act of taking photos is very rewarding. The camera is a tool of the wallflower and I do consider myself in pro league wallflower. When i bought my D60 I knew very little about photography. I put it on manual and used the light meter and thought I was doing something important. For people that have never used an SLR this is impressive because you can take multiple photos of the same things, but different shades. You can’t do this with a $98 point and shoot.

I like to think that I have a natural eye. After time my eye became more sophisticated than my camera. I normally envision a photo in my mind and the look down at my camera and realize that I have no idea how to make that photo happen.

Jen, my very intelligent friend who must speak quickly because there is so much to say, thought me about shutter speeds one night in her kitchen. This 1 hour lesson, given while she was baking, has been the most valuable photo lesson I have received. Since this night I have not used my light meter once. It was also perfect timing because I was beginning to become annoyed with the rate at which I was learning about my tool. This is not an ailment I need to worry about any longer……

BECAUSE….
I figured it out. I understand f-stops. Not completely, obviously. Does anyone? But I understand that the larger the number the more you can see in the photo. That’s all I needed. The bigger the number the bigger the depth of field, more you can see. The smaller the number the smaller the depth, the less you can see.

I promptly went outside and took a photo for each stop in my camera. The following are the biggest jumps.

F-5

F-13

F-22

F-36

Next – understanding the relationship between aperture and shutter speed. Getting past Photo 101.

Jeff and I attended a concert/house party at a home dubbed “Snack Manor”. Its in the Ravenswood Manor area of Chicago. Jeff’s friend’s girlfriend lives there along with 10 other of her friends people. The place is pretty amazing. It was a very old mansion.

I, as a good little photog, took my camera. Still being very amateur I had a bit of a hard time capturing the photos that I saw in my head. The lighting was awesome in the little basement type room that the music was happening in.

I wish I would have know the people that lived there because I would have LOVED to wander around taking photos. At least one photo of the hand drawn map of the house.

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As I’m sure you have seen in the last blog I picked up an Argoflex Seventy-Five. I love this camera. Shes gorgeous. I think I will start naming my cameras. I think I want to call her….Jeanie. Yes. So I took Jeanie out for the first time tonight and we took two decent photos. The first is her face and a bottle of syrup.

And the other was the chandelier in my kitchen. Each photo was taken the exact opposite way of each other.

I love TTV!!!

This photo was taken on the Fox River in downtown Yorkville. I went out to have dinner with my boyfriend and his friends every friday on their lunch break from work. I was killing time before meeting them. Its also the first time I went out with the purpose of taking pictures. I parked my car near the river and wandered out with my camera. My armor.

There was a place where you can unload your boat and an older Mexican man that spoke no English. I asked him if I could take his photo. He didn’t seem sure what I said but smiled with a decent assumption because I was pointing at my camera. In the background of my view finder was this man. He was in head to toe denim except for his hat. He was sitting on a white bucket fishing. My first thought was I can’t take a picture of someone without asking first. But settled on the idea that if he gets real pissed I was younger than him and closer to my car than he was to me.

So I took a couple shots. These are special to me. The random wonderfulness of them. My whole collection from this day is special to me.

When I got home and zoomed in on the picture I realized that he was smiling. I didn’t ask for his permission, but I had it anyway.

This outing is what sealed the deal with me and my camera.

This photo was taken in the first weekend of the camera’s life. My boyfriend and I were riding in his brother truck. Its fuzzy and unfixed and totally amateur. As such it is one of my favorites.

I bought my D60 at the beginning of September last year. It seems strange that I haven’t had this camera for very long and it seems to fit into all the nostalgic loves of my childhood.