Paring Down: Photography

One of the things I accomplished on my vacation was to clear my head and look at all the ways I could pare down my life and kill off some of that darn monkey brain (and no, I don’t know what monkey brain means, and it certainly isn’t meant as an insult to monkeys, though I really don’t like them, it just means my hundred mile an hour, multi-tasking, never shut up brain, kind of like this sentence).

Regardless, one thing was to really decide where I wanted to put my focus on in terms of “me” time.  There are way too many “I want to do’s…” roaming around so I picked a couple of things to focus on in my (ahem) free time.  The first and foremost was photography.  I never really picked up a camera much before about two years ago, but I am finding I have an affinity to it and now cannot seem to walk around without snatching something out of the corner of my eye I want to capture.

This was me up until 11 p.m. last night experimenting with black & white.  ( I was supposed to be cleaning out and uploading over 5,000 shots from Iphoto). Right now I basically just point and shoot.  I mean I look at angles and placement and seem to have an eye for capturing certain things, but I have not the first clue about aperture, and ISO and shutter speeds and light.  So, to make me better and perhaps get me out of the house a little, I have enrolled in two photography classes this fall.  Digital Photography and Portrait Photography in Natural Light run from September through December.  Still life and nature/outdoor photography I hope to have on the grid for next year.

And a reminder, in case you missed the contest post, you have until Saturday midnight Eastern U.S. Standard time to take your guess and win that yummy pie cookbook!