The Long and Boring 'Intro' Post

Obviously the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory. I figured that since I just created this blog it would probably be a good idea to give some sort of introduction as to why I even made a blog. And maybe even include a little bit about myself.

First off this is a photography blog. And more importantly, a blog of my photography. So basically my posts will consist of photos (spoiler alert). I'll probably include some stories about the pictures, because I like story telling. Also I'll try to include information about the shots, like when, where, what, camera settings and whatever else I find relevant. Generally I would not label myself as the blogging type, but I have decided to use a blog as a motivation tool. I love photography but I don't do it as much as I would like to. I figured that if I had some outlet to show off my work I'd be more motivated to actually take more pictures. And since I'm already addicted to the internet, pairing my photography up with a blog seemed like a pretty easy thing to do.

Brief(ish) history about photography and I:
My father instilled in me a love for photography. He studied it some in high school or college, and has a full set of darkroom equipment. As a kid I got to help him develop photos and I always enjoyed it. I've received about 4 cameras as birthday presents. One time my dad actually got me a 35mm film camera. I was so excited, but as he changed the film for the first time he accidently touched the shutter on the inside and broke it. When we took the camera back to replace it my parents let me choose between a new 35mm or a digital camera. I ended up choosing the digital because I was young, I knew I'd take lots of terrible pictures which I could delete on a digital, plus I wouldn't have to buy film, I preferred to spend my allowance on candy. It is hard to say who was more upset, my father or I. Turns out my dad had picked the camera up months before my birthday and had actually been using my lens on his camera.
For as much as I love photography I don't have many images that I would consider good, artsy images. I'll admit that I'm a lazy person and just don't get out and take as many pictures as I'd like to. Not to mention I'm fairly shy about walking around in public with a camera to my face.
I did take a black and white film photography class at my local community college. Here are my 3 favorite shots from that class:

[Image of a nasty spider on a sawhorse]

[Birdhouse in my parent's backyard]

[My brother playing guitar, please ignore that I put the negative in backwards when I developed this...]

My style:

First off I'm a big fan of black and white. I also love shallow depth of field. The smaller the f-stop, the happier I am. (for you non photographers, shallow depth of field is when part of an image is in focus, but the background or foreground are out of focus; the guitar or birdhouse pictures are good examples of it) In general I don't like to photograph people. My favorite subjects are objects outdoors and animals. I prefer to take pictures outside. I prefer candid photography.

Also: Ansel Adams is my favorite photographer, so I guess you can say I get a lot of my style from him.

My equipment:

Updated equipment:
New camera, Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm lens. (July 2011)

55-200mm lens (May 2012

Lightroom (sometime in 2011)

Photoshop CS5 (March 2012)

Gear I started the blog with:

My father's DLSR, an Olypmus E-500. This has two lenses: 14-45mm and 40-150mm.

Corel Paint Pro X.

Here is the Olympus I was using:

Well. Now that this is out of the way I can start the real blogging...wish me luck.