Today was my second to last Photography 1 class.  I've been learning a lot.  The tips I've picked so far are invaluable.  However, I have to say that the photos I've produced from the class so far have not been too pretty though.  Most of the time I'm practicing a skill more than I am worrying about my subject matter.

This next week we're printing our photos though and will view the class photos in a gallery style setup.  I'm feeling very non-artistic at the moment, so this challenge is a little nerve wracking.  Wish me luck!

Jason and I decided we had to get out of the house on Sunday and do something.  We decided to try a new hiking place, since the weather was so pretty.  I am still not used to the temperature swings between our house and the nearby mountains.  As you can guess, as you start climbing in altitude it gets colder.  I seem to always underestimate it, which was the case yesterday.  I ended up stealing Jason's gloves aIt was a beautiful, and quick, hike though, and as long as you stayed out of the wind the temperature wasn't too bad.  The weather is only going to keep getting prettier, so I'm looking forward to exploring more spots in the upcoming months.

I'm back from San Antonio and it feels good to be home!  I was there for 4 days for a work trip.  I stayed with a friend while I was there and practiced with my camera on their kids for a bit.  It was dusk and I was trying to work without a flash, so a lot of my photos are blurry, but there are some fun ones.  I need to take them out when the sun is shining next time because they're fun to photograph!

Panning on a moving object so that its in focus, but the background is blurry, is new to me.  We took General out this weekend so I could work on it.  I still need some work obviously, but it was fun to try!

These are actual photographs, not computer generated.  Aren't they cool?  They are aerial shots of Hutt Lagoon in Australia by Steve Back.  The colors are naturally occurring from algae.  Check out his website to see more surreal nature shots.

Check out these awesome photos by Marcel Christ.

My attempt at getting out there and playing with my camera this week.  This is going to be a challenge!  I promise to try not to have a picture of my dog each week, but there's only so much to photograph around the house and he's pretty cute.

So I've been doing my homework lately... or trying to.  Its very hard to stay on task when I'm home and have all sorts of distractions, but my continuous goal while I have this time is to immerse myself as much as possible into taking photos everyday, looking at photography and finding what I like and what I don't like, researching volunteer opportunities to practice, learning my camera, brushing up on my photoshop skills, and starting my classes (next week, yay!).  Some day I'm better than others, but that's to be expected I think.

I found this photographer this morning called Max & Friends.  I love the name and his photographs are really unique.  He has quite a bag of photo editing tricks that I could take a lesson from.  Check him out!