In the Beginning...

So. My first blog based on my love of photography.  I've had blogs before, venting while going through a divorce, my love of video games, raising a special needs child...but this one is special. I have loved taking photos for my whole life, took selfies way back in the day on Polaroid cameras, and was a bit of a perfectionist who annoyed my "models" ie, my little sister and her friends. But now, now I am trying to learn how to do things right, and not annoy too many people in the process, although I've already accomplished that just today. So...My NEW first blog. Has that new book smell, I think.  Here I will share my newest pictures,  brief descriptions, and my weekly challenges that I'm hoping will teach me a thing or two. That's the plan. I expect to learn patience if nothing else. So.  Sigh. I'm a happily married mom with four sons, two dogs and a strange cat. Kids are growing up and moving out, my autistic son Chris is my handy sidekick, same for my pitbull, Angel, who we call Pups. I have no idea why, but we do, and we use "Angel Marie" when she's in trouble, like normal pet parents do.

  I've been using a cheap digital camera bought from Walmart for $89, and have taken some pretty good shots.

This is Pups, my first model with my first digital camera.

I also took my son's senior photos myself with the same camera:

I really didn't know what I was doing,but they came out pretty well for a novice, and they went into the yearbook, so I am a published photographer, of sorts. 

After that I moved on to corny prom pics: 

I took hundreds but I'll spare you. You get the drift, I have a lot to learn!

Pitbulls have a lot of energy to burn, so I take mine to the lake every morning when the weather is warm enough, and she loves to swim out and catch tennis balls. Like every other mom of my age group, I often shared photos of this on Facebook.  I shared this one day this past summer: 

Everyone on my FB page knows I'm a little obsessed with my dog, but they humor me and put up with Pups spam, occasionally Merc spam too, my Pappy-Jack, who knows he is the second best in our home, and he accepts it by vomiting in my car almost daily. He's a nervous fellow. Anyway, this pic above got a lot of likes and comments, even with the bad lighting and poor quality.  I entered a few online photo contests,  and got the fever. I wanted to be a better photographer, I want better photos, period. 

TLDR? I'm excited to learn, and need an outlet, which will be here. I have a new, "non expensive but better than what I had already" digital camera, a Kodak Pixpro AZ252 that my hubby picked up for my birthday earlier this month, also from Walmart, for about $130. I'll learn my craft and then appeal for a really fancy camera, right now I'm enthralled with this one.  

To show the difference just $40 in price does, these pictures were taken on my birthday. 

I wanted to catch the sunrise in Port Clyde, Maine, and the first picture is of Marshall Point Lighthouse,  taken right after the sunrise. 

A few hours later, after a stop for an SD card for my camera at Walmart, my hubby spontaneously bought me my new camera, when he saw how inexpensive it was and knew how much I wanted a new toy. The second picture is of Pemaquid Point, taken with the new camera, which took me quite a while to figure out how to turn on! Much better photo, huh? Same day, same photographer. 

I love sites like ViewBug, Photocrowd, and 500px. So many photos, ideas, and great photographers to get inspired by! Instant feedback, critiques, and helpful people to learn from. Sometimes I feel like a little, boring needle in a giant, colorful haystack on these sites, but like I said, I'm learning, and that's really what it's all about, for me. 

I am excited to see how well I improve, and what new techniques I can master, or at least bluff my way through.  Every week I will pick something new for me to focus on, right now I seem to be all over the place, shooting landscapes, pets, food, strangers on the street, just about anything and everything.  I also enjoy editing, have Photoshop but haven't learned that yet (also on my to-do list), I use an app called Snapseed for some of my basic, fun editing, more so with my older camera, I find all I need to do is tweak many of my new photos, or edit them just for fun. 

Thank you for hanging around, I hope I can inspire someone to learn something new, if I can do it as an old broad nearing 50, anybody can! It has yet to be determined if I can indeed, learn something useful, but useful to me counts, right? Right? 

Updated to add a link, HERE, so you can check out my istock portfolio:)

And my Adobe portfolio HERE

My shutterstock portfolio HERE