Focus!

This is my camera.   What? You thought I was going to talk about how scatterbrained I am?  Why would I talk about the obvious?  That's right, because I'm blond.  Well, no.  I hate to disappoint you, but today, we're going to talk about my camera.  That's it up there. Pretty isn't it?

I have a Cannon EOS, Rebel XSI.  It's a digital camera, but it's SLR meaning that I get to set all the doodads and thingamajigs on it.  But only if I want to, because it also has automatic settings too.  So far, since getting this camera last year, I've only used the auto settings.  That's because I'm blond, and I don't know how to use my camera.  You knew that being blond was going to come up eventually didn't you?  Yeah, me too.

It came with a standard "kit" lens.  That means the lens it came with is a 18-55mm lens with an f-stop that goes as low as f4.5 and as high as f29.  Don't know what all that means? Yeah, I'm not so clear on it all either, but that's what the box said.  It also says this is a pretty good lens if you want to take portraits or landscape photos. And we also got a 75-300 zoom lens so we could take pictures (like when our kids are in some sort of event) from farther away.  That way we can stay seated in the audience like good grown-ups instead of high-tailing it up to within inches of whatever the performance is to get our shots.

What I really want you to know, is that I've been inspired!  Inspired, I tell you!  My good buddy Ree over at The Pioneer Woman (you know, the one I'm cyber-stalking because I love her and her life?  The one with the hubby who looks hot in his wranglers? Artist who took the photo above? Yeah, that's her.)  She is an amateur photographer,  and when she started blogging way back in 2006, she didn't know much about her camera either.  And now she's a veritable camera junkie.  I dream of being hooked on that kind of hardware!  I dream of making that wonderful digital imagery.  And in order to do that, I must learn to use my camera.  I have a wonderful photographer friend named Laura (http://www.lhbfoto.com) who might be helping me out.  Of course, she can only do what she can with a blond like me, so I'm not hoping for miracles.  I'll also be utilizing Ree's tutorials and whatever else I can find online.  Should be interesting!

I'm going to post all the fun things I learn about my camera here on the blog so you can follow along at home. Get helpful hints to apply to your own camera or photo taking skills.  And to allow you ample opportunity to point and laugh at me and my crazy photo antics.  I promise to post the good.  The bad.  And the ugly photos I take as I go on this journey.  Should be worth a laugh or two, and maybe I'll even make a few nice shots too.  Hopefully I won't be going too blindly into this journey. 

Seriously.. Thoughts?