I am not stupid!

If you've been reading the blog lately, you've found that I recieved a camera for Christmas. With a somewhat spendy camera (not in the photography world, but spendy in the normal world) I decided that I needed to figure out what those letters on the other side of "automatic mode" meant. So far I have lived in green-rectangle land, with a few turnings of the dial into the lands of "running man," "flower," and "lady face." That's been fine and all, but with the vast expanse of internet knowledge before me I no longer had an excuse. I needed to know.

So I looked.

What did I discover? Aye-chee-wah-wah! I had to find the equivalent of "camera buttons for complete dummified idiots." The problem is this: The tutorials often begin assuming you know what words like aperture, shutter priority, reciprocity and ISO speed mean. I consider myself a pretty intelligient individual and yet I felt like I was swimming in a pool of confusion, unable to keep definitions straight or follow what I was reading. Then I found it. A great site that explained things with the understanding that the entire subject matter was not only new to most, but that it was hard to fathom all at once. Geoff Lawrence is a photographer who set up Free Digital Photography Tutorials & Tips. I love Mr. Lawrence. After reading every tutorial (they're pretty short) I now feel like I can at least somewhat follow other websites. Thank you Geoff!

Have I learned what they all mean? Nope. I know what M, Tv, and Av mean. I can mess around with them although I don't know how to really use them for the best results. I'm not so sure with P and I have no idea what A-DEP means at all. But I'm learning.

It sounds horrible, but I really hate not knowing things. I have this almost insatiable desire to know. If not everything, at least everything I can think of to research. (Our household is partial to amazing, hard-to-believe facts. I had originally wrote "factoid," but on a whim looked it up and found that it means "an invented fact taken as true because of its appearance in print." Who knew? That is exactly what I'm talking about!)

So this photography thing is a pretty good patience-inducing hobby. Something I need in my life. Don't worry, I won't post everything I learn, but hopefully you'll notice the evolution of my mad photographic skillz.