My first NaBloPoMo blog post. Well, sort of and frankly, I am lost for words.

Anyway, this photo was taken at my MIL’s place when we celebrated the lantern festival. More photos to come as soon as I get down to processing them.

You may be wondering what I’ve made myself do. Nothing fancy or out of the ordinary for sure. I merely enrolled myself to the local gym. I’ll tell you something else, the enrollment took place some 6 months ago!

Guess what’s happened to my membership? Yep, it’s all gone down the drain; along with my hard earned cash and very much suffered the same fate as my best weight loss supplement.

That’s not the best part – to get my gym membership re-activated, I’d have to pay a hefty penalty! Talk about bummer. It’s no wonder no one exercises and everyone gets fat…*sigh*

these past couple of weeks, I have been grateful for many things: the family that I have, the life that I lead, the people that I know. Just many things that perhaps I didn’t have to look far or things that happen without you having to ask for.

i won’t say things are going exceptionally well at the moment. it’s improving which is a good thing. besides, I am definitely losing weight. a good thing if you ask me cos no more fighting the urge to resist diet pills hahahaha…i’m only kidding.

So, you’ve seen your friend’s photos. They are beautiful. The more you look at them, the more envious you get. This drives you to un-thinkable horizons. You long to join the club. You want to keep up with the Jones’.

You then decide that you would want to take a picture of boring steel buildings and turn them into Van Gogh. OK, well, almost. Basically, you want to take pictures exactly like those of your friend’s. The quickest way would be to ask your friend and have him tell you how.

However, if you choose to urm, surprise him with your err…skill, then you gotta acquire it first. But, where do you begin?

Tell you what…I’ll pave the way for you to get started; you know, just to have some idea. How does that sound? Wonderful? Well then, lets get down to business shall we :

Firstly, your friend probably owns a DSLR. Alright, he told you he does. And you are thinking of getting one as well. You are probably right. But..which one? There are countless of models, brands etc…you can go nuts just trying to decide which one.

I’ll be bias here; I’ll narrow down the field for you. Forget about other brands and simply concentrate on a Nikon or a Canon brand. Now, I am not saying that the other brands are useless but because these 2 are highly popular among pros and ametuers. So, if you want to say sell your lenses or get used ones, there are more out there in the market than say a Sony.

Plus, when you begin your journey (and depending on how strictly you want to see this through), you will find that one lens isn’t enough. Therefore, sourcing for lenses of a popular brand would definitely be easier.

Alright, you’ve now decided on a brand – Nikon (I told you I’m bias). There are plenty out there. You get confused. I was once like you. I didn’t know what to get. An entry-level, the mid-range, the prosumer..the list is endless. If you face the same difficulty, I’ll help you decide – look at your budget. Seriously, photography is a rich man’s game. Lenses can costs thousands of dollars. Until and unless you have carved a name for yourself in that brands like Nikon would send you one for free, you have to purchase them yourself and they don’t cost chicken feet.

You have to be realistic in terms of budgeting. If you are tight, get an entry-level camera and use the access cash for lenses. At the end, it’s the lenses that you’ll keep for a long time. Furthermore, once you know your way around your camera and it’s limitations, you’ll know how to overcome them.

If you want to read more on the SLR system, you could try Photo.net. One of their very popular and informative article appropriately titled Building a Digital SLR System.

I’ll talk more about what happens next when you have purchased yourself a DSLR, apart from oooing and gooing at it all day. …in the next post. So, stick around will ya..

Just last Friday, during a visit at a friend’s house, she said “so, you have one of those camera’s too huh.”. I went “yeah”. Of course, I proceeded to take pictures. Then, my friend asked again “Did you take lessons?”.

Hmm…it got me thinking. Sure enough, I was flattered and on a new high because, frankly, I’ve been asked that several times before. Some have even asked me if I owned a DSLR model that is of befitting of a professional.

So, again, I am feeling on top of the world right now. Much like if someone were to tell you that, they’ve won first prize and are on their way to enjoy the Vegas vacations.

The reason why I feel the way that I am feeling is because firstly, I do not own a high-end DSLR. A DSLR yes but an entry level.

Secondly, I have never taken photography classes, ever. I don’t even have a mentor or someone to show me the ropes when I first held the camera in my hands.

Now, I am not saying that the pictures I’ve taken are of professional standards. They are probably shots pros used to take when they were still rookies. But, just the idea that people assumed that I might have had some assistance with regards to my shot-taking, I feel happy and proud that I am able to get this far on my own.

Would you believe it, about a year ago, I didn’t even know how to operate a simple digital camera? Better believe it. I was out with some friends and I had a hard time figuring out my camera. It got so bad to the point where someone remarked if I owned it in the first place..LOL

Yes, that was how pathetic my case was at the time.

But I was determined. Not to become a professional but because I wanted an improvement. And I liked a good challenge.

If you are like me, you love a good challenge, stick around and I’ll tell you more on how I got started, what I did in my next post