Surfing in the Garden

[shelleylauren]

I'm fairly new here and just just getting back into taking pictures after buying a Canon EOS 350D. I've played with cameras off and on since my mother got me a Brownie Bullet when I was 5, but never really learned how to do it properly. When I first bought a digital camera, I got more motivated, because it was so much easier to experiment, and the feedback was so much quicker, but I missed the quality of my proper camera. In the process of planning a trip and thinking about whether to take the film camera (20 year old Pentax ME Super) or the digital, I wandered into a camera store to look at the Canon EOS, and impulse bought it. I took some pictues at the World Masters Athletics Championship in San Sebastian, Spain, and after I got home decided to make some effort to learn how to do it properly. In the process of this, though, I felt that before taking too many more pictures, I wanted properly look at and share my older pictures, so I made a promise to myself to scan the slides that seem worth the bother at the moment for one year, each month before messing with the new camera. That way I should get caught up with the majority, those back to 1985, in less than 2 years without it taking all of my time. September was the month for 1985, and I have put some of the more interesting ones up. October's task is 1986. I have accomplished my goal in that I have scanned all of them. Some are up, but most are still being edited. (Have a look if you like at my Slides Gallery, and if you have more skill with Photoshop than I do, I welcome your suggestions for improvement.)

But my rules are that they only need to be scanned, and I'll edit them when I don't have anything new that interests me more, so today I got back into taking new pictures, by taking some time to practice using the various controls on my camera. In the process of practising the use of the focus and exposure locks, I took some pictures of some of the neighbors' flowers. While the printer was printing some that I wanted to see how they looked in print, I was killing time playing with the Photoshop filters with one of them. I twirled it, and then discovered that if I cropped it and turned it, I could make it look like a good wave for surfing. So I decided to start my Photo A Day gallery with it to show it off.



They won't all be like this, and I suspect they won't even all be new, because I am find a few burried treasures among the old pictures. Perhaps tomorrow I'll put up the original that this came from.