It's not my fault.

I have always loved art. The masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Da Vinci, Vemeer, etc. painted such incredible images that they appeared to be photographs. Being unschooled in art I thought that a great painting must look like it's a photograph. I would go to the museums and get as close as I could to these great paintings and think to myself how realistic they looked. I could see so much detail in the paintings, it was incredible. This way of thinking about art limited my appreciation for other forms of art. The impressionists just weren't artists, not like the masters. Why was Van Gogh so famous? And Picasso. What was up with that. This was not art, well, not great art. It didn't look like a photo, it was messy. I just couldn't get pass the fact that great art was photographic. But then I married an artist and she told me something that change the way I looked at art forever. She said that before there were cameras paintings were the photographs of the day. But art was not suppose to take a picture it was to create an emotional experience in the viewer. If you want a picture take a photograph with a camera. I began to look at art in a different light. I could now appreciate the impressionists. I came to love Van Gogh, Degas, Monet,etc. But, Picasso, what's up with that? Unfortumately, my love of art did not go hand in hand with my artistic talent. Oh I could paint a picture and sure my images looked like what I was painting but I was no artist and as the years went by I just didn't have the time to develope my talent if I had any. But my wife has talent and she is constantly searching for images from which to create her amazing paintings and drawings. So I decided to buy her a digital SLR camera for her birthday one year. It was a Nikon D80. It is a good camera to enter into the world of digital photography. So now we have this camera with all of these dials and buttons and really cool things that it can do and we set it on automatic and start taking pictures. Well it takes really nice pictures, sometimes, and really bad pictures alot of times, but it's not my fault is it?

As things go I gradually took over the camera from my wife, it was her gift, and tried my best to take great pictures. As she began to market her art I began to photograph her paintings so that she could put them on her website and send them to her clients. As I took the pictures she would ask me why they weren't turning out so good. I told her that I didn't know but it couldn't be my fault. Well, to make a long story longer it was my fault. That's when I decided that I was going to learn how to use the camera. So I decided to take a photography class and I signed up for one 3 weeks ago. It was a revelation. So this blog is going to be my journey into the world of photography. I hope to share with you what I learn about taking pictures and about how my digital SLR camera works.