February is Photography month! I decided.

February photography. Photos in February. Fun February Photos. It’s all beautifully alliterative, who’s to fight it?

The winter holidays brought two photo related accomplishments. I FINALLY sorted through all the 2017 photos I took, and picked out the remaining good ones. I also acquired new lenses for my camera.

Apparently, if you are trying to do macro photography you should have an actual macro lens. The one’s that come with the camera kit are not apparently lenses, but filters you attach to the standard lens. Who knew? However, after a year of the real photographers I know sneering at them, I have removed the filters and am now in possession of an actual macro lens. I had ordered two, but accidentally ordered the incorrect one for the second and had to send it back. I am now impatiently awaiting the replacement.

In the mean time, I can now share my good photos from the past year. Since February tends to be a pretty brutal and dreary month, it doesn’t hurt to have bright flowers and sunshine show up in one’s email at intervals.

2016’s attempt at photography was to just hold my camera and click and get over being afraid of it. I have broken an unusually large number of cameras over my lifetime. In my head, I tramped around outdoors, getting lots of exercise and taking photos of flowers I could use in my paintings over the winter. In actuality I spent most of the time holding my breath, frozen in one place, and giving myself headaches by trying to will bugs to hold still or move where I wanted them with Jedi mind tricks. Everything was on automatic, and very few photos were very good, which is to be expected.

This year I hope to use my actual lenses, and some of the few things I have learned over the past year, and see if I can’t improve. My camera and I are definitely taking the slow and cautious route to getting to know each other. I figure if I keep this pace up I shall be able to call myself an actual photographer in about a decade or so. Maybe two. You can all say you knew me when. 😉

2017 was my second year of photography and my goal was to take photos of bugs or flowers deliberately, instead of thinking I am doing the one and actually doing the other, and not getting decent photos of either. I also graduated to manual settings, although I admit I still don’t know what several of the buttons are for (that is part of this year’s goal).  So today I will share some of my deliberate attempts to learn specific things…they are decent photos, but not my favorites. As February progresses, I will share more of the one’s I actually love–and you can see if you agree with me on how good they are.

Also, completely unrelated, I am running for the Fargo Park Board again. This is my favorite photo from two years ago.