I've been a little lax with my posts lately because I was away on vacation last week in... the Galapagos! But this little jaunt was a great place to get some new fodder for the blog. I embarked on a project that has been bugging me for a while.
You see, I am not a good photographer. I get jealous of some of my friends' pictures that feature fantastic scenery or portraits that seem to capture spontaneous moments. My hallmark is a posed picture. Where everyone is standing dead center. Like this:
Exciting, no?
It's not like I don't have practice taking pictures. When I was younger, my dad was already toting around some camera or another. He had a big fancy Nikon SLR, and there were always a few point-and-shoots hanging around his neck or wrist.
When I was in grade school, I was given my very own 110mm camera with a big red button that made a hearty "click!" when you took a picture and that you had to wind forward with every shot.
For my seventh grade trip to the UK, my dad let me use his 35MM Kodak S-Series with automatic winding and an awesome sliding lens cover feature. Sometime in high school, I upgraded to a nice automatic camera with a flip lens cover and flash built in. AND, it had a zoom! In 2002, Chris and I upgraded to digital, and we've had a nice series of Sony and Canon cameras ever since.
Finally, life came full circle when I bought Chris a Nikon digital SLR (the D90) particularly so he could use it on this trip to the Galapagos.
I wanted to challenge myself to put together more creative images in my photography. I love the way some photos allow to me to experience something I've never seen before or show a totally different view of something familiar. I don't get to use the awesome SLR when Chris and I on vacation together since it's ultimately his camera, so I'm doing the best I can with a little digital camera. Luckily, digital photography has made life easier with on-computer editing.
Here are the results of my endeavor. I took hundreds of pictures - most of them mediocre to bad - and these are the ones that rose to the top. I've edited every single one of them to hopefully capture a mood, feeling, or funny moment. They don't exactly capture the experience, but hopefully you get a flavor for what I was feeling when I took them.
Do these pictures make me look like I had a good time? Because other than the crazy vertigo that lasted for 5 days after I disembarked from the ship, I had a great time.
Finally, a few guest shots. The first is from Chris, who captured a fantastic sunset on our last day on the islands:
Finally, one shot from a fellow vacationer that simply captures the magic of the sea lions in the Galapagos:
Materials used for this project:
- Canon PowerShot SD800
- MacBook Pro and iPhoto
- The Galapagos
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