An informal poll

I have been musing over a comment from anymommy about my photography lighting on yesterday's post, and the fact that I have had a surprising (to me at least) number of compliments on some of my photos, both here and in Mr. Z's blog for which I do the pictures. After some pondering, I have come up with an idea. This idea was further cemented by anymommy's post today in which she claims to have no idea how to use her D50. I'm not sure I buy that entirely, but am willing admit that there are probably many people out there that don't know how to take full advantage of their camera's features.

So I was thinking about maybe writing up a tutorial. I answered some questions on craftster once that ended up turning into more or less an explanation of photography basics that seemed to be somewhat helpful to some beginners on there. And I remember being completely stumped by aperture and shutter speed and depth of field when I started, so I know how frustrating it can be. My thoughts were to perhaps break photography and DSLR basics down into managable chunks to try to explain what all the buttons and features mean and what they do.

This is baby dave. baby dave (whose name is actually carson)
has nothing to do with this post.
But baby dave is super adorable and i had sort of forgotten
about these picturesuntil going through my portfolio (if you will)
and thought the world should know just how cute baby dave is.
and that he might convince you that i really do know a bit about photography.

Now, I in no way make any claims of being a professional photographer, or even a good one for that matter. I took a class in high school (from an excellent teacher... many thanks, mrs. case) and one far less useful one in undergrad, but the majority of my understanding came from experimentation. Now, this was helped largely in part by the fact that, for some time, I dated a guy who had more money wrapped up in photography equipment than I did in my car (which at the time was a brand new Ford Focus... not exactly a Cadillac, but you get my point). Either way, I got to play with many a fine camera body and lens, and the more you get to play with them, the more you learn to understand them.

I have now downgraded to a Canon Rebel (which is fine, but is no 5D or whatever the hell we had) and one lowly 50mm lens. And while I sometimes wish for the glass I used to have access to, I make do with what I have, and come out with what I think are some pretty decent pictures (at least for blogging purposes).

So what do you think? I get like, fifteen readers a day... is anybody interested?