Photography

One of the topics that has continued to come up as Heather and I search for more things we enjoy doing together is photography.

Until now we haven’t really done much with that information, other than say “we should figure out a way to get more into photography together”

As of a few days ago, we are now proud members of the Des Moines Camera Club.

We attended one meeting to try and get a feel for the club, and were really impressed by how friendly the long time members were. To say that they are more knowledgeable than we are about the subject is an understatement, but they were friendly and happy to talk about their hobby.

The speaker at our first meeting was a nature photographer with an incredible portfolio of work. While he could still be considered amateur, many of his pictures have been published in books and magazines.

I was really impressed by his work. Neither Heather nor I are really interested in doing nature photography per say, but it was still really interesting to have someone that good at the craft tell us about some of his work.

On a tangent, it was hard to ignore that the speaker was retired, and therefore had a much more flexible schedule to work with. I guess the lesson to take away from that is he put in a lot of time learning the skills needed to take good pictures over the years, and now that he has the time to really dig in and wait for that perfect shot he can get great pictures!

I think we are going to quickly find that Heather and I have drastically different interests within the broad scope of “photography” but at least it gives us something to talk about 🙂

We have been putting aside a little money each month to eventually buy a nice camera (did someone say Dave Ramsey?).  After one meeting with this club, I am a little concerned about fast you could burn cash with the hobby. Heather seems committed to the idea of not buying until her talents surpass the cameras we have now, but there seems to be a pretty substantial leap from the point-and-shoot models we have and what most people at the club are running. Maybe we can pick up last years model from somebody or something.

Whatever camera we end up using, and whatever topics we end up photographing, hopefully we can post some interesting stuff here over the next year!

-Jordan