The Artist Within

The advent of digital photography has drastically changed my life and, I would venture, the lives of many of you who are reading this post.

To give you some background, prior to owning a digital camera I had shot only a few rolls of film in my life.  Even though I have always been inspired by beautiful photography, I didn't have ready access to a camera nor the funds to take up photography.  You know, the typical life of a grad student kind of stuff.  Life changed when my wife and I bought our first digital camera in the summer of 2002.  I discovered that my repressed "artsy" side was longing to be free.

Digital photography allowed me to snap pictures without the worry of wasting film and money for processing.  This was so liberating!!!  The immediate feedback provided by the ability to review/preview one's pictures allowed me to learn how to take better pictures and offered even the untalented,  like myself, the chance of getting lucky and capturing a decent picture.  Add to this the ability to edit one's own pictures and send them over the internet, post them on Facebook, etc. and...well...you have a revolution.

For this exercise, I have chosen to use Flickr.  I do feel obligated though to mention that my fascination with everything Google made me first choose Picasa.  The sway came when I thought of what "most people" are using.  So, to learn as much as possible about the service that most of my students would use, I decided to give Flickr a try.  So with my new Yahoo account created (sigh...yet another account) I logged into Flickr and typed in my first search "korea dragon color" and was rewarded with a number of hits; my favourite is shown above, or click here to see it in Flickr. (I'm an academic so I feel the need to reference)  I also really liked a lot of the other images from Korea that this photographer had posted.  Wow, this is really cool!  One of my new favourite things to do is to type in some words that come into my head and then click on stuff that I find interesting.  It's really neat to see where it takes you.

So where am I today with digital photography?  Well, since purchasing our first digital camera seven years ago, we have taken about 5,200 photos.  Most of those are of our kids but I try to make time to get out and take pictures and release the "artist within" once in a while.  Here is a link to some of my pictures on Flickr . (Clicking the "Slideshow" is probably the best way to view them.)  I must say that I'm not terribly comfortable with sending photos out to the world so have only published a few of my favourites.  I have, however, discovered a wonderful new way to explore.

Thanks for reading.