Since I was in high school, I’ve always wanted a nice digital camera. I’ve always had a normal point and shoot camera around for vacations and school trips, but I wanted the real deal. But I knew if I got a nice camera, I would have to buy Photoshop with it because it would drive me crazy if I didn’t. The only downside, the current version of Photoshop cost about $700.
In college, I had free access to the full blown version of Photoshop because the computers in the Engineering Network had it installed. I was a kid in the candy shop. I knew I had to take advantage of the opportunity, at least to learn it and get comfortable with it, because I knew someday I would get my own copy. I went through tutorial after tutorial online, as YouTube wasn’t nearly as big as it is today. Since I didn’t have a camera, I usually made logos and cool signs from these tutorials. One of my favorite things to do was to make cool logos for the Navigators, which is an on-campus Christian ministry I was really involved with while I was at CSU. I loved mashing up the CSU Ram logo with Navigators. When I finished a few of them, I gave them to the Navs staff in case they found them useful. They started using them as title slides in PowerPoint/Presenter during Nav Nights. My favorite thing is, to this day, almost eight years since I graduated, they still use one of those images during their meetings. When I get the opportunity to be with them and see those images, I love the look on their faces when I tell them that I made them. Most of them assumed one of the Art majors made them, not the Mechanical Engineering student who played bass and ran the sound system.
Last November (Cyber Monday 2014 to be exact) I finally got the opportunity to buy a ‘real’ camera. I bought a Nikon D5300 package which included two standard kit lenses (18-55mm and 55-200mm). Just as exciting as that, I learned that Adobe had changed the way they sold their software. Instead of outright buying their programs, you could use them as a subscription service and always be up to date. That let me get fully operational copies of both Photoshop and Lightroom for only $10/month total! Let the games begin.
After I got my camera, messed around with it a little bit, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, bought a bunch of accessories that I thought I would need, I decided it was time to go out and find something to shoot. My favorite photos have always involved sunsets, so I decided I would try to get some cool sunset photos of the mountains. I found a decent spot near the highline canal/trail just south of Chatfield Reservoir. I set up my camera on a tripod, and waited for the sunset.
The first thing I remember was feeling really awkward when people would walk by me. It just felt so weird to be standing there with my camera, standing around waiting. Oh well. I was taking a bunch of random shots, most of them terrible. I tried several different compositions with various trees and bushes. The photo at the top of this post is the best one to come from it. I like it. No it is not the most amazing photo you’ve ever seen, or anything that you will find in National Geographic or 500px, but I will always love it because it was the first real photo excursion I went on.
The other important lesson I learned that day was that sunsets don’t always show up. I know that sounds simple, but before I got a camera, I guess I always assumed there was at least a decent sunset every day. Not true. Since that day, I have learned to pay close attention to the weather and the nuances of the clouds to be able to predict if the sunset will light up the sky with the colors that will make great pictures.