I am so excited to announce and start my first BLOG SERIES!! I am entitling this the Start Up Series and hope to chronicle my journey from when I purchased my first DSLR to present day. My hope is to inspire other aspiring photographers that no matter where you are in your journey, even if today is the first day that you realized you love photography, you can SUCCEED with hard work!

So, my journey began at the beginning of 2011 with the purchase of a Canon Rebel T3, and let me tell you, from the get go I was convinced that I was already a pro just by having that camera! Ohhh, how much I still had to learn! It came with two kit lenses, both with an aperture of 5.6. I also signed up for the FREE beginners class that came with my camera purchase…this was a great first step! When you are first starting out always be on the lookout and be open to attending any free workshop you can find! I can honestly say that I don’t remember much from that class and I don’t think I retained much information because after it ended I thought, “I’m good” and didn’t do any follow up research for myself. This was my first and possibly biggest mistake! One thing I did do right was shoot, shoot, shoot! I mostly shot inanimate objects in the beginning, and my dog, Coney. Unfortunately, I was shooting in Auto Mode…so I’m not sure that all of that shooting did me a whole lot of good. Looking back, my two pieces of advice for any new and aspiring photographer is…RESEARCH and get to using Manual Mode ASAP! To be continued in the next installment…

Below are a few of the very first images I took with my Rebel, all in Auto Mode. They are not horrible pictures by any means, but looking at them now, there is a whole lot I would do differently to improve them!