As a hobby, I love photography. But I often feel shy (and actually kind of afraid) to talk about about it because I just don't have the technical know-how to call myself a "true photographer." It's not from lack of trying either...my Nikon D300 for Dummies book has seen more action than my stack of "vintage" Domino Magazines (and we know that is saying a lot).
Even with technicalities slipping through my mind like a sieve, I still I find so much simple joy in snapping photos, that for today I'm going to brave the critical voice in my head telling me that you all will laugh me out of blogland (please don't), and just show you some of the photos that I took with a new lens that I got the other day.
photo taken with my phone
The lens is an AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G (I had to look up what that means exactly, too). Isn't she a beauty? Even though I take photos all the time, before buying it (my first lens purchase other than the one I bought with my camera body 5 years ago) I still spent hours googling photography terms to make sure that I was getting the right thing. I really wanted something that worked well in low-light situations and would also allow me to get beautiful close-up shots with a milky soft and shallow depth of field. Oh...and I needed to be able to pay for it using the gift cards I received for Christmas (thank you family)...so it had to be somewhat affordable.
Even after all my googling, when my package arrived I was afraid to open the box for fear that my lack of knowledge would land me with something only vaguely lens-related (like maybe a $200 lens cap or a cleaning pad). Luckily (what a relief) I managed to purchase the perfect lens, and got to snapping photos of random things immediately.
I'm obsessed with it! But since I can't really tell you all the technical how's and whys of the lens, I'll let the photos speak for themselves (if you would like more technical details you can read about it here). The only editing done to these photos was a few slight tweaks in the Levels setting in Photoshop.
I have so much to discover about my new lens' capabilities (I can't wait for a good low light scenario...and to snap photos at my sister's wedding later this year), but I can tell that it's going to be a lot of fun to figure out. xo Ez
