About the Photographs in My Blog
This week I am out of town on a canoeing trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota with my two oldest sons and their scout troop, so I had to write this week’s post ahead of time and set it to post automatically. This will be my first non-personal finance post since launching my blog about a month ago on Memorial Day, 5/26/19. As of 6/20/19 (the time I am writing this post), 25 days after launching, there have been 620 visitors to the blog, 2,173 page views, and 37 people have subscribed. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest. It’s been very rewarding to hear how the content is already helping people with their finances and watching the website traffic grow with time. Please continue to share it with friends via your social media accounts and spread the word.
As I described in my Guide to the Blog post, I would like to write about other things that I am passionate about besides personal finance from time to time. It not only gives me a creative outlet, but also helps my readers get to know me a little better, which should translate to better engagement with my personal finance content. These posts will be found under the Other tab in the main menu.
Today I’d like to talk about the photographs in my blog. A number of people have commented on or asked about the pictures associated with my posts. All of the photographs you see in the blog are my own personal photographs taken over the last few years. When I first decided to create a personal finance blog, I mapped out a preliminary plan of how I would structure it. This included content, menu structure, categories, tags, and images. As I looked at other personal finance and FI blogs, most had photographs of business meetings, people enjoying their retirement, graphics of money, etc. Most appeared to be generic internet images. This didn’t really seem to fit with what I wanted to do. Then I had the idea to use some of my own photographs.
At this point, I should back up and explain how I started learning photography. Like most people, I enjoyed taking pictures with my smart phone when traveling, at a family event, or when I saw something striking, like an amazing sunset. Over the years I have collected some pretty good pictures that way, but by no means would I have considered myself a photographer. Then, this last year my daughter, who has amazing artistic talent, asked for a “real camera” for her 11th birthday. Without doing too much research, I bought her an entry level Nikon DSLR camera I found on Amazon that seemed to have good reviews (DSLR stands for digital single lens reflex and is basically a digital camera you can change lenses on). Minutes after she opened it I could readily see it was a little too complicated for an 11 year-old and she was disappointed. I corrected the situation by getting her a nice little point and shoot Cannon zoom camera that she really enjoys. But now I was left with this DSLR camera and the decision of whether to keep it and find a use for it or return it. Well, as you might guess, I decided to keep it.
A few weeks later, I took the camera with us on a vacation and started taking pictures. Not knowing any better and lacking any photography skills, I was only taking pictures in auto mode. It was fun at first because it was different than taking pictures on my phone. However, since I was only shooting in auto mode, it was essentially just a point and shoot camera and all I ever changed was zooming in and out with the 18-55 mm kit lens that came with the camera. I got some decent pictures but grew bored with this, and after our trip it sat at home packed away for awhile.
I don’t remember what inspired me, but after a few months I decided to give it another try and figured there must be more to this photography thing. I read the entire manual for the camera and did some google searches for beginning photography. As I watched a few videos and read some articles online, I began to learn the triad of exposure: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I learned how to manipulate these settings on my camera and saw how it changed the pictures and it opened up a whole new world to me. I tried shooting in manual mode for my next few trips and I was hooked.
I started experimenting and loved how I could control the depth of field, change areas of focus in an image, capture different scenes in different ways, and play with the lighting. The highlight of traveling started to become finding what photographs I could create. Rather than mindlessly shopping and buying some random souvenirs that would more than likely end up as junk in the future, my new focus was finding pictures that would capture the experience of the trip, the mood, the city, the sights.
As I’ve developed a passion for photography I’ve learned to use prime lenses and a telephoto lens. I started using filters. I’ve upgraded my camera to a professional grade mirrorless camera and lens. Lately I’ve been focusing on learning the techniques and tricks of street photography, landscape photography, architectural photography, and hopefully with this trip to the Boundary Waters, some wildlife photography.
Now back to the blog. As I began to collect some of my photographs to include in the blog, I realized I’ve been lucky enough to travel to some pretty cool places and take some pretty nice photographs along the way. Posting these photographs would be a great way to share my experiences traveling to these unique places in the world, as well as my passion for photography. So I made the decision to only include my own photographs in the blog.
I would recommend trying photography to anyone interested in adding another dimension to their adventures. Photography helps me to see the world in a new way, especially when traveling. I am always looking for a great shot and thinking how I would capture it. I still have so much to learn, but that is what makes it great. While it may cost some money up front, you can get some great pictures with an entry level DSLR or a used camera with just one or two lenses. There is so much on the internet and in books at the library, you don’t have to take a class or pay someone to teach you. It’s a pretty great FI hobby.
I have included some of my pictures in this post that you see regularly on the site as the headers for categories in the main menu. Since categories don’t have a place to write captions for the headers on my website template, I wanted to include these pictures here so I could share where I took them.
That wrap’s up my post for this week. Thanks for reading. Keep tracking your income and expenses and keep heading down the path to FI.
