Continuous Drive: A Photography Student's blog

I've started blogging as a way of documenting my path through photography. I intend to chronicle my life in photography beginning with my first experiences and continuing to document my foray into becoming a professional photographer. I do not anticipate for one minute that most people will be interested in my blogging and will be doing this mostly as a form of personal journalism. But for those of you who like to exercise your reading muscles by perusing the rambling posts of a soon to be 20 year old's photography blog then boy-oh-boy did you just hit the mother load.

Reflecting back on the relatively small amount of progress that I've made with my photos is what set things in motion for this blog. I noticed how different my pictures are and how my gear has helped shape what kind of photos I take. Seeing this difference insired me to journal my evolution in the ways I take photos, who I take photos for, and if and when I get payed for my photos. As of this post I've been shooting for about 8 months but the past 4 have been where I've made some serious decisions about how I will let photography shape my life.

I was first introduced into the world of photography when I started going to my girlfriend's horseback riding competitions (English eventing for those in the know). It was originally something to do during the down time but I found myself becoming entranced with the proccess. The first camera I bought was a Fujifilm s5200, a crackerjack of a camera (I have dated phrases) that did a lot of things pretty well. Not too much time passed before I found myself being hindered by the full electronic zoom, shutter lag, and a DoF that you could land a plane in and still have room for the dinner and luggage trollies.

After much deliberation and dread of spending an absurd amount of money on a camera I bought my Olympus E-500 and 14-45+40-150 kit from Cameta Cameras for 500 bucks shipped (I only mention them because they've been so great to me and I highly support them and their business practices). I swear that, at the time, 500 dollars seemed like 5000 dollars seems to me now. But even then I knew it was a steal and I still hold that Olympus has the best bang for the buck over every other entry level camera being made right now. But that's all I'll say on the subject because the "Which camera should I get" topic has been beaten, nay pulverized, into the ground so thoroughly that if you breath too deep you're liable to inhale some fanboy dust (Contact a doctor immediately).

Now with the addition of an OM (film era) 50mm f/1.8, FL-50 (TTL-FP flash), Vivitar 283, and all the appropriate adapters, modifiers, and triggers to go with I'm entering the deceptively simple yet stunningly complex world of off camera lighting. More on this later.

Also Later in the week I will be posting a review of the Elinchrom Skyports.