How's it going everyone?! Welcome back to another blog if you're a repeat offender, or welcome for your first if you're new!

This is a guide for absolute beginners looking to purchase their first camera. I will share my experience in deciding on my first camera, and why it was a great choice.

Our cameras have four main shooting modes: Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual. But the question that most students I mentor always ask is which priority should I shoot in, especially if it's like an eagle that's soaring above tree tops?

That is quite a bold statement to make. Especially with the capabilities of RAW files. However, for the moment I am going to ignore RAW files (I will speak about them later on in this article). We all know of photographers from years gone by who didn't have auto exposure and took phenomenal images on film. To name a few: Fan Ho, Don McCullin, Ira Block, Annie Leibovitz, and Steve McCurry. They are in no particular order, but they all started shooting without digital cameras, and without auto-exposure. All their most distinctive shots have been taken without auto-exposure and on film.

Think Pink - Kodak Aerochrome Film Reimagined For The Digital Age

In today’s day and age, we are all obsessed with taking photos that are aesthetically pleasing and sharing them on social media. Our smartphones are our best friends and professional selfie capturers; and in a world of pop-up Instagram spots, what more do we need? Photography aficionados will tell you that you don’t get the same result without a camera, but if you were like me, you might be thinking something like, What do I even need a digital camera for these days? The truth is though, you really cannot do everything on a phone that you can on a camera; therefore, real cameras remain relevant. Professional photographers are not the only ones who need real cameras; photography as a hobby is more popular than ever, and if you are a beginner photographer, you can still benefit from a good camera. However, if you’re still skeptical, the reasons why digital cameras aren’t going anywhere might literally change the way you look at the world.

Last winter, I lost all my cameras on a messed up flight to Tokyo. Consequently, I had to shoot the entire trip on my phone, and it turned out much better than I'd expected.

After so long of procrastinating and never gathering ideas for a work around to edit those large .NEF files from my then new Nikon D500, I have decided to take some 'inspired action' to look through them after downloading the ON1 Photo Raw (2019 Edition), taking up a few minutes of my afternoon to install into my laptop. Before you ask, no, I am not sponsored by the ON1 company for mentioning their software in this entry. Just to add to this, I used the free trial edition. Now back to the story. I've gone through the files to pick out a handful of unique photos to release and add to my library. I'm happy to report 'mission accomplished' to this goal! The photos I've edited and picked out are stunning.

Where do you see yourself in five years? How about ten years? We all come to a point in our life where we must decide what we want to do with the rest of our lives. No, I’m not talking about who we are but where do we see ourselves in the future.

As a new photographer, it can be difficult to understand the various settings on your DSLR and how they all work together to create an image. Maybe you understand some things like shutter speed and composition, along with the tips for using the rule of thirds in photography, but you find the more technical aspects of photography a bit more elusive and complex, like depth of field.