Several years ago I witnessed my friends get in to digital SLR cameras and photography. I was blown away by the features and speed of the DSLR cameras. Whenever I was with them and taking pictures I would always have DSLR envy because I had to work extra hard to compose a picture due to extra timing delays that went along with the point and shoot technologies at the time. In addition to the cameras themselves, the whole world of photography was also catching my attention. Watching my close friend JP White jump in to photography and produce great looking photos, I knew I eventually I wanted to make photography a hobby of mine too.

Well eventually has finally come with the purchase of my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D5100. Like I always do with big purchases I started researching different cameras and figuring out where I may fall in to the DSLR camera world. It all started during a lunch hour trip to Ritz camera in the Christiana mall. JP and I stopped off to window shop and I picked up a Nikon D3000. I was impressed with how it felt and blown away at the speed of the camera. It was at that moment that I knew I was going to buy a camera, but not right away.

After that day I started talking tech details with JP and our friend Eric Chang who is another great photographer. They both shoot Nikon cameras and started passing on knowledge to me about how they started, including lessons learned about how buying additional lenses will be more important and pricey than buying the actual camera itself. One great point they had, and what swayed me in to the Nikon camp, was that they already had a great collection of lenses between the two of them and I would be able to save money by borrowing lenses while I learned and developed my own skills. This was great and I immediately started looking at the different Nikon cameras.

I started looking at the specs of the different cameras and used a great site called snapsort.com to compare their technical details against each other. At the time I was looking, in the fall of 2011, Nikon had a great sale going on. One day while visiting Costco, I found they had a D3100 bundle that included two lenses, learning videos, and a case. The price was very reasonable. I started to get serious about deciding on the D3100 but I didn’t buy it that day. One thing that I kept hearing JP talk about was how the D7000 had a great image processor and it’s high ISO ability (ISO 6400) allowed for it to offset minor lighting issues indoors. The D3100 only went up to ISO3200 and I started looking at the D5100 which did go to ISO6400, plus it also had the same image sensor as the more expensive D7000.

Finally, in November of 2011 I decided to pull the trigger on the Nikon D5100. I went to Best Buy where they had the D5100, a 18-55VR kit lens, a 55-200VR lens, and a Nikon camera bag on sale for $899. I had some reward zone points and few $10 gift cards. All said and done, I walked out of the store with the D5100 package for $834.

I am very excited to have my first DSLR and I am really getting excited about going out and learning how to shoot my new camera. I have not done a lot of stuff yet as it is cold out and its hard to get any free time to go shoot. But, I am browsing a lot of different photography sites and absorbing as much knowledge as I possible can. I love talking to JP and Eric about photography and hope to keep learning from them.

We were lucky enough to get tickets in to Lincoln Financial Field to watch a procession of players, coaches, and the World Series trophy. After the speeches and cheering we were preparing to leave in order to beat the crowd that would most definitely overwhelm the public transportation that we used to get in to the city. It was at this point that I was by a window of the suite level looking out over the sports complex and I saw Citizens Bank Park. The wave tailgaters, people, beautiful weather, and presence of the park itself made for a great picture.

About the shot: The original shot was done in color but I like the timeless look of the black and white that was done in post using iPhoto and Aperture.

Overall, i like the framing and composition of the shot and it definitely captures Citizens Bank Park in full celebratory glory.

I found a great new and “FREE” WordPress theme that I absolutely love! It is called Minimatica and the feature set and easy modification features rival any premium WordPress theme out there. This can be attested by the fact that what you see here is a 100% out of the box configuration with no tweaking. For the record, this is the first time ever that I installed a WordPress theme and went straight to adding content without tweaking the layout a bit.

I do not have a lot posted yet but I hope you enjoy what is there. Check back on my blog as I post articles related to my photography hobby.

Update 1: I ran in to one problem when setting up the front page slider. In it’s default configuration the slider will display all posts. This poses to be a bit of a problem when you start incorporating other types of non-photo content, like blog posts, in to the site. To be more exact, the slider will show all posts, regardless if it has a featured image or not. If it does not have an image you end up with a slider spot that has text but no photo and it looks out of place. I fixed the problem by using a nice little plugin called “Frontpage Category Filter”. Using this plugin, you can turn off certain categories that you do not want listed in the slider. This was easy for my site as I post all my photos under the Photography category. I just turned off all other categories except for Photography and my problem was solved.