A little Show and Tell

So a little about my new camera... my final choice was the result of a ton mind-numbing hours of research that I did, which was then followed by back and forth debates in my mind, with my husband and basically anyone who could stand to answer my questions and talk to me about it, and topped off with much hand-wringing and hemming and hawing.  Let's just say that if I spotted you with a dSLR, I was asking you about.  LOL.  And mind you, ALL this was preceded with me talking about how I'd been dying to get a dSLR for months (my husband might argue that it was years!).  But it was a big investment on my part and I seem to have the personality that pains me to spend money on myself, but have absolutely no issues doing so on the people I care about.  Go figure.  Anyways, back to the camera.

I decided on the Canon EOS 7D.

The final factors/combination that weighed into it was that:

-The test pics looked amazing (how could you go wrong with a Canon?);

-I liked the feel of the Canon (vs a Nikon which was my other choice) - I'd gotten great advice from Savitri to make sure I took the time to hold the camera and get to know it;

-**It can take a great number of pics continuously in a second**- this was a BIG reason for why I chose this specific Canon, as I have 3 boys who are very active and play sports year round.  I am very excited to really capture pics of them while they are shooting a ball, up at bat or kicking the ball! :)

-It has a movie function too.  Now I'm sure that real photographers will probably shudder to know that I took that into consideration, but hey, at the end of the day, I'm not a pro and wanted to be able to take record movies without having to lug one more thing with me.  

The combination of all of these led me to my new camera (and Canon was running a good promotion on the camera, so that didn't hurt either!) and I couldn't be more excited.

So last night, in addition to posting my first entry, I got started on my photography assignment.  As I quickly mentioned yesterday, I am taking a beginner photography course.  It's an online course, which makes this a first for me x2 (first online course ever and as well as photography course).  I hope to over the next six weeks get to know my camera and all those cool manual functions much better (it's barely a month old) and learn to take great pics... well at this point I would settle for good ones!  As soon as I get through the assignment and have something to share, I'll be posting them pronto.  (Crossing my fingers and feeling pretty good about the whole thing!).  

But in the meantime, these are 2 cards I made for a birthday party (twins!) from last week.  You'll be seeing a ton of boy birthday cards here given that I have 3 boys, and between them, always seem to have a party every weekend (and sometimes a few!)

I used stuff that I have had for awhile to make both these cards.  As you'll also see, I am not the most trendy person, so if you want a nostalgic flashback in a crafting kind of way, definitely stop in often!  The pp on the All Starr card is from an SU kit I bought in '04, maybe?.  It often takes me a while to get to using a lot of my stuff, so when I do, it lingers.  Ask me if I've even opened up any of the BG or MME Halloween patterned paper collections I bought a few months ago ;)  And winter collections - I haven't even gotten around to buy any yet!  LOL