I bought a tripod.

I went to the L.A. camera swap meet in Pasadena today and bought myself a tripod. If you don’t know about it, it’s a monthly event where people come to buy and sell camera goods, from vintage cameras to used dSLRs. I spent less than what I expected to for my tripod, so I would say that the trip was a success. I was tempted to buy a sweet camera bag but I managed to control myself. It’s going to take some practice working with the tripod, but it will come together at some point. A more immediate effect of this purchase though, is that I’ll probably do a bit more video blogging since it will be easier rigging up my camera. I might record a conversation with my mom or something. That would be hilarious.

I bought a new camera.

I bought a Holga the other day. Since I spend all my money on beer and cigarettes, I wasn’t able to afford the Canon flash that I wanted to buy, so I bought this instead. I got an alright deal and I even bought an external flash attachment for it just for kicks. I’ll be trying it out this weekend and see what comes out. Hopefully I can get my hands on a scanner at some point.

Find me on Flickr!

I guess you don't have to look to hard.  Here's the link: my photostream.

I’ve finally decided to cough up the $25 to pay for the damn pro account.  I know it’s lacking content right now, but I have a ton of photos that I’ll be putting up over the next week.

The Photojojo Daily Pic Pick

I haven't really touched my camera in a while.  I'm going to blame the weather on this, because I'm usually hesitant to bring my camera out when there's a chance of rain.  Anyway, you can check out the contest here.  For the entire month of July, there will be a different theme every day and there's a winner picked at the end of each day.  I'm not thinking I'm going to be winning anything, but it's practice at least.

I'm going to get better at photography.

I have to say that I really like taking pictures.  It's something I want to really get good at.  There's still a lot to learn and I know that the best way to get better is just getting out and taking more pictures, which I am doing.  However, I feel that I can try taking my photography to the next level, which means doing two different things.

First, I'm going to buy an external flash unit.  I know that I probably won't be making the most use of it at first, but it's not going to hurt having one.  It just means that I'll be able to get used to using one sooner than later.  I guess it might not make sense for me to buy all this gear right now since I just started doing this, but the won just dropped, so it's a good time to buy something like this.  'm leaning towards the Speedlite 430EX II.  I've also considered getting the less expensive Speedlite 270EX.  They're both Canon flashes so if it'll be fully compatible or not isn't a problem.  I'm more worried about the price, but I figure that if I'm going to buy a flash, I might as well buy a decent one instead of buying a cheap one and then getting a more expensive one later.  I'm also working a few Saturdays this month, so I'll have the extra cash.

The second thing I'm going to do is start digitally editing my photos.  This is going to be a huge undertaking for me since it's not something I really do.  I usually upload the pictures as I take them, except for a few minor touches like cropping and shit.  It's probably going to be a lot of work.    Learning how to work in Photoshop is going to be hard since I'm on my own.  If I was back home, I would have signed up for a digital photo editing class at a community college, but since that's out of the question in Korea, I'll just buy a how-to book or something.

It's not as if I have a real goal in mind.  I just want to get better.  It's not as if there were any real method at gauging how good my photography is anyway.  I also know that I'm never going to be a professional photographer either, since I'm nowhere near dedicated enough.  What I do know is that I want to be able to take good pictures, put the touches on those pictures to make them better pictures, and then be proud enough print some out and hang them on my wall.