After a long year in Afghanistan, it was time for a nice relaxing vacation. At the time Photography meant having a good point and shoot. G.A.S wasn’t even a syndrome that I knew of and as far as I was concerned I had just bought the best camera out there (a hidden gem). I was excited to take some pictures and spend time with my wonderful wife.

I knew nothing of aperture, ISO or shutter speed, but my Canon PowerShot SD990 IS had this really amazing feature (to me) that displayed exactly what the exposure was going to be on the LCD screen when I was in manual. If moved the settings under AV/TV (whatever the heck those settings were. All Greek to me) with the dial, the LCD screen would either brighten or darken. I eventually realized that the LCD screen was showing me exactly what the photo was going to look like. I could get a live view of the scene and pick how I wanted it to look! I also caught on that the shutter speed had to be above 1” and for some reason F2.8 would brighten the LCD screen. Oh and this setting labeled ISO could also brighten my photo too! I had no idea what I was doing. I fought with the camera the entire trip just to make sure my images were not blurred! But I kept on clicking and even though I didn’t know what was happening, the joy of photography started to take hold.

These photos are not the best photos in the world, by any stretch of the imagination, but they were created in the pure innocence of a first encounter with photography. Since then I have made some money with part time photography gigs and I have acquired gear! As quickly as I had gained the joy of photography, I started loosing. All has not been lost and this trip and these moments are a constant reminder of what I am trying to get back too.

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