Learning Curve

I joined Flickr a few years ago to keep tabs on one of my kids who was traveling the world, volunteering far from home and having great adventures. I rediscovered my love of taking pictures and being inspired by them as well. I also discovered that I could still have adventures and learn new things. I also have another daughter who loves photography and is very talented. I have learned alot of technical things from her about photography but there is so much I want to learn...the learning curve is pretty steep now that I have a nice DSLR.

So I have joined Flickr groups, gone to a couple photography seminars and spent countless hours with my camera manual. I figure it's time to practice all that I'm learning and I sure appreciate the wealth of knowledge shared freely by a lot of talented people in the blog-o-sphere. There also perks to having a blog of one's own. Contests and freebies, yup...I like free stuff and I thrive on competition. I am hoping to improve my skills with a little competition.

The first free stuff I have taken advantage of is this pretty backround and header  

I found at Shabbyblogs.

So easy to use and customize. I love to scrapbook so this was a great tool to get me started!

The competitions that I am looking forward to entering will be from 

a fun website Iheartfaces.

They have weekly contests for photography. I figure I can learn more by practice and I like themes that I can try in my family photography efforts. This week the theme is jumping...here is my entry of a photo I took last summer. These kids volunteered for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts working in mold remediation of some of the worst homes in New Orleans including the infamous Ninth Ward. Their crews worked on hundreds of homes and the work they did was dangerous as well as difficult. I love these kids and I love this photo. I think it's a great way to start my blogging efforts, it's a great way to feel about life!