Siesta Key Photos

Vacation was fun! Only one trip to the emergency room! Judging by how excited Ashish gets at the mere mention of intestinal bleeding, I'm sure the medical students who read this blog would find that story fascinating, but I'm not going to go into it here (don't worry, it didn't involve me, and it didn't involve intestinal bleeding).

Anyway, shortly after arriving in Siesta Key, I noticed that my dad brought his Nikon D100 Digital SLR Camera. Score. So, I decided to take some time to learn real digital photography. By "real digital photography" I mean learning about aperture, shutter speed, ISO film speed, exposure bracketing, and RAW image manipulation - as opposed to my normal point-and-shoot adventures, wondering why my images come out grainy and bleary afterwards.

Having never taken a course in photography, this all sounds very daunting, which is why I avoided learning it for so many years. As it turns out, however, a half hour's worth of reading the camera manual, a few random websites, and a nice beach to walk while messing with camera settings can get you pretty far.

Here is the result:

Beach Goers

Surfers

Learning how to surf is still on my life-long todo list *sigh*.

Scenery

Normally the gulf is eerie glassy calm. This was true for the first few days of our stay, but midweek Hurricane Rita, passing 50 miles south of us, decided to stir up some nice waves.

Wildlife

Sunset

Night Photography

Ok, so capturing images at night is a lot harder than capturing them when the sun is shining. I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but I personally like some of these shots.

Conclusion

Crap, I'm running out of the self-control necessary to prevent myself from dropping $$$$ on a my own digital SLR :(

More photos available in my Siesta Key Photoset!

---

© Josh Staiger, joshstaiger@gmail.com