The only thing I like more than stirring the crowd with my unpopular opinions is stirring my creativity.  In the past, my creativity has been limited to music.  One might say that creating music is my life.  Without it, I would simply cease to exist.

Something that has always held my interest, but I have never been able to afford to pursue is photography.  I have a great eye for composing shots - be it portrait photography, still life, or macros.  It's just, I don't have the cash to get into it.  Especially with digitals running as expensive as they are.

With a stroke of luck, I ran across a Canon EOS Rebel Xs (body only) on E-bay.  With only 13 seconds remaining in the auction, I threw my bid out there.  Time expired with me as the high bidder.  At the completely reasonable price of $10.50, I am now the proud owner of a good quality SLR camera! 

A camera body is useless without a lens, of course.  That said, I threw an extra $40 (earned by selling my old cell phone) toward a 35-80mm zoom lens.  This should be a good basic lens for taking portraits.  That'll start me out, at least.

In the coming days, if I take a pic worth sharing, I'll throw them on this blog.  I'm anticipating some good shots.  I just hope I can live up to my own expectations.  In the mean time, I'll share some very poor quality shots I took with a circa-1970's camera.  The exposure meter was broken, so it was hard to estimate the brightness.  The shots ended up over exposed... but still good memories were captured!

(my youngest daughter)

(my older daughters - very over exposed, but not bad for such an old camera)

More, better quality shots on the way in the coming months.  Stay tuned...

By the way... if anybody has any Canon EF-compatible lenses they want to donate or sell to me on the cheap, let me know! ;)

+ruined