I Bought a dSLR Camera and I Don’t Know What I’m Doing

I got a little restless the other week. And then I got a little obsessed.

And then I bought a camera…

That I don’t know how to use. But I’m not ashamed, so I’m going to show you some of the first photos I’ve taken with my fancy new camera and explain how I ended up with it.

Here’s how it went down. My friend Christina asked if I was planning on buying a nice camera for my trips and travels. (We may have been drinking at the time, but the seed was planted.) Well, no, I thought, I’m already paranoid enough about losing, breaking, and/or having my iPhone stolen. It takes pretty solid pictures… right? I don’t want to have to worry about losing a camera too.

All of my Mexico pictures were taken with an iPhone 6… and I thought they looked good.

But, of course, this conversation was enough to start the relentless brainstorming, Internet browsing, and research that followed. Tina is pretty good with the peer pressure. whether she knows it or not (spoiler: she does). But she also had a point. You’ll never regret having awesome photos.

A search of the words “best budget beginner dSLR” and I happened upon this article by The Wirecutter.  Throw in the fact that one of my favorite travel bloggers, Kristin at Be My Travel Muse, uses a version of this camera and takes baller pictures with it, and I was convinced.

A little more browsing and I discovered that Groupon had a manufacturer-refurbished Nikon D3300 (I mean really, the exact camera I was looking for, what are the odds?) available for $399. I’ll take that as a sign that God wants me to have a new camera.

I didn’t even let that Groupon countdown clock get close to running out (though, man, those things really get you itching to buy). After three days of mulling it over, I got it. I just had to. And then I bought the recommended SD card (which holds like 4,000 photos)… and then the neoprene case.

I swear I’m done for now.

Nothing left to do but practice, right? And I have been practicing…

Christina and I headed to the Raleigh Flea Market one Saturday to check out the goods while I took some amateur-hour shots with my newly arrived camera for the first time.

And sometimes I just walk down my street with my camera around my neck like a weirdo and take pictures of plants and weeds. Totally normal right? I sure do love that Macro setting (that’s the one with the little picture of the flower, you guys, and it blurs the backgrounds of images).

Um, and then the real reason for all of this new camera nonsense. Who am I kidding?

FOOD PICTURES!!!

Okay, yes, I already had my new camera when I made and wrote about Chicken Liver Pate. Here it is in all its glory under some lamp light. Don’t you love that great couch background above? And that wooden Goodwill side table as a backdrop? (Unrelated: I have no decorating abilities and will never claim to. There will not be any home decor blog posts in my future.)

Below is a series of my genius idea for breakfast this morning:  a fried egg over the top of leftover chicken enchilada filling from dinner, topped with some hot sauce for drama.

I promise I’ll get better! Both at taking photos and editing them. I’m not quite ready to invest in any Adobe programs at the moment (and I’m kind of waiting on someone to share them with me for free), so I’m gonna stick with iPhoto and Picasa for now. Meanwhile, I’ll continue hauling my camera out with me as much as possible, despite the fact that it makes me look like a complete goober.

Note: I’m now itching to buy a MacBook Air (13″) with a little added RAM, but of course the cheapskate in me feels the need to browse all of the refurbished models and wait until the Apple Event next week to see if they’ll release new models of the MacBook Airs so that (maybe) prices on the old ones will fall!

Do you have a dSLR? Any tips, tricks, advice, or tutorials you may have for me are beyond welcome!