This year was a bit of a resurgence of my photography work and needless to say I had a lot of fun. During interterm of my junior year at Dana College I took “Intro to 35MM Photography” and I can safely say it is the one class at Dana I walked away with a tangible skill I could use in the real world. Don’t take that as “I learned nothing else at Dana” because that’s not true. I was a writer and a broadcaster and college got me better at those two things.

But that photography class. . .that’s the one where I walked in knowing virtually nothing and left knowing the basics of a skill I could use the rest of my life. Keep in mind this was pre-digital photo days so you had either 24 or 36 chances to MAYBE get it right before you went back out and did it all again after you developed your film and realized you had zero clue what you were doing.

After college I kept the camera and would shoot photos at any NAIA football game I was covering. I kept on with the photography for nearly 10 years before I even tried to shoot anything else. I loved shooting sports because regardless of the play or action you could capture something. It honestly wasn’t until this year and the purchase of another lens did I begin to take it seriously.

I shoot with a Nikon D90. I first got this camera in 2008 with two lenses, an 18-105mm and a 70-300mm. Last year I picked up a 50mm lens that allowed me to do more portrait stuff. It took me a while to figure out just exactly how to shoot with it but overall I am pleased with the results.

The one thing I learned about photographer over the last year is simply to never stop shooting and never stop learning. I’ve met some pretty talented photogs over the last few years and all of them are constantly trying to find new ways to do something they’ve done for years. My work in comparison to them is pretty amateur but I’m fine with that because I can see it improving.

Enough babble, here are my favorite photos from this last year: