What the Heck?

I'm so excited that I can't sleep. I decided tonight that, what the heck, I am going to buy a camera. I have been wanting one for quite some time, and the more I think about it, the harder it is to wait! Doug and I went to pizza place #5 tonight- Fellini's Pizza - and it was just an adorable building. Very retro and fun and I just saw the whole place in pictures in my head. I brought my little digital camera, and I tried to be as artsy as I could with it, but it was not satisfying my craving for beautiful pictures! (It might have also been that I have no idea what I'm doing with my camera?) Speaking of, I started to play with some settings on my camera tonight. I didn't read the manual or anything, I just started pushing buttons! I think I was changing the shutter speed, but I couldn't tell whether higher or lower was best. Obviously, I am a photographer in the making! HA!

Anyways, I had it in my head that it would be a long time before I made this big purchase. Now that I'm married and our money is combined, I'm realizing that I think of purchases very differently (which is probably both good and bad). I'm usually pretty conservative with my money and save most of it, but I have never had a problem with making purchases I really want, like trips, an ipod, etc. But now that it's our money, I realize now that I have taken on a new guilt with any big purchase! Doug and I talked about this at dinner, and he made me feel a lot better about it all.

I received so many helpful responses to my post about cameras (thanks for your help!!), but I also heard a lot of huge price tags that scared me. So tonight after dinner, I immediately started researching what kind of camera I would like to figure out when it would even be possible for me to buy it. Several of the people who responded had the Canon Rebel Xsi, so I started with that. After reading the reviews, I was sold! It sounds like the perfect camera for me to start out with, and I was so happy to see the price tag was less than I had in my head.

I found the camera & lens for $530 on Centraldigital.com, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for $90 on journeyed.com (amazing deal for students- which my husband is :)

I also received several recommendations for iheartfaces.com, which has tutorials for just about anything you need to know! So instead of paying for local classes, I think I will try this route. They have weekly challenges where you can submit a photo, so I will definitely get into that!

Thanks again for all of the advice, I can't wait to get started!! And Pep is ready to be my little model :)

Oh! One funny story before I try to go to sleep. We ate our pizza on the adorable patio at Fellini's, where it was pretty crowded. As we were leaving, we walked past a car parked right next to the patio. They had one of those fake legs hanging out of the trunk. Even though I have seen these many times, it somehow frightened me enough to shriek and jump about 4 feet in the air, which caused the whole patio to look at me. The car owner thought it was just the best thing she had ever seen.