Trial by error: A story about photography

I took photography as a sophomore and junior in high school, it was a wonderful class. We used the old black and white canons, learned about metering, exposure, fstops etc.  We developed our film in darkrooms and processed our photographs in trays of chemicals and hung them from wires...  Oh the nostalgia.  It awakened a love of photography in me.  Truthfully I like almost everything artistic so enjoying photography wasn't a huge surprise.  I took photography again in college, 3 classes in fact.  I still have the film camera I bought for that class.  For some reason, all the things I'd learned in high school seemed to escape me.  Truthfully, I'm not sure what I was thinking or doing those first 2 years of college.  I'm not entirely sure that I wasn't being remotely controlled by aliens, I was such a different person then.

I digress--

Melony Farrar of Sweet Wink rekindled my interest in photography.  I worked with her for 2 years doing hair and makeup for her business.  There was a plan for me to branch into Savannah, expanding Sweet Wink, but that did not end up working out (yet).  I bought a Nikon D90, and started tinkering with it.  I had never used a digital SLR before, having only used black and white film.  Basically, while I had some previous experience I was starting over. Color and white balance has been a major issue.

What I ended up with was a expansive collection of well composed photographs that were crap.  There were a few Photoshop-salvageable images but the quality was so variable, it was embarrassing.  

my secret love of bird photography.. if I had a few spare Ks laying around I would love to get my hands on a telephoto lens.

my pretty ex-puppy, Sumo

Bacon

My sisters house

and then sometimes you end up with a picture of a polar bear sodomizing your firstborn son.  Go ahead and laugh at the color *sigh*

Since then I have cracked open my D90 book, I wish I could say I have read it cover to cover, it's a work in progress.  I *made* a greycard for myself and it's made an enormous difference.  I can only imagine what a real one would do, lol.  I've also figured out the white balance settings for my photographs, so as long as the lighting temperature isn't wonky (like trying to take a photograph in my coral pink parlor, see above) I can get pretty consistent results.  A true trial by error.