Introductions - Part 1

Who am I?

My name is Chris and, recently, I've invested my meager load of spending money to immerse myself into the fine art of photography. I was growing bored with my time outside of my relationship and work, as that time was spent mercilessly destroying (literally) keyboard after keyboard while surfing the internet, playing video games, and obsessively watching Japanese anime (which happens to be an apparently timeless Asian-American past-time, mind you).

Why photography?

My girlfriend cosplaying an Archbishop from Ragnarok Online

Truth be told, I wasn't drawn to photography by my own accord.

My girlfriend is actually a budding hobbyist herself -- and just as engaged into the aforementioned Asian-American past-time. In fact, our love of extraordinary and fantastic tales is what brought us together as friends seven years ago. However, we both have different ideas of expressing our fondness of these kinds of things: I draw (badly) and build (an explanation for a later post), while she cosplays.

During last year's Anime Expo in Los Angeles, she had participated in a photoshoot in cosplay with a professional photographer. She jokingly brought up the idea of me picking up photography so she could have free photoshoots at her beck and call, and since then I had kept the option at the back of my head.

It wasn't until early this year that I really started to weigh the hobby as an interest. We ended up attending another, smaller convention (Anime Los Angeles). As the dust settled and we went home, I hopped onto the internet and flipped through some professional pictures of cosplayers from the con. It occurred to me that I had started growing an interest in the whole mechanical aspect behind each composition.

My Wikipedia searches on rule-of-thirds eventually leaked into more (you all know what that site can do to your attention span): Within the hour I was learning about ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and more.

I loved being creative. I loved using logic and critical thinking. I was never particularly skilled at using a pencil on paper or paintbrush on canvas.

Photography just seemed to fit, and when I got my first entry-level set-up (Canon 1100D/T3 with an EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III) (I can explain) (I swear), it truly did click. Three months since then, I've been struggling to better my knowledge and skill with the hobby.

Why "struggling", you ask?

The legendary Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II - The king of budget lenses

Because I'm a self-proclaimed budget photographer, and the "budget" part of that prideful title doesn't equal much in dollar bills.