Jealousy sparked my photographic interest. When a friend of mine would bring her DSLR out years ago, I waited like an excited child on Christmas for pictures to pop on Facebook, always wow-ed by just how NEAT they looked. The background was blurry! How did she DO that??
So before visiting my brother out in LA in 2009, I decided that my point and shoot just wasn’t going to cut it. Two days before my flight, I bought a Nikon D40. I couldn’t contain my excitement before the trip. Pictures were taken of everything, mostly just macros, isolating subjects just for the sake of creating bokeh. My first trip out, I didn’t even want to bother with landscapes because I couldn’t make anything blurry with an in-focus subject. Like, totally boring!
Then, I decided to take a hike through Ricketts Glen State Park in my home state of Pennsylvania. Waterfalls everywhere. Trails and streams begging for wide angles. All of a sudden, I couldn’t impress myself (or others) just because I had a camera that could render things out of focus. I had to finally LEARN about photography.
I dove in deep, reading everything I could. I spent hours on websites just looking at other photographer’s works – from amateurs to professionals, I didn’t care. I found myself returning to Ricketts Glen again and again, always trying to outdo my last trip. And I found myself shifting my philosophy. All of a sudden, EVERYTHING had to be in focus. I needed detail all over my image. Everything sharp. From that point on, landscape photography grabbed me and has never let go.
Links:
Website: http://colintgallagher.com
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colin-Gallagher-Photographer/170407189656590
Twitter: http://twitter.com/colintgallagher
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