I am from Virginia, but I have lived in New England for 15 years.

I have always loved taking pictures but have mostly used cheap cameras to do so. My dad had (still has) an old Minolta, and I remember him practicing on us when we were little. Maybe that inspired me. I've mostly owned point-and-shoots (I used to actually own a disc camera!), and a few months ago I decided to take it up a notch. I got a Canon EOS T1i with the kit lens and the add-on telephoto kit lens. There are a lot of variables with these cameras!

Recently I discovered bokeh. I wondered how to do bokeh. I read that the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens was good for that, so I bought one. Then I wanted to do some macro. I decided to get a macro lens. I got a Canon 100mm Macro f/2.8 lens. I learned that to do better macro, you need a separate flash, so I bought a Speedlite. You can see where I'm going with this, right?

I've decided to stop buying any fancy new equipment for now and to just learn how to use what I have (although I am really interested in getting a better telephoto). I consider myself a beginner, because I'm only just understanding what exposure settings do and what partial metering means. For example, I only just realized yesterday that my camera will also tell me when something is focused when I focus manually. Got a lot to learn.