Hello, World.

Where to begin, where to begin.  Maybe with the birth of this idea?  Alright, well here it goes. 

I am normally a very vivid dreamer.  I remember details from my dream almost as if I am living a parallel life inside my sleeping body.  Last night was no different, but in my dream last night I had a mission.  A mission that very much is something that I am working on during my awake hours as well - to improve my photography skills.  In this dream I was sitting at a computer working on what was basically an ongoing growth chart of my skills.  This dream-world blog consisted on me working on a specific piece of my photography and sharing it with the online blog-o-sphere (isn't that what this is called?) along with pictures/links/whatever.  Upon awakening, I laid in bed for a while and thought maybe that might be a fun idea.  It would give my photography a purpose as well as an outlet for sharing.  Only people who were truly interested could look at my pictures and give me feedback instead of just clogging up my personal facebook page.  So here I am - LRC Images.  Growth in progress. 

So a little of my backstory - I have always been interested in photography, although I didn't always realize it.  When I was in high school there weren't great digital cameras or photoshop or online photography communities.  Hell, I don't think blogs even existed back then.  Okay, that makes me sound ancient.  It wasn't THAT long ago - I graduated in 2001, but technology sure has changed since then!  College went by in a blur, I got my first digital camera (I think it was like 3.2 megapixels and it was pretty top dollar!).  I took a million pictures of the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway.  I graduated with an education degree.  I took a million pictures of the kids in my classroom.  I got a cat and met a boy, took a million pictures the cat and the boy.  Got married.  More pictures.  Got a house.  More pictures.  Baby.  More pictures.  Another baby.  Even more pictures.  You get the idea.  It wasn't until Baby #2 was born that I really wanted those super cute newborn/baby pictures.  Problem was we were BROKE.  Like $5 in the bank account broke.  No way could I afford to pay someone to take our pictures, so I did it.  I knew *nothing* about how to take great pictures and I only had a cheap point and shoot camera.  My pictures mostly turned out like this:

Yeah, I may have even printed that picture out....

Slowly my "photography" evolved into better pictures like this:

And then I discovered Picassa.  I LOVED picassa.  You could do the coolest effects with it.....  *insert sarcasm*

 And then in June, everything changed.  I got my first DSLR camera.  I joined several online photography communities.  And I started reading and practicing and reading and practicing.  I put my camera on Manual mode and never looked back.  I started to learn what I like and what I don't like.  And I kept growing. 

In September my wonderful husband bought me a copy of Photoshop Elements for my birthday.  And I grew some more.  I also started watermarking my pictures that I started posting for CC (Constructive criticism) on the photography boards. 

And that pretty much brings us to today.  That is just about 18 months of learning in one post.  The thing is, I still don't really know what I'm doing.  I've read the books, I can explain all the vocabulary, but I still don't feel like I *know* what I should be doing.  The images I get that I fall in love with are random and mostly unplanned in the sense that I'm not sure WHY the image turns out the way it does.  I still very much struggle with lighting and focus.  I'm still learning how to optimize my images with PSE and how to get that elusive great shot SOOC (straight out of camera). 

I still have a LOT to learn. So please, like my page on facebook (www.facebook.com/LRCimages), come back and visit my blog, give me feedback, and watch me grow!