Today I went to Beattie Park in Matthews to take some pictures and learn how to work the camera better. I've just moved from a point and shoot snapshot camera to a more sophisticated digital SLR.  It's really interesting.  I went with my friend Jim, and he showed me some basic stuff, and I took about 300 pictures to try to understand the different controls and settings on the camera.  I got about 4 decent shots out of the 300 I took, but since the whole exercise was to help me understand how the camera worked, I'm not upset.  I'm glad I didn't try to learn how to take pictures back in the film days, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the patience to learn it.  The great thing about digital is that you can take all the pictures you want, and it doesn't cost anything more.

One trick that Jim showed me was how to take 'ghost' pictures.  You set the camera in shutterspeed mode, crank the exposure time to about 10 seconds and take a picture of a person.  About 5 seconds into the exposure, you have them run out of the shot, and it looks as if they are ghosts.  Eric and Alex and I had a good time with that this evening. 

There is a class that Jim took a few months ago that taught him all sorts of great stuff.  I'm going to sign up for it Monday.  One of the bad things about the trip today is that I saw how much a good tripod helps.  The one I have is really flimsy, and will have to be replaced.  Any excuse to buy a new gadget, right?