About 9 months ago, I took my first trip with my photography equipment, having a purpose of my trip be going out to shoot pictures. It was actually a work trip to the headquarters of my day job in Cary, North Carolina, very close to Raleigh. At the time, I felt like I had a long way to go in developing my skills as a photographer, but I was excited to get out and test myself. I nervously wandered the streets of Raleigh struggling to find interesting subjects to capture, but having fun learning in the process. After a little bit of time, I managed to get more comfortable with the process, and brought back a few decent shots. However, it was the knowledge and experience I gained that was the real payoff. I was fairly proud of that outing, and hoped I could try it again soon.

Well, last week I got exactly that chance. I returned once again for work, and planned on re-visiting some of the same places I shot almost a year earlier. It was fascinating to me to recognize the difference in how I felt during the shoot, as I feel like the last year has taught me so much about lighting, composition, and understanding my equipment. My confidence was much higher in all these areas on this new outing, but what surprised me was how much better I felt I was able to “see” through my camera’s lens.

I know that sounds abstract, so let me elaborate a bit. During my previous trip to Raleigh, I remember snapping my shutter hundreds and hundreds of times, trying to capture everything I noticed as even remotely interesting. Most of these shots ended up being worthless for everything but the lesson they taught me. This time around, however, I felt much calmer in my search for subjects. I had a much easier time filtering out those potential subjects that just don’t seem to turn out right when viewed through the camera’s lens.

The results of the trip last week helped me feel like my efforts to further educate myself are paying off. I view photography from the standpoint of how it satisfies as a creative outlet, and when I’m able to take a much more confident in my approach, it makes that fulfillment significantly more rich.

I hope you can enjoy the gallery of photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Since the new year is here, I thought I’d do some restructuring of my photo sets to make room for all the new pictures of 2008. To save from things getting too cluttered, I put all the photo set albums into a “2007″ archive album. What does this mean to you? Why would anyone else care about this change but me? Well, if you’ve ever received a link directly to one of my photo set galleries before, those links will unfortunately be broken. Hopefully the site will take a best-bet at the gallery you’re heading to.. but if you can’t find what you’re looking for, just browse through the gallery and find it on your own. I haven’t removed anything, just reorganized. If you need assistance finding anything, please feel free to let me know!