In the beginning........

Well, this is the beginning of an attempt to let everyone know what we're doing with our photography business. I'll start with some history on how this all began.

Cami and I have wanted to have our own photography business for at least 8 years now. I guess it started with me serving my mission in Japan. After I was out for about 5 months, I realized that my little point-and-shoot wasn't capturing what I was seeing. I also realized that I may not ever make it back to Japan. So, I sold my mountain bike and purchased the nicest camera I could afford. It was a used Canon 35mm EOS 3 with a 28-105 zoom lens for about 75,000 yen (about 650 US dollars in 1997). It was a great camera! Unfortunately, I couldn't read Japanese worth a darn, and I didn't know the right vocabulary to talk with someone about camera's, so I learned how to use all of it's settings the hard way!! I did get some great photo's on my mission, and to this day I don't regret buying that camera. There's something about a great photo that makes you feel emotion, and a sense of being there when it was taken. What more could you ask for!

So, once I convinced Cami to marry me, she too fell in love with photography. In fact, after Livia was born, she'd decided to study photography at SFCC in Spokane and make it her profession. But, after a year or so of studying we decided to finish our education at the University of Idaho in Moscow, and soon found that they didn't offer a photography program. That put things on hold for a while......about 6 years to be exact.

That brings us to the present, almost. About a month or two ago, we went to Seattle for Sydney's Amblyopia. On the LONG car ride home, we began to talk again about how we'd spend our Tax return money that we'd soon be receiving. The usual came back up, bills, car repair, savings.....blah, blah, blah. But then, out of nowhere, Cami says, "I think we should start our photography business!" I instantly got excited and started running numbers in my head for what we'd need and the associated costs, when she interrupted my excitement with, "I was only like 40% serious." But, as you can tell with this blog, 40% was obviously enough to get us started.

Which brings me to the present. I've researched just about everything on the planet having to do with camera hardware, and then researched some more. What I've purchased is this.

Canon EOS 40D w/Canon 28-135 IS lens

Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS "L" lens

Canon 430EX Flash

We should receive everything on Friday of this week, and I'm very excited to say the least. I've had MANY sleepless nights trying to decide on the right equipment for us to start with. It really needed to have that right combination of ease of use and image quality without breaking the bank. Once I decided on the equipment, I went through my usual bargain shopping ritual, which again includes MANY nights of tossing and turning and dozens of hours spent surfing the net looking for coupons and deals. It is very satisfying though to actually find everything at the best possible prices. That is one thing that makes me tick......the best deal. I will tell you, I've become dang good at it too. It's an art, to find the best price from a reputable retailer that you can trust. This time it turned out to be Amazon.com, they had almost everything, except the 70-200mm lens. That's a story for another day......