I'm Back !!!!

Hello all, it is been a while but I have a very good excuse for my absence from cyber-space. I am now back where it all started - in Sydney. Yep, my time in the land of fondue and chocolate has come to an end after 20 interesting months!

I have spent the last three months settling into the swing of things here in Sydney, which I must say has been harder than I expected. But I finally have all my furniture and belongings (which took two months to make the journey from Switzerland) and have found residence with a wonderful girl who felt sorry for a homeless bum. But more about that later.

I will leave my return to cyber-space brief for now. I hope to share some of my parting memories from Europe with you very soon. I will also be working on developing my website into a journal dedicated to my experiences of all things to do with digital photography, as I had promised before I left Switzerland (read below).

Until then take care and au revoir.

Long awaited update!

It has been a long time coming but I have finally got around to updating my the Bear's Den. You probably think I have been in hibernation but truth is I have been busy, especially with my new found hobby - photography!

I have always enjoyed taking photographs but for one reason or another never quite fulfilled my ambitions in this area. However, with the advent of my first digital camera (Canon PowerShot G2) sparked my interest once again.

This interest is now bordering on a passion for this expensive pastime thanks to the acquistion of my first digital SLR camera (Canon EOS 10D) during my trip to Los Angeles last August. Since then, I have basically been inseparable from my camera, and rarely miss a chance to take a snaps.

When I am not taking pictures I am reading and learning about how to improve my photographs. It can be a very time-consuming practice, especially when you aren't that great at taking the photographs themselves. I spend a lot of time trying to clean up my images on the computer with programs such as Adobe Photoshop Elements and Capture One LE.

But for me that's one of the joys of digital photography, even when the first look at an image brings disappointment at having mixed up the settings or done something wrong, it is sometimes still possible to save that image from the 'recycle bin'.

My ultimate goal, however, is to take pictures so good that they don't require minimal 'touching-up' or none at all. Until then, I will keep learning, experimenting and trying new things.

There are probably many people out there like me who have experienced a great deal of frustration with digital photography at some point. Never quite understanding why an image isn't sharp of why the print doesn't look the same as it does on the screen.  My research has uncovered a multitude of fantastic and helpful websites dedicated to helping people like me improve their skills in this area and gain maximum enjoyment out the photographs they take.

So, in any effort to spread the gospel on digital photography and provide hope to those misguided souls out there in the coming weeks I will adding some pages to my website aimed squarley at the subject of digital photography. I do not intend to recreate the wheel so to speak but rather share some of my findings and perhaps provide a guide to those websites I found most useful.

Until then, happy snapping and be sure to visit again soon.

Cheers,

Marc.