traveling has inspired my photo bug....not sure where to go from here...?

[ajdamiano]

Hey all,

Just a quick into. My name is Adam Damiano. I'm 31 years old, recently married and just arriving back in the states after spending nearly 2 years abroad. A little over a year of that time was spent in South korea teaching English courses with my wife and the following 6 months were spent traveling throughout Southeast Asia and then Europe.

During my time in South Korea, I had the opportunity to travel throughout the country and a few surrounding countries which gave me quite a bit of new subjects to photograph. I have always just owned simple point and shoots which were great, handy and easy to use but after a fellow teacher showed me his DSLR I started to wonder if I was missing out by just using my lil Samsung.

I did a bit of research and made the commitment to invest in a Nikon D5000 as it was reasonably priced and seemed to offer a good range of options for me to begin learning.

Took me a good few weeks to really understand even how to take simple shots but since then i've really started to form a passion for it. So much so that over my 6 months, I snapped almost 20K photos in almost 20 countries.

I bought the camera with the kit 18-55 and then upgraded to the Tamron 18-200 which has really been alot of fun with its wide angle effect.

My wife and I are transitioning into our next move and have discussed our options for whats next. Although i've just begun to explore photography on a deeper level, i'm feeling strong about making it a part of my profession.
So, i'm here today running through my recent life with you all in hopes that I can pick your brains to grab some ideas on how to proceed. My real passions are lying in travel photography with a focus on cultural and landscape images. I just need to figure out where yo direct my focus to get started and know that i'm headed in a direction that will work best.

I've researched a local photo school that offers general and camera specific courses that i intend to enroll in over the next few weeks to give me some much needed eduation on my equiptment and photography as a whole.

My wife has developed a site for me to share with friends and family that i would gladly take some feedback on if any of you have the time. We also kept a pretty thorough travel blog. The links are below.

blog- with eyes wide open
photo site- Wix.com a damiano photography created by ajdamiano based on Photographer Book

And thats about it. I'm excited to hear from you all and hope to build on my excitement for photography over the coming weeks. Thanks so much and happy holidays!

Sincerely,
Adam Damiano

 

[703Methane]

Hey Adam , Welcome to the site (i'm new here too). I wanted to start off by saying I absolutely love your website, your wife did an amazing job. Love the idea of how you can select the country you want to visit and below that it shows all the differnt places. Amazing !
After scrolling through some of your photos I really like the way your showing the differnt types of cultures and landscapes. But one thing i did notice is that some of your pictures are a little exposed. But other than that everything seems great !

What programs are you using to do your editing with ?

And one of my suggestions for the next area to go to would have to be South America/Caribbean sea. I went to Costa Rica this summer with my girlfriend to visit her family. Just the difference from America and Europe that I've already experienced, was one of a kind. Their traditions, cities, landscapes, are beyond interesting.
Unfortunately when i went out there , I packed everything camera, tripod,lens, chargers. And just happened to forget every single battery that I owned for my camera. And in Costa Rica finding Batteries for a Canon T1i, apparently is the hardest thing in the world.
Just don't make my mistake if you go .

 

[ajdamiano]

Hey thanks for the welcome!

My wife did put in some time in setting things up and we're hard at work on a new site with our own domain just to get things a bit better organized.

The program we use at the moment was actually free software called Photoscape. It was convenient as we were able to easily batch edit a few hundred photos as we backpacked so they were finished as we went without having to run almost 20K of them once we got back home

I do agree with you on the exposure though...some of the settings are a bit off and over saturate some of the color which at times I like, but it can also dertract from the real beauty of the subjects.

Any suggestions on other post processing programs? I was looking at Phtotoshop elements and i've heart or Lightroom for macs but i'm currently on a PC so i'm not sure thats an option.

Have a great day!
adam

 

[703Methane]

You can get light room for your PC. Light room isn't just for the mac its for both. I'm on a Dell xps and I have light room 3.

But um other than that have you looked into adobe photoshop ? Or what i've been seeing a lot on this forum is people using a free program called, Gimp.
I personally never used it, i'm more of a photoshop/light room person. But, check it out.

 

[goneriding24]

Hello, I haven't had a chance to check out your site but will soonest. I have Photoshop Elements 9 and it's a bit over my head. I'm a newbie too. But it does have tutorials that have been very, very helpful. I'll check out Photoscape.

Like you, I have taken oodle of pictures and am organizing them right now, as I type. I have way more photos than I thought!!

 

[ajdamiano]

thanks for the tips yall!! Good to know that there are so many options out there.

Happy New Year All!