Who needs introductions?

Hello again,

I just uploaded all the pictures I've taken so far on my computer, and I'm now going to give you a first taste of what I've been exploring.

So the first picture that I have that I thought was amazing, is of my cat.

I took this not really knowing what I was doing, just kind of fooling around. It was only when I hit the playback button (the button that you press

to view all of your photos) that I realized that I took a really crisp picture. I can't remember what I did to take this or get this precise effect, I probably just put it on AUTO mode.

All the words that are in red, by the way, are notes from me to you to tell you that later on in all of these posts I will talk about what it means in much more detail so that you can follow along and understand what I'm talking about. All of the stuff that I know is self-taught by reading forums, the manual (more than three times), or asking people on websites. The photography world out there is huge and thank goodness, otherwise I'd be lost.

Back to the photos, I'm going to show you two more that are just me trying to figure out how it all works. The first from the top of a hill three blocks down my street. I set out the same day that I got the camera to take it right before it got dark and the picture turned out all right, but because I didn't have a tripod, I couldn't keep the camera from shaking while it tried to take in as much light as possible. The other is the next morning, I made a coffee (as I am slightly addicted) and thought that a picture of the smoke would be kind of cool.

So, as you can see, I've managed to just barely capture the steam from the cup, and the sunset is a little too dark for my liking. I will talk more about how I assume I could have possible changed that when I hopefully bring up aperture and shutter speed. But right now, I have to go to bed, so goodnight for now, hope to rant some more tomorrow.

Peace