I'm in love with...

photography!!! For the first time in my adult life, I have a real, true hobby! I did the wedding planning hobby for a year and a half and loved it (and then helped a few friends, and then that hobby ended), I did the grad school thing for a year (after graduation in July that "hobby" ended), and this fall I was left with not a thing to do with my free time that I truly enjoyed. I like to golf with Matt and my dad, but I can only take about once or twice a month before I'm burnt out.

AND THEN, we bought a new digital SLR camera! (As described in this post). And a new hobby was born! Matt and I just finished an intro to SLR camera course at the store where we bought our camera and we are now armed with some knowledge of how our beast works. Although, we only know about 25% of the features and functions that our camera is truly capable of doing, but we'll get to the rest as needed.

Every year Matt and I take a "fall leaf trip" where we head off towards Illinois or Wisconsin to look for beautifully burnt orange turning leaves. Each year I simply get in the car and we take off. Matt usually knows the destination, I'm just along for the ride (and an AMAZING nap on the way)!

This year we ended up in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. This year we packed our new camera and a tripod. On the way we passed this beautiful, old, abandoned church. As we went racing past it I yelled for Matt to turn around. And it was at this amazing church that we were able to get these pictures: (we used the tripod and set the 10 second timer and ran!)

**I'm not sure why these pictures look so blurry when they are little, if you click on them and make them bigger they look much better, like they should! =) **












We spent almost an hour at the church finding cool places to try out our camera. We then left and headed further down the road until we saw another beautiful area in the distance. We both had our eye on it. We found an old railroad car, a very warn down-about to fall apart building, and a beautifully restored building of some sort, and we were able to get these pictures:











Overall we had a blast! I am in love with some of the pictures that we took. I actually get to take a very good friend's family pictures this weekend, I am VERY excited! I'll post some of their pictures (if she gives me permission) on Sunday after we are done.

I am super excited to have this new hobby... now we just need kids of our own so that I can truly have a model whenever I need one! =) Speaking of, we were cleared to start up with shots and the whole "hoopla" again so hopefully around...ummm July 2010 I'll have a fresh model to take pictures of. Fingers crossed! =)

P.S.
Matt got a wild hair and created his own blog this weekend. Check it out here if you have a second. He is going to post some of the pictures that we take every few weeks (assuming he doesn't give up on it and it doesn't sit with one post for the next year). =)