What about taking the picture? Its summer time and the photo ops are perfect! Days at the lake, days at the beach, day hikes in the mountains…what could be better? I dabble in photography; besides this blog, it’s one of my creative outlets and although my specialty is landscapes, I like candids of my family and friends. Then I embarrass them by posting the pictures to my Facebook page.  Let’s face it though. If you don’t have a great camera, then some of the fun goes out of it. I like digital SLR’s, as opposed to point-and-shoots. They can be heavy and cumbersome, especially if you’re shepherding your son and his two friends through Universal Studios.  I’ve recently come across hybrids- combining the best of SLR’s with the best of compact digital cameras. My favorite? The Pentax Q.

The pictures it takes are crisp, clean, and perfect.  You can use manual or automatic shutter and aperture settings, and the interchangeable lenses do the job of lenses twice their size. Pictures I’ve taken with it rival my Canon EOS 7D, and I would marry that camera if I could. The Canon EOS line is the user-friendly flagship of the Canon line, and has been my stand-by for a long time. I’m definitely no National Geographic photographer, so I need something that’s user-friendly and doesn’t make me feel like I’m a five year old attempting to construct a small nuclear weapon.  The Canon fits my needs nicely for my contest submission photographs.

No matter the camera, whether it’s a 10$ disposable, or a 5000$ SLR, the point is to go out and take pictures! Take a picture of the dog playing in the spray of the sprinkler, or the kids dangling from trees. Catch the surf at sunrise, or the mountain tops at dusk, just get out and shoot!