I know photography is an area of blogging that be overwhelming.  You may drool over gorgeous, magazine quality photographs on other blogs and feel like you can never do that, so there’s no point in trying.  That’s how I felt when I first started my business, then my blog.  I just raised the white photography flag and took pictures on automatic.  This was the result of that mentality…     Nice.  Yes.  Those are pictures I took and sent along to my designer to use for my website.  She politely encouraged me to work on my photography skills.  I had taken a photography class a few years ago, so there was really no excuse.  I understood the way a camera worked, but I had focused most of my early photography efforts on cats and kids and things outside in pretty natural light.  I hadn’t tried to stage and photograph my home.  These

I’ve become a bit of a lens junkie over the past year.  It all started when my old Nikon lens (that came with the film SLR I bought about eight years ago) wasn’t working with my new D7000 Nikon.  It worked, but it took forever to get it to focus, so it was finally time for an upgrade.  Since then, I’ve bought four new lenses and just added one more…a 50 mm.  (If your curious about my camera and other lenses, you can read about them HERE.)  It’s not the one I really wanted, but this one is $130 and the one I really wanted was almost $700, so I decided I would get this one for now and upgrade later. One reason I wanted this lens is because the aperture can open to 1.8, which is big.  That means the camera lets in more light, which is nice for interior

  I kinda have to pinch myself today.  I have four of my blogging icons here to share some words of wisdom on using quality photos to grow your blog and then I get to chime in on the subject as well.  Kate from Centsational Girl brought us together to share a series on Growing Your Blog.  I know I would’ve loved to read something like this when I first started, so I’m honored to be a part of this.  The topic for today is photography and styling.  I’ll give the floor to my guests and then share some additional thoughts with you… Y’all I should be arrested. I use a 4 year old Nikon D40 whose lens cap was lost a year or two ago. I have Photoshop but I don’t have time for the learning curve so if I do any editing it’s in iPhoto that came with