Photo Post 2: Now What?

I decided to try my luck at taking some more sunset photos; two days ago I went out to a fairly large hill and set up my tripod on it. Then I proceeded to take about 55 photos because the sunset was beautiful. I kept looking at my images and saw that they were WAY underexposed and looked gray. Now after a bit of reading and stuff I gather that if you underexpose sunrise/sunset usually the colors come out a bit more in the sky. I tried to get a good shot and I thought it might just be the screen on the back for some reason. I was wrong. CHECK YOUR SETTINGS. I guess I forget that more than I think because earlier that day I was shooting some stuff I wanted spot metering on for, well I never changed it back to matrix (I know some people don't like to use matrix, but for now it suits my purposes and keeps things relatively simple). So here is the best shot I got that day. Now its not horrible, there are a few great flaws I see though; it isn't that the ground is underexposed it is that the sky turned out so grayish, and the blues are way too gray. Lastly the only semi decent shot I got was a bit after the sun actually set, which isn't a bad time but I did like the composition of the shots whilst it was setting.

Photo Post 1: A Sunset

This picture was taken of a sunset in south-central wisconsin in mid summer. I had not done that many sunset pictures before. There is minimal post processing. I really do like this picture just because of how vivid the colors were that day do to the strange cloud cover (very thin but expansive).

What this is all about

So, this morning after sleeping in considerably late, I found myself in a state of laziness. "What should I do?" I thought. Well I might as well start a blog because that seems about what I should do. What about? Obviously (by the title of the blog) Photography. Well about that... I am a Medical Microbiology and Immunology Student... I have never had any formal training in photography. This brings me to my point. This blog is a photography super n00b sharing some photos and maybe a few techniques I find useful or interesting. If you do have training in photography/ visual art or anything else, feel free to critique (with respect) anything. Again I say I have no formal training, so I am trying to learn to get better at me newfound hobby of interest.

I haven't been doing this stuff for too long; I would reckon around a year. I started out on a Nikon L110, a nice fairly high quality "compact" camera (it is considerably large). However, after realizing my Interest is quite substantial, I decided to move up to the DSLR world. I recently purchased the Nikon D3100, an entry level but great DSLR. I have fallen in love with this camera and look forward to expanding my lens range. My skills are limited but I find that with help, my passion can fuel my desire to learn.

So! Lets go take some photos, share them here, comment, critique, discuss, do whatever!