I absolutely love to take photographs.  I'm very rarely seen without a camera.  Except for the time I saw a beautiful rainbow above a tunnel I was about to go through, and the time there was a vulture sitting in the grass as I dropped the twins off at preschool.  Isn't that always the way though, you leave the house for 5 minutes and something amazing happens.  And you have no camera.  And you swear you will never leave the house again without it.  But you do. 

Anyway, despite my love of photography, I have never taken a class.  It's one of those things that has been on my bucket list.  Well, unless you count the Lensbaby photo walk I did in Chicago in 2009 with thanks to the Shutter Sisters.  But seriously, I know, or should I say knew, only 3 settings on my camera: normal mode, sports mode and no flash mode.  No, I'm not kidding.  They are the only 3 settings I've been using up until this point.

So when my friend Leah snagged me a spot at an REI photography class, I was a little more than excited.   I had no idea REI even offered classes.  But they do, and they are amazing.  The photography class was 2 hours long and I now know each of the automatic modes on my camera.  I cannot wait to try all of them out.  They also covered basic manual settings, camera accessories, saving files and editing software. 

I captured this fuzzy little critter today using the macro mode. 

If you love travel and the outdoors as much as we do, I highly recommend you look into the REI Outdoor School Classes and Outings schedule.  I would love to take the Backcountry Cooking Class and the Digital Camera Field Class next. 

And just because I love the deer that roam around our neighboorhood, I thought I'd share these photos with you as well.  They were taken a couple of weeks ago from my back door.