Well, it's been more than a year now since I wrote my first journal, in which I was basically describing my "debute" to photography. The context back then was me, getting back from a nice trip through Europe (my first time ever out of the country) in which I got the chance to enjoy my freshly bought first digital camera, the same Canon PowerShot A560 which I still use today. The result was my "EUROTRIP - Taize '07" album [link] which contains my first uploaded photos on DeviantART. My "all-time hit" considering favorites, views and comments was and still is "The Eiffel Tower by Night" [link] with 1,325 views, 17 comments and 38 favorites. It might not sound like much, others get that daily from a single shot but it means a whole lot to me, especially because I don't see myself as a real photographer, but more of a memory keeper. The album is completely non-edited, not even a single crop. I was truly a beginner and had zero knowledge in photo-editing software or in any editing for that matter. After a while, accidentally stumbling into my ACDSee's editing menu I started to do the basics (Crop, Unsharp Mask, Saturation, Brightness/Contrast) and after that I found a very simple small programme, PhotoFiltre, which I only used for adding frames to my shots. Very soon, I found the Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Saturation, Brightness etc. bars very useful and until a few weeks ago, I did all my (brutal) editing using ACDSee and PhotoFiltre.

Back to the present:
A few weeks ago, I got back from my second trip through Europe and came back with the "EUROTRIP - Taize '08" album: [link]
This features photos taken with the same Canon A560 that I used in the last year's album (now at the venerable age of 37,500 shots according to the built-in counter) but this time the pictures are edited and with this occasion I finally started to use the mighty Photoshop. I'm not an editing enthusiast (and I'm also a slow learner), so the work I did still resumes to the basic "Image" column of the CS2: Crop, Levels, Brightness, Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Shadows/Highlights and sometimes a small amount of the warming filters. The album is more of a photojournalistic nature. I really wanted to share the experience, to "walk" the viewers through the places I had the luck to visit, that's why I uploaded more pictures than I originally planned, although I'm aware they're not all special and artistic. This mostly applies to the Taize pictures, which I'm sure that the ones that have been there had a good time watching them and thinking of all of their beautiful memories related to Taize. Those pictures are mostly dedicated to them and hopefully they'll convince others to go there at least for a visit. I tried to give as much information as possible about the places in the description of each picture.

My greatest photography wish at the moment is a new camera. The Canon is ok and for a camera as basic as that I got some unexpected results with only minor editing to help. But I really crave for a Manual mode with control over Aperture and Shutter Speed, which my camera totally lacks and which ruins my good intentions most of the time. I could also use more zoom, image stabilization and manual focus to cope with my ideas.
If I had the money, the Sony DSC-H50 would be the ideal bridge compromise for me.

All of these being said, I hope you'll enjoy watching my pictures:
EUROTRIP - Taize '08: [link]
EUROTRIP - Taize '07: [link]