New camera!!!!

I am now the proud co-owner of a Nikon 3100!!!

I’m super excited to get some better pictures. I’ve been wanting a DSLR pretty much since I started scrapbooking in 2009. When we went to St. Augustine with my FIL, Jason fell in love with his dad’s Nikon. So of course all of a sudden we totally needed one too.

Costco is having a great deal on the 3100 package this month, so if anyone is in need of a camera, go check it out. It came with two lenses, a case, and a couple of instructional DVD’s. We also got a tripod. We’re now working on a pretty extensive wish list of accessories and lenses. If anyone has a recommendation for a remote, we’d love to hear it.

I haven’t gotten to play around with it a ton, but Jason has taken some fantastic pictures. And hopefully this will help me be less discouraged with blogging my recipes.

So far we’ve taken photos of ducks.

And trees.

The faster shutter speed is soooo nice for catching birds in flight.

We tried to shoot the full moon with mixed results.

Jason got some cool photos of our balcony garden.

And this guy.

And of course we have to take pictures of every meal we eat. Cause that’s how we roll….

I’m excited to learn more about photography. But weirdly I still use instagram for so many more of my pictures. Whatever works 🙂

Also Jason is getting back to his blog. Check it out here.

What’s your system? (mobile)

I listened to the latest episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable recently where they talked about your scrapping system. That is such a big topic I just had to write about it.

I loved hearing about Amy Tan’s system of scrapping using mini books. She basically keeps a little bag of stuff in her purse that she uses to collect things so that when she gets home, a lot of the work is already done. She keeps a book to jot down notes, a pen, tape, even a tiny printer to print photos on the go. She must have a Huge Purse. I’m really intrigued by that idea, and might work on something like that for the summer.

That got me thinking about my own digi version of scrapping on the go. How can a digital person keep up with things while on a trip, or just collecting everyday things for Project Life?

My best tool is definitely my iPhone 4. I can’t say enough about the ease of use, the great camera, and of course all the apps! I would definitely not get as many pictures as I do if I were using the regular camera.

The thing on the phone that I use the most for scrapping is the Momento app. I’ve seen a lot of people sing it’s praises and I’m definitely joining that choir. You can use it to jot down notes, collect photos, and it even grabs feeds from your social network. I’ve been using it since last spring and it has been so helpful to refer back to, especially if I need to remember details for a layout.

Camera apps. I want to do a whole post on these, but on the rare occasion you take a crappy iPhone picture, they can do a lot to help it look better. The one I use the most is Instagram.

There is a lot more to my system than just my phone, but as far as keeping up with things on the go, nothing has helped like it has.