Happy 4th of July everyone. I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable 4th of July. My weekend consisted of work, fireworks, the lake, and painting.

Friday, I was stuck at work. I had to go in for a few hours by request of my property manager. It turned out to be a good time to catch up on all the work I needed to catch up on. I got done there at around 6pm and went home to relax for a while. From there I then went to the Buckhead area of Atlanta to watch the Lenox Mall fireworks which is one of the the biggest, if not the biggest, fireworks displays in Atlanta. The property I run is very near Lenox Mall, so I had access to an area where most people were not allowed. From there I set up my camera and tripod to see if I can get some good photos of the fireworks. I stuck around and shot some photos of the crowd and the traffic afterwords. I was mainly just trying to work on my evening long exposure shots. I am pretty happy with my results. Overall it was a very enjoyable evening.

On Saturday, I went up to my parents house for a day on the lake. I was not feeling great so I only took a few photos. We had a good turn out and I got a good action shot of Matt (my soon to be brother in law) jumping off the dock.

Sunday was a relax/house work day. I helped my roommate paint the spare bedroom in our house. The painting was fun. With 2 people it goes quick. The paint is a bit to yellow, but it looked OK once it dried. I will be moving into that bedroom soon because it is bigger and has a bathroom. We are going to do some more work on it over the next few weeks before I move in.

Oh and one final note, I leave for my San Francisco and Las Vegas trip in 1 week! I am getting pretty excited. See this post for more info.

A couple of weeks ago, I dropped the ball and entered the world of DSLR photography. My weapon of choice, the Nikon D40, a reasonably priced professional grade camera. I did not want to post a review right when I got it, so I opted to use the crap out of it for a few weeks then review it. Below is my unboxing video which I posted to my YouTube account, but never posted on the site:

I have had the camera for 13 days and I have taken over 1200 pictures. Let me first offer this disclaimer, I am a BEGINNER when it comes to photography. I am not offering photography advice just yet. This is a review of the camera!

I shopped around pretty good looking at Nikon and Canon models. I choose the Nikon D40 for 2 main reasons:

1. I could not find a bad review about this product. I read probably close to 100 reviews and all of them were positive. Professionals and amateurs all said it is an amazing camera.
2. The second reason was price! This camera was about $100 to $200 cheaper then any other DSLR camera on the market.