I'm a Great Fan of the Great Courses and have quite a few. Joel Sartore's Fundamentals courses are very good for several reasons, not the least of which is that he is just a down to earth guy who loves to take pictures. I'm a life long amateur and learned a lot from him. But don't pay full price; wait for a sale or buy used. Also, don't bother with his six-lecture travels pictures. There is nothing new there.

I'm a Great Fan of the Great Courses and have quite a few. Joel Sartore's Fundamentals courses are very good for several reasons, not the least of which is that he is just a down to earth guy who loves to take pictures. I'm a life long amateur and learned a lot from him. But don't pay full price; wait for a sale or buy used. Also, don't bother with his six-lecture travels pictures. There is nothing new there.

Hi, I'm a new member here, and am getting my feet wet. I went to the Lighthouse at Mukilteo, Washington yesterday. Here are some of my favorites for the day.

Ran into a wedding shoot


The lighthouses building was loocked, but I saw this looking through the front window and out the back


Trying to get a little less touristy photo


Shooting the breeze


Peeking in through the window

Actually, I do feel better. While you're shooting, you tell yourself to take everything, because the great thing about digital is that you can delete most of them later. The main problem is that it takes a lot longer to decide which ones to delete than it did to take them in the first place. I'd rather be shooting than deleting.

I have both Joel Sartore's Fundamentals I and Fundamentals II courses, and I love them. Admittedly, Fundamentals I is pretty, well, fundamental. Most people won't learn much from the first four or five lessons. But it gets better and better. The Fundamentals II is all done in the field under lots of different conditions. It's basically problem solving, and I learned a lot.