A Little About Me

So here I am with my very first post.  I'm somewhat new to blogging, and will be learning as I go.  In this first post, I would like to give a little history of why I'm starting this blog.


First of all, my wife and her family have been around mandolins their entire lives.  My mother-in-law (who lived to be 92 years old) began playing the mandolin on a town square in southern Indiana when she was around 8 years old.  She played the mandolin to draw a small crowd while her dad would preach right there on the street corner.  My father-in-law was the manager of the San Diego Mandolin Orchestra for many years.  As my wife grew up in San Diego, she began playing the mandolin and the octave mandola.  She loved either instrument, but she played the mandolin and octave mandola in The San Diego Mandolin Orchestra for around 15 years.  When we moved to the mid-west, there was no mandolin orchestra nearby, and raising a family seemed to consume much of our time.  In December of 2000, my wife released a Christmas album called Snowed In With A Mandolin on CHRISTmas Day.  She had always had a dream of creating a recording, and this was a huge accomplishment.  Every mandolin or mandolin family instrument on the CD is her playing.  You can hear the recording at OzarkMandolins.com.  Just recently, she began teaching a few students how to play the mandolin, and I became one of her students.  I could always pick out a tune on the mandolin, but reading music notes was a foreign language to me.  Slowly but surely, I've been able to learn to read music.  I'm still at a very beginner level, but I am learning none-the-less.  This past Christmas, we had a small group of us (7 people), play Christmas music at our local Chick-Fil-A restaraunt.  That was quite an accomplishment.  You can find a video of Angels We Have Heard On High from that concert on my Facebook Group (Ozark Mandolins). 


In addition to music, I've embarked on a new hobby.  I've always been interested in photography, but have never owned any camera other than a point-and-shoot style.  But that is changing now.  This week I purchased a Canon T1i DSLR camera (used).  It has not yet arrived in the mail, but I'm already watching YouTube videos to learn the basics of photography. I also purchased a 50mm lens that is supposed to be really good for close-range portrait type shots.  My initial desire is to begin taking pictures of mandolins and musical instruments.  I'll see where this new hobby takes me, though.


So that is my story of where my thoughts are around starting this blog.  I hope you find the pictures I post to be enjoyable. I'll also post information I learn that is helpful about photography.  And So I begin...