Introduction

 Hi, My name is Greg McCary. I am a maintenance tech/amateur photographer and Olympus Moderator at photographyreview.com. I have been taking and studying landscape and street photography for about five years. Most of what I have learned was from the great photographers at Photography Review, Internet photographers and books. Oh, I am 52 years old if that matters.
 When I first got serious with photography I put myself on a five year plan to get where I wanted to be. To develop my style, be comfortable with what I was doing and enjoy photography with a deeper understanding. I came up with the figure five because one of my biggest inspirations, Gary Heller from New York, had started five years before me and was one of the most influential landscape, urban, photographers I had seen on Photography Review or even the Internet for that matter.
  Because of all the help that I have recieved over the years and that lately people have been asking me "How do you do that?"  I thought that I would create a blog and answer some of those questions and also do the same for others as Gary and a few others have done for me. But be for warned that you have to have thick skin and a keen mind to live through the hard nose critiques and be able to pick out what is helpful and what is not. But I certainly advise joining a forum with photographers you admire and joining in some friendly critiques. It is one of the best things you can do and will shorten the learning process by many years. But also be warned not all photographers are going to share with you all of their tricks. They are liken to magicians with a bag of magic. Don't be surprised if they never show you their out of camera pre PhotoShop images.
 I would name all of my inspirations but they are many, some of them I only know by there Internet name and sure as I did I would forget one or two.

 So what am I going to do here in this blog? Well I am going to take you through the process, my process, right or wrong I will show you first hand how I make a picture. Make, because there is a lot more to it than just taking a picture. The story is not over when you take it. I will go from packing the bag, picking a subject and how I approach it, shoot it and then bring the RAW file home and process it on the computer, display it on the Internet and share it.

 The first Lesson will be. "What's in the Bag,?" I will go though what equipment I have and why I use it. I am going to show you with no holding back what's in my bag of magic. I hope you enjoy the course.