Ahoy, Mateys!

          Right now you're probably expecting the whole "Hi, I'm Czarina... blah blah blah" introduction.  But do you really care who I am?  You're probably not reading this adventure because you're interested in me, not yet at least.  You are likely here from a link or reference that sparked your curiosity.  I love curiosity.  Satisfying your curiosity is my goal, but a good book doesn't give away all the fun and gory details in the beginning or what would be left to keep you coming back?  My amazing (to me) pictures? Possibly, since that's what brought you here in the first place, but I'm not willing to take that chance.  Besides, I love a book with twists and surprises.  Perhaps my story will have a few.

          There you go.  You're welcome.  Feel free to copy and paste it, print it, Pin it, whatever.  All I ask for is a little credit.  Taking pictures has been a hobby of mine since I got my first, cheap, film camera back in grade school.  That's right, kiddos, back in the 90s cameras weren't all digital.  You had to put a film roll in your camera, wind the little scroll thing (Oops, you caught me, I don't know technical terms) until you see the number, and then you can take your pictures.  After you take a couple dozen, you wind the scroll thing to the end of the roll, take the roll to the pharmacy to be developed, wait a few hours or a couple days depending on how patient you are and how much you are willing to spend, then you finally get to see whether or not your pictures even turned out any good.

What family doesn't have pet ducks?

          I have so many low quality and blurry, yet heartwarming photos from my childhood.  I got my first digital camera for Christmas in 2001.  When I picked it out my dad and I believed it had a viewing screen on the back, or at least I hoped so, because that is what I really wanted.  I would finally have a chance to know if my picture was good right after the beep sounded.

This is the clearest photo I took that December in its full size.

          Uh-oh, you guessed it, Dad and I were both wrong.  Sadly, the picture quality was even worse than a film camera!  The images were very small and often blurry, there was no zoom or focus button, and there wasn't even a flash.  Poor quality did not prevent me from taking hundreds of pictures with it throughout the following years, though, until...

My grandest adventure brought me to this picture and hundreds more.  Stick around to hear about it.

...I had a very good reason to buy myself a brand new digital camera with all the bells and whistles in 2008.  Perhaps ALL is an exaggeration, but at the time I didn't know how to use them to my advantage anyway, as you'll learn.  If I get a blurry photo now, I take another shot right away and another until I get the shot I wanted.  As this picture shows, sometimes the right amount of blur can make an image truly magical.

        Oh dear, I'm afraid I've said too much for a first entry.  You might already be thinking you know a thing or two about me.  So I'd better stop here.  Please come back next time to learn about my One Rule of this adventure to help us to share in our delight.