My first photos to share!

Okay, so I've had this blog for a few weeks now and I have barely taken the time to post anything!  I've taken tons of photos since getting my camera, but not much has been "share worthy".  Well, I like the pictures, but after starting to try and learn how to really understand photography, I realize that they probably aren't actually that good.  Ha ha.  Anyhow, the purpose of having this blog is to post some shots and hopefully connect with other beginner photographers who can offer some advice, or tips, or criticism or anything.

I've been trying to spend some time lately reading and following tutorials online to learn the fundamentals of exposure and focus and to de-mystify concepts like white balance, aperture, ISO etc.  I've found some awesome resources online and also decided to download the Lightroom 3 trial to start trying to post process my pictures.  I decided to start with some photos I took in Hawaii just before Christmas.

So, allow me to present my first few shots that I think I am proud of...

1.  Converted it to B&W manually so I don't know if I got the hues right...

2.  Ditto on this one (seeing it in Blogger it looks a lot darker)...

3.  But the colours in the original were really cool, so I tried to "punch" them up in this version...

4.  And this one I also converted in LR3...

This is my first try at using LR3 to process any pictures and I kind of doubt that I've gotten it right.  I guess my biggest question is (and I will be searching out the answer from anywhere I can get it) is how do you know when you've got the colours, highlights, shadows, saturation etc. correct?  Is there an actual, measurable state you're going for, or is it truly up to the photographer's preferences?  How do I know if the skin tones look okay or if they need to be brightened or lightened or darkened?

So, if you've found this blog and know anything about DSLR photography, I would love to hear from you.  Or, if you know of, or follow any other photography blogs, I'd love to know which ones so I can start building a reading list.

Thanks!