A Beautiful Day

Today was a beautiful day.

                   It looked quite like this.

Perfect blue skies, puffy white cotton ball clouds, beaming sun exposing itself and proud to shower drops of delight on anyone lucky enough to be spending the afternoon in the Long Island Wine Country.

This was my first trip to the LI vineyards and LiV distillery.  This is what I learned: I want to buy a farm, grow grapes and potatoes, make luscious wines and creamy vodka (I also learned today that vodka can be creamy), rescue horses from slaughter, have a petting zoo, and take beautiful pictures of it all.

Hm.  That's quite a tall order.  Let's break it down a little.  The whole farm/vineyard/vodka distillery/horse rescue thing is probably something to which I don't want to commit at the moment.  However, I do have a love for wine, and a long burning desire to capture beauty in every day life through the lens of a camera.

A couple of years ago, I discovered The Traveling Vineyard.  I wanted to treat my best friend to a wine tasting for her bachelorette party and I knew there had to be someone out there that would bring the wine to us.  My love for drinking wine met my love for business and making money, and soon enough they had a quickie marriage and I was a TTV consultant.  My foray into direct sales of wine only last a few months, but I completely enjoyed the experience of learning about wine.  However, I haven't learned nearly enough.  Luckily, I recently found a Groupon deal for a wine class at American Bartenders School.  I am really looking forward to continuing my wine education.  Perhaps one day I will be running a vineyard and tasting house.  Or maybe I'll just visit various vineyards and tasting houses and report back on them.

The other thing that I recalled today was just how much I love to take photographs.  

I love to take scenic pictures

I miss today already.

and showcase the true beauty of every day things. 

I'm not so sure I did that with this picture, what with my shadow in the lower right corner and all.  But I do believe I can develop this skill.  First step, by a real camera.  The Samsung point and shoot that my boyfriend bought me for my birthday two years ago recently fell off a counter top and is now broken.  (Side note: My Motorola Droid 2 Global did a pretty awesome job as a fill-in today.) While I think I'd still like to get a point and shoot for the convenience factor, I would really love to get a DSLR to make my photos even more awesome.  Oh, and I'd love to take a class to teach me a) how to use the DSLR and b) how to make my photos awesome.  Maybe it'll be a hobby.  Maybe I'll one day be published.  Who knows?  But step 1: Buy a camera!

Do you dabble in either of these hobbies?  How did you get started?  What do you love most about it?