I break things a lot.

I break glasses, I’ve broken a bike, I’ve broken at least five cell phones, I broke my wrist once and I broke the very nice point-and-shoot camera my parents gave me as a high school graduation gift, as well as the replacement that was sent (the problems with those cameras were identical, so really, I think they broke themselves — but with my track record, who’s going to believe me?).

What's been filling my days recently. Photo from panasonic.com.

Still, because of my growing interest in photography and my determination to show that I can have just one nice thing that I don’t break, I recently splurged on an early Christmas present: a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35. It has 12.1 megapixels, 18X optical zoom, a Leica lens and several features that mimic its much more expensive DSLR peers. None of these mean a whole lot to me, but I was told by a photographer with much more talent than I that the last characteristic sealed the deal. As for me, I was comfortable with my choice because I had used, and enjoyed, this camera before while I was working for my high school newspaper.

I’ve taken hundreds of photos since the camera arrived on my doorstep, but some of my favorites remain the ones I took on the first night I had it. I was in the passenger seat of a moving car when I took most of these, and very few of them are well composed or in focus. However, I had a great time photographing lights of all types, and just this once, I decided having fun was more important than taking professional-grade photographs.

Since then, I’ve taken countless more photos, many of which are in focus and a few of which actually made me proud. The second half of this slideshow is just a few of those photos, mostly taken at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, at a small farm and in the city of Branson, Missouri.

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The timing of this purchase had much to do with the fact that I soon will be spending ten weeks in Spain, completing one of Ohio University’s study-abroad programs. I will be taking more photos there and will share them mostly on my newly created and, as of now, rather bare travel blog — you can watch my progress during the upcoming weeks at rebeccamckinseytravels.wordpress.com.

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