New lens - Nifty Fifty

I have been thinking about getting a new lens for my Nikon SLR for a while, particularly since the lovely Lucy recommended the 50mm for getting good portraits (I've searched for the comment on AOW but can't remember which post it was on - maybe I'm remembering wrong!  I think it was Lucy!)  Portraits aren't something I've been interested in before but since I'm taking photos of myself to share my outfits, I thought I should try to improve them.  What really triggered me to go for it in the end was seeing Anna's stunning shots for her Flower Crown tutorial.  Although I do know a little about photography and love my landscape, underwater and nature photography (see all galleries here), I haven't spent as much time or effort when taking photos for the blog.  Even though photography is a major hobby of mine, I've only really concentrated on travel photography in the past couple of years.  I have too many hobbies!!!

I went for the Nikkor AF 1.8D which cost about £90 new (not much cheaper second hand on ebay).

I'm still practising with my new lens for crafty projects and food photos for the blog as I'm used to using my trusty Canon G11 for these.  The canon does give very good results for minimal effort and is very handy to carry around as well,  but I do think the photos I share on here could be better to improve the overall look.

So, hopefully I will get more confident in using my 'big' camera more often for this kind of photography and you will see a difference!  I'm loving it already and took a few pictures of our drinks when I went along to Blook club this weekend and played around with some gorgeous bright coral roses hubby bought me last week.  I'm still getting to grips with using a prime lens when my camera isn't attached to my tripod but I think I'm starting to get used to it now.

I love how the roses in this one seem to make a heart shape.