Photography: is it for me?

I recently decided to take up a new hobby: Photography

With an impending holiday in August, cruising for 8 days around the Med (Majorca, Sardinia, Italy and France), what better opportunity to take some fantastic photographs to look back on? Apart from getting some photos of family and friends who are going, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get some fantastic photos of the white, sandy beaches in Sardinia, and whilst we're in Italy to get the Colosseum and all the fantastic architecture on camera.

Out I go to buy a camera.....£300 budget and came back with this little beauty, a Kodak Easyshare P850, capable of zooming up to 12x:



I've had it for three weeks now and have used it twice, and haven't even read the manual......I'm determined to get better, but learning what all the settings do isn't going to be fun...I think it will pretty much be a point and shoot as most of the settings seem to be easily changed at the press of a single button, with settings for every environment you could possibly imagina - even fireworks!

I was enjoying practicing on the Medion 6.36 digital camera I was able to use, and took some photos that I was quite happy with for my first ever shots on a digital: