I can’t believe I’ve made it through the Shooting 101: First Steps with a DSLR class through Clickin’ Moms. I am amazed at the differences I see in my photography. I’ve truly become a hobby-ist… bringing my camera everywhere, taking a million snapshots, and evoking eye rolls from the fam for too many pictures of things in nature.
And, you know what? I love it!
Here’s a brief recap of weeks 2 & 3, as well as samples of my work. I have a long way to go, I know. But I am so excited with my improvement. View Week 1 here.
Week 2: Aperture
During week 2 we focused on Understanding Aperture and Shooting in Aperture Priority Mode and, for those of us who never knew what Aperture or the f# was on our cameras, it was all explained here. This week I learned what I’ve always wanted to know: how to get that fuzzy blur behind your pictures so that it really focuses on and makes your subjects sharp and crispy.
We continued to play a bit with the light as we explored, and I took lots of pictures of stills– which means very few of my kids because they are so rarely still.
This week’s lesson was extremely helpful for me in blogging, as it’s helping me to learn just how to take pictures of objects for my blog. You’ll see that this slideshow is a mix of photos of M&Ms (for a post I’m working on for Rusty & Rosy) and a doll (because that’s what Little brought with her that day.) You’ll also noticed that I struggled with taking photos of the M&Ms… this week was definitely a work in progress. I mastered more each time I tried.
Week 3: Shutter Speed and ISO
This week I was truly, overwhelmed in my reading and wish that the lessons could have been broken up more. (Really, I’d just like another week of class!) We learned about shutter speed (which I already understood but didn’t know how to apply on a DSLR) and ISO. Both affect how much light you’re letting into the camera, which I why I became overwhelmed. There’s a direct relationship between the two, but both can be changed to get the right image. Learning to incorporate Shutter Speed, ISO, and aperture choices is definitely something I plan to continue to work on a lot. And you’ll be able to tell that I did work on it a lot this past week. This slideshow has over 100 photos where I continued adjusting the different areas to make them work together to get the best shots. And while I did get many awesome shots, you’ll see in several series how I tried to get the shots more and more “right” by adjusting ISO, aperture, shutter speed, composition, staging… everything.
Photography isn’t easy, folks. It takes a lot of learning, testing, playing, and experimenting. I’m definitely getting there–where ever there may be. And I can say that for certain, I’m feeling accomplishment and pride. Keep in mind; I’d never once taken the camera out of Auto before unless it was to one of the preset settings. Now, I’m learning to adjust with my brain, not the camera’s brain.
Come back next week for the review of Clickin’ Moms First Steps with a DSLR class.
