Pictures

I was just going to send Mom and Jess an email because I know they are into photography but then I thought I haven't posted on this blog for a long, long time.  And anyway, I will probably post all the same pictures eventually on my own blog.  But, you can see them here too.

I have been taking a photography class this month.  I took one on editing last month and the month before on composition.  This month is DSLR and it's been a lot of information.  I practiced all last week, taking hundreds of pictures and I could probably count on my hand the number that actually turned out.  Then on Saturday the class was on lighting and he showed us some tricks and I'm finally starting to get some good ones again.  I was about to give up.  Honestly, I have an eye for good pictures but not for technical things so this doesn't come naturally for me.  I made Mike give me sinareos like, "you are outside on a sunny day and Eli is jumping on the trampoline.  You want him to be frozen in your picture."  Then I'd have to tell him a rough idea of all the settings I'd set my camera to.  I'm sure it will just take practice but by the time I get it all set to the right settings they kids have moved on and the picture is wasted.

I went for a walk last week and then today.  Last week all my pictures were overexposed.  It was very frustrating.  The teacher said he believes my camera is calibrated wrong and I should send it back and get a new one that is calibrated right.  That might have some part in what was wrong but also, I just wasn't getting the settings right.  Today was much better.  I tried to take a similar picture and you can see how much better the lighting is.

So, pictures from my walk last week:

She hates looking at the camera.  Hates it.

Pictures from my walk this morning:

I still need to work on depth of field and composition things but for now, I just want to get the lighting and setting right and then once I can do all that easily and quickly I will work more on actually getting a nice looking picture.  But I am much more pleased with today's pictures than last week.

Here are some fun pictures from my class on Saturday.  The teacher taught us some fun lighting tricks (which actually aren't needed if you have a cool flash).  My friend Bonnie modeled for me.  The groups of pictures were taken with the same settings but the first one of each group I used the trick my teacher showed us and those pictures actually had the right lighting.

Same setting, but with trick

It's a fun class.  I wish it wasn't such a steep learning curve for me.  But, I am learning sot that is exciting.