Little Guy

So last week, I asked a friend if I could photograph her children while I visited, which she was very open to. I learned my first lesson in photographing children, which is that they are on their own schedule, because one of them had to go down for a nap. When I first pulled out my camera, my friend's son was laying on the couch. I wanted to take some shots without disturbing him just to see if I could get the exposure right with a faster shutter speed because kids are wiggly. I was also afraid if I started asking him to do anything, he may get unhappy and then I wouldn't have any shots. So here are the first photos I've taken of a child with my new fancy camera:

No blurred motion! And the lighting looks okay to me. I haven't learned much yet on changing/fixing skin tones and I didn't do anything to the white balance. I can't tell if the focus fell on his face or on the blanket right near his face. What do you think?
Luckily my friend then coaxed him down onto the floor in front of the couch to play with his train set, so I had my next set-up/scene. I raised my shutter speed because I assumed he'd be moving more. I also raised my ISO because he was further away from the window, and because raising the shutter speed lowered the light too. I got down on the floor and came up with:

Not really the rule of thirds and I chopped off his feet, but you can't beat that smile!

I think the focus fell on his right elbow. And I chopped off his left elbow and left knee. 

Full body!

I set the aperture low because it was one child and I wanted the background blurry. But I think because we were really close and the couch was right behind him, the depth of field I chose picked up more and less than I wanted it to.
He wanted to get back up on the couch so I took a couple more. They looked brighter than the previous couch ones and I guessed it was because I had left my ISO up and my shutter speed down, and I was right!

At this point, my friend took our her old camera which had a lens that fit my camera. So I popped it on and used the camera the same way I had been using it, because I have not even begun to learn about different lens'. The one thing I did notice was that I could fit more in the picture from the same distance. It also had a higher minimum aperture so more was in focus. He also jumped back down to the trains.

Back to my lens and I feebly tried to set up the couch with a blanket so as to have a plain background.

He wanted to sit on the other side of the couch. Haha!

What a cutie!

The top one had a higher ISO than the rest, so that's why it is much brighter. I do not have any post-processing software to change that, or anything really. That will be a whole other world of learning.
Overall, I got some good experience with the camera mechanics of photographing a child. I didn't even really pay attention to where the natural light was. But I hope as I get more experience, I'll feel more comfortable setting up shots. A big thank you to Kristen and Ayden for allowing me to experiment!
Because I don't have any children or pets of my own to experiment often on, I was reading into doing a weekly photo scavenger hunt. So I think my next post will focus on that!

Keeping on

So last Monday, I took my camera out to some other coastal areas. They were so ravaged by recent storms, I didn't come up with much. I more just played around with the settings. It seems in the beginning I can't quite figure out what the settings should be, but once I take that first picture, I can figure out how to get them a little better. So my first of the day was this :

I let in too much light!! After some adjusting, I was able to get these:

It's hard to see on the LCD screen where perfect is though. I have to come back and look at them on the computer and compare the settings. I know the aperture setting is how much is in focus, so for scenery pictures it should be high, but I'm not sure how high is too high yet. Because it also affects how much light comes into your photo. I also am not sure if the lens I have is the best for scenery pictures.
As far as composition, I think this one is nice with the rule of thirds and getting a pretty even horizon! But I don't have a zoom lens, and this was as close as I could get, so I'm not sure if it's too small or far away:

I also went to a bridal store this week to see my friend try on weddings dresses. Unfortunately I don't want to post those pictures in case anyone who knows her sees them! But it was good to play around with the camera in a new setting. I was able to get her and her dress in focus and the background blurry which was nice.

This past weekend, I went on a walk in the woods with my camera. I had gloves on and realized that I was changing the mode every time I turned the camera on and off! So I don't really know which pictures were taken how I wanted them and which weren't. I started out yet again completely wrong:

And tried to fix it to this:

But I think my focus did not fall on the sap which is where I wanted it. I also decided I didn't like the composition so got this:

I played around with the aperture on these pine cones:

Two other favorites of the day:

So atleast I'm still getting out there and using the camera! Next up: my attempt to photograph a 2 year old!

My First Post!

I was so excited when I started opening all of the packages from Amazon on Saturday morning. All the photography jargon on each of the boxes was almost too much to handle. When I held the camera in my hands, I realized the object of my months-long coveting, was finally mine. 

I have been reading photography blogs for months, learning about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I know what each of them mean and that they work together. I haven't had the hands-on practice to really GET IT though. I understand other rules of photography too, like the rule of thirds, no limb-chopping, etc. In some of my favorite photos I've taken with my regular digital camera, I can sometimes see that I unknowingly did follow them. 

But I've sabotaged myself in many new hobbies, even my career at times, by learning as much as I can, then getting frustrated and giving up because my execution is not perfect right out of the gate. 

I am not going to do that with photography and this camera. I am going to give it a chance. I am going to suffer through not being good at it for awhile. I'm not even going to expect exponential improvement. I am going to go with the flow, learning and trying and not beating myself. This is my documentation of the good, the bad, and the ugly of my journey.

Once I had everything out of boxes and put together, I took a picture of a mug on my coffee table, aiming to get the mug in focus and everything behind it blurry, while also getting the lighting right. 

I was actually really happy with this! I played around with the ISO only, which gave me lighter and darker images. I felt like I was executing what I'd learned. Great! I had to meet family for lunch, so I put the camera battery on the charger, and off I went. 

The next day I was nervous about failing, but wanted to get started on my new life in photography. So we went for a drive along the Cape. It was an overcast day, which I've heard is good for picture-taking. But as I stood at the ocean, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to take a picture of. So I tried some waves, with a little rock jetty. Tried to get the jetty only in focus by using a small aperture. Figured the ISO should be low because I was outside. Not sure if I even thought about the shutter speed, or looked at my ticker to see if the three landed it at zero. I got:

Whoa, that's a lot of white! I didn't know what to change, but I knew I had to change something. I didn't think I should raise the ISO because that would let more light in. I still was aiming for the jetty to be the only focus so I didn't change the aperture. I lowered the shutter speed. And I got:

I mean atleast I can see it now right? Just for fun, I lowered the shutter speed more, assuming it would get darker: 

I was so uncomfortable just standing there taking pictures of the same thing over and over, but looking back, I wish I would have raised the aperture, getting the whole thing in focus, and seeing what else could be tweaked, and how it changed the image. But when I look at the LCD screen in the moment, I cannot see the subtle differences, so I felt silly literally taking 11 pictures of the same thing. But obviously I have to. *First aha moment of the blog. 

I really like the one small detail in focus and the background blurry thing, probably because that's the only thing I'm really confident in, so I did some more of that:

We then went to my favorite place, a harbor where seals frequent. My lens is not a zoom, so I was not able to really capture them. But for fun: 

No one was around so I felt more comfortable being creative and practicing. I ended up with these two, one I think is too light and one I think is too dark:

I can't remember if I was really paying attention to the ticker, but again, I should have played around more with the settings even thought I couldn't tell on the LCD screen the differences. 

I also thought this was cute:

And my favorite picture of the day:

It kind of follows the rule of thirds, and I wanted mostly the shell and the tip of the water in the focus. But it seems a little light and devoid of color. It also was cloudy and March, so we'll see as time goes on what happens.

Thus ends my first post, but begins my blogging and photography journey!