Aperature Week

Well, I did it.  I went a whole week taking a zillion shots all in "A" setting.  Some of them turned out great... others turned out too bright, too dark or just plain bad.  I wish I could say I have a good grasp of how to manipulate the settings - but I don't.  I just messed with things when I remembered to and came up with these....



"Crazy Face" ... nice blur in the background

Chocolate Face,  I like how his hand is blurred... helps me understand the depth.

Just plain cute

I like how the background is all "bokeh"

My Little Guys First Meal

My awesome niece Alice

Cute Hair

So, not in 'A' but, cool colour-fill!



My husband took this one

.... I tired.

Daddy & Liam

So, anyways... Aperture setting is cool.  I will likely shoot a lot of outdoor shots with this.  I just need to set it right for the lighting.  That will be my next thing to learn.

Sorry - super distracted.  Will make a better entry later.

A Photo Shoot In My Dining Room

So, my friend who was coming to take some shots of Liam ended up being 2 hours late.  Liam was primed and ready at 2pm so I just started taking shots myself.  I took about 300 by the end of it, with some of them being lighting shots and others just messing with the different effects and settings on the camera to see what they do.

I had some ideas to work with that I gathered here.  Nothing turned out the way I thought I wanted it to but, some of the shots I am super proud of.

So, this is the shot that inspired the first few of these.

No editing

No editing

Colour Fill and a lowered saturation

Edited... but I cant remember how and cropped.

Cropped

I did a hundred things to this and then just turned off the saturation.  Something weird happened because Liam looks like a corpse...

This took a million shots.  Hard to get a natural shot of these two... always moving

BW, or maybe I turned off saturation.

Croped and warmed.

Cropped and cooled

'Enhanced' but I don't really know what that button does...

My fave of the day.  Cropped, enhanced, and cooled (I think)

Well, that was fun.  I still need to find time to go back and try cropping and editing some of the others... but with an infant and 2 dogs - time is not on my side.

My friend then taught me what some of the buttons do on my camera.  He set my pic taking mode to Jpeg Fine which is supposed to help take better photos. (we'll see, these are all just plain ol' Jpeg)  We also talked about aperture.  The next round of photos will be tinkering with that!

I also learned that a good editing program can make a world of difference.  The "shot well" program I currently use does not have enough bells and whistles for my liking.  Or maybe it does and I just don't know where they are...

Until next time.

Week 1 With The Camera

So, I have used up one of my 16GB cards twice this week.  I have also run down the battery 3 times.  Let's just say I have taken a few (hundred) pictures.

Most of the pictures turned out like they did when I was using my point and shoot, but some of them - especially ones taken outdoors - seemed to have an... energy to them that I don't think I have been able to capture before.

Like this one.

We went on a nature hike with a bunch of other moms and kids and I just took a zillion pics - trying not to have anything posed.

I love the little boy running, but not the elbow.  Must take more time to frame pics before I click.

Eventually, once I made sure to take at least one picture of everyones kids, I went on to taking photos of 'nature'.  This is where I got frustrated.

Why is the bird black - what am I doing wrong?

These bugs were super gross.  Why cant I get a more detailed pic though...?

A beautiful thistle that I completely forgot to use the macro setting for (duh)

Note to self - don't stand in the sunlight.

Food setting is cool, but must remember to focus on the meat - when it is meat that I am bragging about.

I need to learn the differences in my lenses and what their limitations are.  I know the 55-300 takes AWESOME close up pics of faces... but I must be at a certain distance for it to work properly.  Must learn that distance to save myself time and MBs.

Here are some examples.

I could take those ALL day, every day of my life.  As a new mom, I know the value of having a beautiful face shot to brag to your friends about!

Well - that's it for this week.  Today my friend is coming over to do a 'shoot' with his fancy camera and hopefully capture some nice family shots for us - and maybe teach me some tricks! 

Must learn to do good Bokeh soon.  I heart the look of those shots!

Day One With My New Camera

Very first shot.  All systems go... moving on.

Storybook feature.  Terrible.  Can't think of one reason to ever use this function.

Sketch Feature.  Probably should have done it on a picture other than the one I just "story booked".

Soft Feature.  That needs some practice.

Okay! 218 pics later we found a good one!

Ooooh colour fill feature - me like!

He's just so sweet

Oh crap!  Sorry Liam, I'll stop now.

Okay - wait, colour fill is fun!

Weeeee!

So... 300+ shots later and I have already become an addict.

I promise, as some point there will be pictures of things other than Liam. The next week after ownership was a collection of zillions more Liam pics, a birthday and a nature hike... which will be my next entry!

So, I'm New To This...

My husband kindly bought me a fancy camera for my 35th Birthday.  I have an almost 6 month old son whom I have been photo blogging (Liam's Life Blog) his life since day 1.  My old point-and-shoot Olympus was slowly turning into the worst camera ever and it was time for an upgrade.

'Upgrade' to a Nikon D5100 with 18-55 and 55-300 lenses is an understatement to say the least!

I feel obligated to figure out exactly HOW to use this camera and all it's gadgets because otherwise - we should have just got another point-and-shoot.  I created this blog to encourage myself to continue learning new things with my camera, and to keep a collection of the progress I am making.  Perhaps some day I will be posting photos that I am being paid to take?!?!

Welcome to the journey.  Advice, critiques and any other comments are more than welcome!