Photography

I have a few goals in my life at the moment.  Becoming a better mom is one (patience, where art thou?), loosing the baby fat is another.  About time for both of them if you ask me.  Improving my sewing skills and finally getting into gear to making those baby clothes quilts that I have been meaning to make for the last, oh, five years or so.

Another goal is to become a better photographer.  While being a professional photographer is definitely on my list of dream jobs, that's not what I aspire.  But I take decent pictures and I want to become better.  We have cute kids, and we go interesting places.  Both are important parts of my life that I want to document.  Then, a few days ago my friend M., who is one fantastic photographer, wrote me an email and encouraged me.  I was incredibly flattered and happy, and this turned into motivation and, well, here we are.

I love the creativity of photography and I'm much better at composition than at the technical side - so the technical side is what I need to work on primarily.  I spent the day reading and futzing around, and for the first time in too many years, I think that I've finally wrapped my brain around f-stops, ISO and shutter speeds.  So much so that I'm thinking to myself - hey, that wasn't hard.  Why ever did this seem such a mystery before?  Today, I've ventured beyond the artsy mode on my camera (a Canon Digital Rebel XT) and started playing around with the manual settings and for the first time, the results didn't completely suck.  So I guess some learning has occurred!

My (self-given) assignment today was to work with aperture.  I love blurry backgrounds for kid's shots and so I lean towards larger apertures.  It's a steep learning curve for me.  Here are some results of today (and if you're wondering why the pictures are mostly showing Leah - well, she's at home, the others aren't!)

Comments

[Stephanie]

Fabulous! So adorable!

[Neurondoc]

Cuties! Could you have Elder Husband respond to Younger Husband's email regarding the laptop quote...?