Alexander

My good friend, Erin, came over yesterday and we talked a little bit about photography. I was trying to teach her some of the techniques I have been experimenting with when I am taking pictures. We had both Wesley and her baby, Alexander downstairs in my make shift photo studio. The session was mainly for her to experiment. One of our main problems was she has a Canon and I don't know how to work her camera. That being said, she doesn't know how to work her camera except in full automatic mode. At this point, I am usually shooting in manual, and I use a combination format that shoots the pic in both RAW and JPEG. I love the ease of the JPEG and am hanging onto that setting as a crutch and for ease, but when I want to get into the nitty gritty of photo editing, RAW format is so much better! Aside from that, I just wanted to recommend the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. It is a WONDERFUL book for beginners, like me, and help explains how to use different techniques to get the effects you desire.

I only took 8 pictures, and only 2 are blog worthy. That is a 25% turn out. I think my personal goal is 5 "good" pictures per session. Well, maybe that doesn't sound like a lot and frankly that is failing marks in school, but with photography, especially child photography, it sounds like a slightly attainable goal for me at this point. Of course, I could snap pictures all day, but my subjects can be a little difficult to work with. Wesley will turn every way, except facing the camera, and then he won't smile and half the time he does smile my lighting is bad or the focus is bad or there is some other technical difficulty on my end. Again, I am still learning. I must remind myself that often. Regardless, of the 8 pics I took, I LOVE LOVE LOVE 2 of them. That makes me super happy. Then again, it was easy to get a couple great shots when you have a cooperative (and handsome!) subject.