Stepping out of the box

Over the years, my hobby of documenting my children's lives through photographs has taken on a whole life of it's own. I am often teased by my children, and husband, that I take pictures of EVERYTHING! I will admit, that this is true most of the time. I will also admit, that I am more than OKAY with that! In fact, I have been a key source for many friends and acquaintances, for photos of various events... sports, field trips, parties, and many other social gatherings. Yes, I seem to be the person that people rely on for pictures, and I am very happy to oblige them.

Given that I never seem to miss a photo opportunity, and don't want to fail at taking the photos that so many others rely on, besides myself, I always play it safe and shoot in Automatic mode. This way, I let the camera do all the guess work when it comes to the ISO, Aperture, and all other fun and confusing camera settings. To be honest, all of those settings scare me! I have been, and still am, afraid of stepping outside my safe little automatic camera box, and venturing into the world of Manual Mode. Learning all the settings on the camera seems so very overwhelming to me, and totally intimidating. Ahh, but if I could learn what to do, just think how amazing my pictures could be? I usually get a lot of positive feedback on photos that I take, but what if I could take them to the next level?

I decided to take the plunge and signed up for a photography webinar. Of course it was very limited as to the information it provided to it's viewers. After all, there was a very hard sell at the end of the webinar for other products. I didn't bite. I need baby steps. One, or two, new things at a time! This webinar talked about aperture and ISO, so that is where I began.

I had the perfect chance to put this new information to the test. We had a snow day. So I asked my youngest to be my model, and out we went. First we shot around the house, then ventured out to another location. While I still have a lot of practicing to do, I think I did a pretty good job for my first round!