My photography class wrapped up last night.   (Yay! I can finally mark something off of my Resolutions list!!!)

I had a great time in the class.   I love that I finally know how to operate my camera in Manual mode rather than Automatic.   As the instructor says, “Now you’re taking the picture instead of the camera taking the picture.”   Which is a cool feeling, except that I also realize that makes me responsible for the bad pictures, too.

Here’s some of my class work:

Metering a light object

Metering a dark object (with a plug for our family friends at Circle S Vineyards, if you’re in Houston go see Uncle Dave. )

My favorite, playing with the f-stop to blur the background.   It’s like erasing all the busy distractions from the background, so that the focus is on one simple thing.   I’d love it if I could figure out how to do that in my day-to-day life.   Imagine how peaceful life could be if you could tune out the neighbor’s barking dogs, the children arguing over who knows what, the general noise that just seems to takes over.

More with the f-stop

Blurred Action vs. Stop Motion

So that’s what I learned in a nutshell.   Now, I probably can’t explain it or teach it to anyone yet.   But I’ll get there – slowly but surely – I’ll get there…

Cropped but straight out of camera

Cropped and applied PW Action Fresh and Colorful

Spent a little bit of time playing with photoshop this afternoon.   I found Ree’s (The Pioneer Woman) Photoshop actions and fiddled with them.   They didn’t dramatically change the pictures, but they now have a little extra punch to them. I think I’m in love.  

Cropped but straight out of camera

Cropped and applied PW Action Fresh and Colorful

If you’d like to take a look at my flickr page, here you go.

If there are any you really like, or if you have some pointers you’d like to share – leave a comment on that photo page.

Enjoy!   http://www.flickr.com/photos/texastanya/

Thanks!