Written by Jessica on Thursday, January 07, 2010
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I hinted towards the love/hate relationship Olivia and I have. You see, she can do quite amazing things. But I'm afraid she's not living up to her potential though. It's not her fault, it's mine. Which makes it all that much more frustrating. I've got a lot to learn, but I'm making progress.

At first, most of my pictures looked something like this:




No matter how still I tried to hold my hand, that's what I got. Then I got frustrated and determined to figure it out. So I skipped over to Amanda's then to The Pioneer Woman's sites for some lessons in DSLR Photography. LOVE THEM! And I learned about things like Aperture and ISO, and the various uses of lenses and the best way to use light, including my Speedlite (Thanks to Amanda's tip I knew to point the Speedlite at the ceiling instead of directly at the subject). Then I pulled Olivia out again and just like that - they're not great photos by any means, but a marked improvement!






This is one of my favorites, because I was practicing manually adjusting my focal point (thanks again to Amanda) on the object Brayden was trying to give me.







These images are right off the camera, no editing whatsoever. You see, I know how to use Photoshop to make bad pictures okay. Like, if there's a section that needs to be cropped out, I'm your woman. If it's way too dark (underexposed - see I'm learning) and you need the picture brightened, I can hook you up. However, if it's an already pretty good picture and you need to take it to great, you know the pictures you look at in awe and amazement... well, I can't help you. I need to learn more about how to use the layers and whatnot in photoshop. Currently if the "auto adjustment" or a little "cropping" won't take care of it, I'm out.of.luck.

On that note, if anyone knows of any great tutorials or tips (aside from Amanda's and The Pioneer Woman's) I'd love to know about them. In the meantime, you will have to look at my mediocre (at best) pictures.

Now that I have Olivia, I'm thinking of doing the 365 thing, a picture a day for 365 days.... Can I do it??

BTW- Brayden isn't my favorite child or anything, just my most willing participant lately.

1 i *heart* comments!:

pyjammy pam said...

oooh, those aren't bad at all! i need to go through the PW site too, i forgot about her site. good idea.

i wish i had a speedlite (i used to have one, then i sold it because it was too complicated for me, ha ha) but at least i have photoshop and know how to use it. :)

as far as crib tents go...i LOVE them. hooooo boy, they have saved our sanity! fortunately, my boys are not terribly adventurous so they haven't tried to break out. they work best on the cribs that don't have the higher back, and if you order directly from the manufacturer (tots in mind) you can buy two, get one free. nice!