Finishing up 31 Days to a Better Photo

Back on February 6th I posted about my desire to read all of Darcy's posts in her series 31 Days to a Better Photo.  I finished the series this morning.  Thank you Darcy for the fantastic tutorials.  This was a wonderful series.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to use their camera better.

Days 16 - 19

The nice thing about doing a series after the fact is that you don't have to wait until the next day to read a post.  So I should only be up to day 17 but since I was just hanging around today I thought I would read ahead.  I read Day 16 on Exposure Compensation
Day 17 - the Low Down on Lenses
Day 18 - What camera do you have?
and
Day 19 - When natural light won't cut it

My husband is sick and my foot is taking forever to heal so we just hung out all day.  It was great to get some reading done.  Head on over to Life with My 3 Boybarians and check out the 31 Days to a Better Photo Series.  I am learning a lot and enjoying myself.  Let me know if you are following along.

Day 7's assignment and Day 15

Back on Day 7 Darcy talked about Tackling Depth of Field.  This was a photo assignment day and when I went to do the assignment I was unhappy with any of my photos which turned out to be a good thing because I definitely learned a few things from my mistakes.  Today I tried again and the lighting isn't great because I took these photos inside but they serve the purpose of showing how depth of field changes with aperture changes.  I took the whole spectrum of aperture options on my camera and then picked 3 to show the differences.

One with a wider aperture opening:

 One from around the middle:

One with a smaller aperture opening:

As you can see from the pictures that the chair in the background is blurry with the wide open aperture and much clearer with the smaller opening.  As I said I know the pictures themselves are not very good because of the lighting but I wanted to use my SOOC pictures to show the assignment and these work for that.  I have simplified depth of field here because Darcy did a fabulous job of explaining it here.  Go check it out.

Day 15 is another reading assignment this time the topic is histograms.  

Day 11's assignment - Shooting Manually and Day 14

As I have written about in my last 4 posts I am late to the party but doing Darcy's 31 Days to a Better Photo series.  Yesterday I talked about the assignments that I have not yet done, well today I was able to get outside for a brief stint to do Day 11's assignment and that is to shoot manually.  It was good to turn off auto mode and try to get some acceptable photos shooting manually.  I use to shoot in manual mode a lot with my ZLR but it was tons easier than with the SLR.  I took several photos trying to change aperture and then making the appropriate adjustment with shutter speed or vice-versa.  It felt good to finally have some stuff click. I have a long way to go but I would highly recommend Darcy's series to anyone who wants to feel more comfortable with their picture taking.  Here is my favorite of my manual shots today.

 I took this in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.  This is SOOC with a small crop and an addition of my copyright. 

Day 14 - Is a reading assignment about histograms which I read this morning. 

Days 7 -13

I haven't posted in a week for several reasons. One being the designing, creating and mailing of the invitations I mentioned in the previous post.  Second reason is my foot is still driving me batty from my surgery.  The pain is still so bad that I come home and put it up every night.  The last reason is my commute makes it so that I do not get home in daylight in order to do the photo assignments.  Here is my catch up.

Day 7 -  Tackling Depth of Field - this was a photo assignment day and I tried to do it today on my way to the commuter train.  Unfortunately, I was not happy with any of the photos so I will be re-doing this assignment. (pending)


Day 8 -  The Exposure Triangle - this was a reading assignment and Darcy used a good analogy to make you understand how to put together everything we have learned about ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

Day 9 - Scales - This is really where I am stuck....making everything happen like second nature.  I continue to have to really think about every aspect and by the time I figure it out the shot is gone.

Day 10 - Meter Maids - this reading assignment was chock full of good information as they all have been but this one definitely caused a light bulb or two to go off.

Day 11 - Shooting Manually - this was a photo assignment day.  I will do this assignment after I do day 7's assignment properly. (pending) Completed and posted on 2/17/2011

Day 12 - What's White Balance - Great examples of the various white balance presets available in your camera.

Day 13 - Setting Custom White Balance - another photo assignment that I will do in order after day 7 and 11.  (pending)

I am caught up with all the reading and need to catch up on the assignments which I am hoping to do this weekend.

Take care!

***Updated 2/17/2011 to show Day 11's assignment completed.***

Day 6

As I have been posting I am doing the 31 Days to a Better Photo by Darcy from Life with My 3 Boybarians.

Today was a reading day about understanding aperture.  Good information.

I am working feverishly to get invitations out for a 80th birthday party so this is yet another short post.

Have a good night.

Day 4 and 5

Sunday I posted about my endeavor to follow Darcy's ( from over at Life With My 3 Boybarians ) 31 Days to a Better Photo series.  Yesterday life happened and I wasn't able to do day 4 so today I am talking about day 4 and 5.  Day 4 is about ISO which I actually understood before and have seen first hand what happens if you forget to turn down the ISO after shooting in a dimly lit location.  The funny thing is today my practice shot didn't show nearly as much noise as my past experience so I won't post them here but her lesson is well written and easy to understand. 

Day 5 is a reading day about aperture.  Good information and I look forward to part 2 tomorrow.  If you haven't read her series you should go check it out here.

Gotta run and get some sleep.  See ya tomorrow.

31 Days to a Better Photo - Day 3

Back in October Darcy over at Life With My 3 Boybarians wrote a series of blog posts entitled 31 Days to a Better Photo.  Unfortunately, in October I was still using my ZLR so I decided to wait until I bought my first SLR (which I did in December - Woo Hoo!).  So go on over and check out the series and then follow along here as I do my 31 days to help me learn my camera.

Day 1 is a introduction, Day 2 is an assignment to read your manual which I have done so I am starting here with Day 3.  I can't encourage you enough to go over and read her posts.  I will not be writing out the instructions here as Darcy has done a ton of research and this is her work.  I will be posting photos and my perspective on the assignment only. I also have not read ahead so that I can do each task as they come along.

Day 3 is about shutter speed and shooting in shutter priority.  Here are my photos.

 All 3 were taken with an ISO of 200, aperture of  f/3.5  and focal length of 18 mm.  As part of the assignment I was supposed to lock in aperture and to be honest I couldn't figure out how to do that other than trying not to move and in these 3 photos I was able to get the same aperture.

Thanks for the lessons Darcy I can already tell I will be learning a lot!