Photography final... :)

as i've mentioned about a thousand times..

i'm hoping to one day become a professional photographer...

and while that dream might be a little far off...

i certainly have been having a great time learning all there is to know about this cool craft...

the last class i took really kicked my butt...

it was all about understanding the technical side of my camera...

so the entire time..

i had to shoot in complete manual...

for those of you with "nicer cameras" try putting it in manual...

if you're anything like me...

you would just hold your breath and hope for the best...

so i was really proud of my work in this class...

learning about metering for different skin tones...

and a bunch of other tech stuff that i did not even know was possible with my camera...

so i thought i'd share a few of my favorite pics i took for this class...

thanks for checking it out!! :)

there were quite a few "mini assignments" each week...

so at this point my kids run and hide when they see me coming with the camera :)

but here are the *highlights* from the main assignment for each of the 4 weeks...

Here's week 1 (all about sharp focus)...

as you can see, I missed focus on her face here (the sharp focus is on the leaf in front of her face)...


(oh, and please click on the pics to see the great big;) )

still week 1-

here, i missed focus on getting both of her eyes sharp (her left eye is more blurry that right)...

here, i just plain missed focus...

(i think the focus fell somewhere on the leaf beside her)

ok, on to week 2...

this week was about getting skin tones correct...

it was all about making sure that your settings don't make your subjects skin too bright or too dark...

this week was also about getting reflective light in your subjects eyes...

(and I just loved bean's eyes in this one...)

i never realized how much she keeps her fingers in her mouth until i started taking more pictures of her :)

she's a bit bright in this next one...(i did not get an A..lol) 

but in my defense, i never knew how hard it was to do this intentionally! :)

ok, week 3 was changing your camera settings to achieve desired effects...

and more focus... :)

so here is my "stopping action" shot..

here is my "small focus, depth of field" shot...

(just the tips of the petals are in focus)

this is my "pick something difficult to achieve focus on" pic...

ok, and last but not least, week 4.

we basically had to take a shot that incorporated everything we learned...

gets some background blur (to demonstrate depth of field)...

perfect focus...

great skin tones...

great composition (for something interesting)...

and great light in your subjects eyes...

and only got 1 picture to submit...

so after taking a billion pictures...

there were a few contenders...

here is one of my neighbor's daughter, McKenzie...

i just loved this one of bean... 

if she had been looking right at the camera, it would have been perfect...

so i finally decided on this picture of Ayden..

i really like it!

hope you do too! :)

thanks again for checking this out! :)