First Time Photographer

For about five years now I have been interested in photography. I got my first nice film camera about five years ago. Every now and then I would take pictures for people (family) and frame them. But with film it was really hard to get the pictures I wanted...plus I didn't have the programs or software to fix them up. Recently for Christmas I got my first nice digital camera and have been experimenting and learning ever since. My goal and dream is to be able to shoot photographs for people and have them turn out with professional quality. I'm on my way but I still have a lot to learn. I felt like posting them on a blog I would be able to see my improvements and also get feed back from other people.

The first pictures are some girls that live right here close to me. Their mother asked if I would take some pictures for their Christmas card. It was a quick photo shoot and I didn't have enough time to really test the lighting or even get to know my camera for that matter. But somehow with a strain of luck they turned out decent. Looking back there are a few things I would do differently. I would iron my backdrop and get rid of he wrinkles...and also I would have the subject further away from the back drop so that the background was a lot more unfocused. Some of the photos actually turned out this way...but not on purpose.

The next set of photos are a little boy that I babysit for. I took his one year old pictures. This one I also would have ironed the back drop...wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles!!!!!! I won't make that mistake again. Also the light was definitely more on one side. Although this can be used as a creative style for these photos I should have reflected more light onto the other side so that it was a little more even. Because of the light imbalance you can see that have of the photo is a little over shot while the other half is just right. I couldn't decide whether it was better to have the one half a little darker and the light side exposed properly, or over expose the bright side and have the dark side correctly exposed. I choose to have a little over exposure, but still don't know which I like better.

The last set of photos are of a neighbor girl playing outside in the sprinklers. I was just messing around with some automatic features in my camera as opposed to manual. I'm still a little slow in getting the shutter

speed, f-stop, and ISO to work well together, and how to get all the information with the correct exposure. I have found that lighting is everything though, and now my main goal is to get the best lighting...always, and to work with what I have and figure out how to make it the right light

I will be taking pictures of some really cute twins soon, so those will be posted shortly (with the back drop ironed, and hopefully the light evenly distributed).