Expect better photos

I attended a day-long photography workshop on Saturday and, for the first time, received formal instruction about aperture, shutter speed, composition, etc. We covered the contents of a 7-week course in a matter of 8 hours. Most of it I had read about on my own before, but I think that put me in a better position to soak it all up on Saturday. I really enjoyed the class and don't remember the last time I was so interested in learning something. I'm getting excited about this hobby and the new dimensions that are added to it when you leave Auto mode behind.

The car photo above is one of my homework assignments from the class. The instructor gave us a list of photos to take over our lunch break. The purpose of this one was to use a slow shutter speed and pan along a moving object so that the background is blurry but the object is not. I think my experience as a videographer helped me here by giving me practice with smooth pans.

Another assignment was to shoot something that was predominantly white and overexpose it to make it actually look white (rather than middle gray, which is how it would look if you followed the exposure meter), and then do the same thing by underexposing black. We also learned about depth of field, a thing or two about lighting, how to white balance correctly for a sunset, and some tips about editing photos on a computer. Suddenly I'm seeing all kinds of problems in most of the pictures I've ever taken (the same can be said about my video as well). But I'm not exactly going to delete my gallery... even poorly taken pictures serve as a record of our adventures and good times.

One thing I'm realizing is I may need to buy a better lens sometime in the future. I've been using the one that came with the camera, but if I could get a telephoto that has a 2.8 F-stop, I'd have the capability of shooting at a faster shutter speed in lower light, which is really what every photography enthusiast wants. I know lenses aren't cheap, but I'm going to start shopping around. Too bad R doesn't have another birthday coming up.