Since I was little, I have thoroughly enjoyed taking pictures. My father purchased a decent dslr when all three kids were in sports and various activities, and I was in heaven playing with Dad's big camera. In high school, I took a photography class and enjoyed using my dad's camera but was advised not to major in photography in college so I could develop my own photography style. I took that advice from a professional photographer and never took another class in photo. Its been 6 years later and I've been dying of not knowing how to use a nice camera to take decent pictures of my new life with my husband (maybe I should have taken his advise like a grain of salt!). I always joked with my father that he should give me his camera since it collects dust sitting on his shelf and I could put it to better use. Once I graduated college (December '13), I received a very generous gift of my very own dslr camera from my parents.
At the beginning of this year I decided to start following a good number of photographers on Instagram, once my new camera came in the mail. I had the urge to learn how to use it so that Jade and I could start documenting our life together with quality images. Life was busy and I didn't have the time to learn manual mode (no one should be snapping images in auto mode!). So our images were produced by auto mode settings and they turned out for the knowledge I had of lighting and when I needed a moving object in slow motion the turn-dial needed to be on the "runner" icon. That was it. If I wanted depth of field in my images, I had to have my 55-200mm lens on or it was good luck. I had the desire to learn, but I never had the time and it was killing me. A very talented Utah County photographer, Mckenzie Deakins, takes unbelievably gorgeous images. So talented that I really wish I could re-do my wedding all over so she could take my pictures... (Check out her website: http://photographybymckenzie.com) She is a photographer I started following and every now and then would post a little notice that she would be teaching a photo class. Unfortunately, they had all been on weekdays throughout the year and I didn't want to ask for work off. But at the beginning of November she posted she was doing a class on a Saturday!! I mentioned it to Jade, he went his way about to his a cappella group for practice, and I...took my credit card out and signed up! I was SO excited. I was FINALLY going to learn how to use my camera the way it should be used and now I could take good pictures of our adventures we have. The class was today and it was a thrill - minus the part of me being 20 minutes late as I interpreted it starting at 11am since it said 10am (PST)...
I learned a great deal and it was fun to be learning with others who want to learn the basics of their cameras too. Mckenzie gave us some excellent advice I am planning to put to use. This is the group of gals in the class.
After we learned the basics of our camera and how to control it in manual mode, McKenzie had this lovely model come for us so we could practice shooting. Brinnan was so gorgeous and so patient with us as we were learning to hold our cameras correctly, learning to not make faces when we review the back of our camera after shooting an image of our model, learning to guide the model ourselves, etc. It was so much fun even though it was raining down on us! Here are a couple images I snapped; these are SOOC - no editing.
We also learned how to stop motion in manual mode. It was a bit tricky at first with blurry hair in motion, but once I realized there are only 3 main things to worry or change in manual mode (it just takes a little thinking and adjusting) I was able to snap some crisp images of her whipping her hair.
I am so grateful I had the opportunity to go to this McPhoto 101 class. It was what I needed to get excited about my camera and the possibilities it will lead to are endless.
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