Mastering The Shot...

A week and a half ago I headed to Pennsylvania to take a DSLR photography class, which I have been wanting to take for 6 months. My girlfriend Amanda took the class a year ago and when I started seeing her pictures is when I decided I wanted a DSLR camera. I got my camera in December, an early Christmas present from my Bonded sisters and my husband. I loved it, but needed help learning how to use it. Amanda helped me get started, but when talking to her about the class I knew it would be even more helpful. For the last 7 months I have been playing around with the camera in manual mode trying to learn and awaiting an opportunity to take the Mastering The Shot class. Finally on August 4th I was able to take the class with 7 other girls including my sister-in-law Christy and good friend Michele.

Heather Blair was our teacher. She actually received her first DSLR camera 4 years ago and pretty much taught herself how to use it. She now takes pictures as a profession. She offers the Mastering The Shot class every couple of months, which is always around 8 people and completely hands on. It was on a Sunday from 10-4 at a local park and I walked away with a greater understanding of how all the components on my camera work and how to use manual mode. I won't ever go back to automatic.

Adrienne, Christy, Lynne, Michele, Heather, me, Gina, Andrea and Missy.

Christy, Michele and me. t was great taking the class with friends.

Heather also provides a 30 Day Challenge for each of us after our class together. She gives us a theme for each day that we have to take a picture of. I have spent a lot of time taking pictures, but it is giving me some good experience and making me think about what I learned in the class. We all post our pictures to a Flickr website and Heather gives us feedback on the picture and our settings. She lets us know if there is something we should have changed on our settings or done differently in our setup. I appreciate this so much and the fact that she is always encouraging us. She really wants us to succeed in learning how to use our cameras.

Here is my first week of pictures...

Day 1 - Something Blue

Day 2 - Dessert

Day3 - Bokeh

Day 4 - Negative Space

Day 5 - Clouds

Day 6 - Someone You Love

Day 7 - High Angle