February 20, 2011

I think the hard part for me in learning all I can about photography and getting the best pictures out of my camera is finding time to take pictures. With my schedule it’ll be hard to work in time before or after work (maybe on my lunch break?) and on weekends. And even weekends are limited as I spend a good chunk of my time at or driving to and from church.

But today I was able to capture a few shots. The first picture is a view from the stairway above my apartment. The rain stopped sometime overnight and we were left with beautiful clouds in the sky. I had a hard time finding the right setting so my sky wasn’t totally white and my tree wasn’t totally black. I think I got a pretty decent picture. The rest of the photos are from my grandparents’ back yard. One of my favorite things about their house is their flowers. Grandma and Grandpa took pride in working their yard and producing gorgeous flowers. It saddens me to know that they are no longer able to tend to this magnificent yard.

I had a hard time taking the right photos of the flowers. 4:20 on a Sunday afternoon in February in Orange County, California, is quite a bright time of day. I did eventually find the right combination (I think) of settings. I ended up relying on Auto White Balance because none of the other white balance settings gave me the right colors. And to make matters worse, I didn’t have a lot of time to take the pictures; never a good thing for any photographer. I’m going to have to plan a day to come back and try again so I can really dive into the different settings on the camera.

None of these photos have been edited. I took RAW and JPG of each and hope to play around with the editing software that came with my camera in the next few days; I can only work on the pictures when I’m at home and only after I’ve fed my kid.

If you have any tips on what might make my pictures better, please let me know. I’ve included some settings information in the captions to make it more clear what I used.

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