I'm Ready For My Close-Up

Looks like I need to fix Mr. Sock Monkey's ear

Back in high school, I borrowed my father's fancy manual Minolta camera for a photography class.  It was black and white and required real film.  I would always scratch up the film when self-developing and I would always mess up the filters when using the enlarger.  I learned a great deal about setting up the shot and depth-of-field.

Hot Sexy Drewbie

I. Have. Forgotten. Everything.  F-stops, ISO, and other technical terms that I cannot even recall.

Experimenting Night Portrait Settings. . . 

on my neighbor's house.  I wish mine was this festive :-)

My little snap-&-shoot Nikon has served me well and still will for years to come when I do not want to lug around a huge camera bag.  Setting up the shot has completely gone out the window when photographing a very mobile toddler.  Ellie moves too fast.  I may shoot about 30 photos and only one is usable. (Yes, I take tons of photos).

Depth-of-Field Experiment

Depth-of-Field Experiment

Baby Drews bought me a Sony alpha 55 something-or-other SLR camera for Christmas.  To be used at Christmas, hence why I have the camera now.  Thank you Drew!!!!  I have 3 lenses and I am slowly learning what all of the fancy buttons on this camera are for.  It also has this LCD screen that shows all sorts of graphs and whatnot.  Again, I do not know what it all means. . .yet.  (It should be noted that Andrew is the one who wanted the camera but he already got his Christmas present so he "gave" me the camera under the pretense of it being my present)

Tights!  Can you tell I love tights on Bear-Bear?

As you can see in all of these photos, I am experimenting with the different lenses and apertures.  I know that I could just put it on "Auto" mode and call it a day, but that takes all of the fun out of having an SLR.  The cool thing is, it can snap 10 pictures very quickly so it looks like an Ellie (or kitty or doggy) play-by-play.

Am I a supposed to smile at this large contraption?

I am ready for my close-up.

Of course, I still have to read the manual and brush up on the different techniques.  Oh and the editing software.