A couple of weekends ago, my little family traveled down to Austin, Texas so that I could attend a short photography workshop on Saturday. The workshop was given by Katie Evans (http://kevansphotography.blogspot.com/), who has also written a helpful book for aspiring photographers such as myself (http://thekeytotakingpictures.com). I first found out about Katie’s book through the lovely craft blog from Dana (http://www.dana-made-it.com/) and started following Katie’s photography blog as a result. A few weeks after I started following her blog, Katie announced that she would be holding a photography workshop in Austin. Since we had that weekend free, I jumped on the chance to learn how to Get Off of Auto(matic settings on my camera). During the session, we walked through Katie’s book and took several hours to learn about how to manipulate our camera settings to capture crisp, clean images with proper exposure (yes, it’s basic… but YES, I needed help!) Then we ventured out with a model (Kelsey) to put what we had learned into practice. Photos below, but first a few comments:
1) I ended up using my kit lens (telescoping 18-105 mm) on my Nikon D90 during the photo shoot, and about halfway through the 30 minute shoot I realized that I should have put on my prime 50 mm lens. It was back in the café, so I couldn’t quickly switch it out.
2) Since I wasn’t using my best lens, I couldn’t get as low of an aperture as I wanted and the exposure looks pretty ‘meh’ in most of the pictures. Live and learn, for sure.
3) Kelsey was a cute model, but most of my favorite shots ended up being of jewelry and accessories. (Hopefully you like some of the pictures, Kelsey!)
4) I minimally edited the photos in Picassa because A) I am still figuring out Photoshop Elements and B) I uploaded and worked on these during my lunch hour (mostly) and Elements is only loaded on my computer at home. Mostly I cropped and manually adjusted up the brightness, highlights, and shadows.
5) Is obvious that I NEED PRACTICE, like crazy.
6) The workshop was fun and I learned a lot... I will post a follow up about the rest of our weekend and include some pictures in which I start to use manual settings.
Here are my favorites:
{Workshop Participants + Katie + Kelsey}
{Katie photographing Kelsey}
{Katie photographing Kelsey}
{Kelsey and Katie... not a particularly great photograph but I thought it was cute of Katie and a good memory of the day}
{Owl Necklace BW}
{Owl Necklace Blue}
{Rings}
{Accessories}
{Shoe}
{Kelsey 1}
{Kelsey 2}
{Kelsey 3}
{Kelsey 4}
{Kelsey 5 - I like it even though she isn't smiling}
{Kelsey 6 - Typical Senior Portrait}
