My bestie got me this great book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson (3rd edition) when I first bought my camera 3 years ago. Truth be told, I started to read it and take notes, being the good academic I am. And immediately after the first few pages, I was completely overwhelmed. And that was that. Closed the book and on the shelf it went. It wasn’t until I started to really take pictures and get frustrated that I couldn’t capture subjects the way I was envisioning that the book started to look more appealing.

Open, re-read first and second sections. NOPE – still intimidating. I guess I was afraid that once I started to mess around with the oh-so-scary manual settings I would break my camera and wouldn’t be able to get it back to my trusty old auto. I know, silly Maddie.

A few months ago I dusted it off again, threw out my old notes, and started fresh and determined. But it wasn’t until I had a lovely afternoon with my great photographer friend that finally got me over the hump. She let me play around with her cameras (Nikon D800 and D700) and all of a sudden, this wasn’t so intimidating!

For me the key has been practice, practice, practice and of course, reading the book. It’s really great at walking you through different exercises and concisely explaining how all the camera functions correlate. I think what I like best about the book is that the author offers tip and tricks of the trade coupled with his personal opinions, sort of like a must-see list from a friend that’s been where you’re about to go – you trust their opinion.

This image of the fireplace is from a company shoot a few weeks ago. We’ve launched a new sector to our business that features pre-fabricated units and we’re in desperate need of lifestyle images. Since I’ve become the resident photographer over the past 2 years, it’s been a great forum to practice. But this shoot was the first I dared to try manually. This was by far the best shot of the day. The sun was presenting to be quite an issue and I was getting increasingly frustrated, but the timing and settings for this image made it all worth it.

Don’t mind me while I… toot toot beep beep!