It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a babe!!

My dear friend was kind enough to lend her cutie of a kid for some photo practice this past weekend. I know the only ticket to becoming a successful photographer will be to practice, practice, practice so practice I shall. There were a few things I noticed while shooting that were great learning experiences.

• Lighting – especially with the sun – can be quite a challenge. It went from bright to dark real quick when you’re shooting from different angles and while aperture priority helps quickly solve that I also find that being able to manually control my settings, which sometimes means not the ‘perfect exposure,’ is what I prefer
• Backdrop – vital to the composition of your image. There were a few times where I wasn’t noticing the back drop while focusing on the lighting and such, which resulted in some retouching to create the over feel I was striving for. No biggie but in my opinion the less retouching you have to do the better.
• RAW vs JPG – a very new concept and intimidating at that. BUT would have been super helpful for editing afterwards. There are a few photos I would like to have better control over in terms of overall brightness, highlighting, etc.. and I know RAW provides those capabilities. That’s on my to-do list, or to-learn list rather.
• More-the-Merrier – I’m sure it’s a no-brainer to any seasoned photographer, but the more pictures you take the better, which requires you to be fast. That’s how you get those treasured few.

Here are some of my favs