Asking for Photography Help

Whether you really wanted to or not, when you become a parent you become a photographer (among many other things). I recall being so busy in high school, drawing and painting, and seeing others interested in photography take photography courses. Back then, that just wasn’t me. I was happy with my charcoal, linoleum cutting, my watercolors and my tempera. Dirty hands and busy mind, and happy as my toddler in a mud puddle.

Not anymore.

I’m not sure exactly when it started – perhaps it began by my giving birth and suddenly having a subject to photograph all of a sudden, which then gave way to my attention being needed elsewhere and not on a pad of paper with pencil in hand. Suddenly, there simply wasn’t any time to sit and sketch or paint any longer. Meanwhile I’m clicking away, preserving memories with whatever cheap camera we had, not thinking I needed anything fancy at all to capture the kids’ pictures (boy was I ever wrong), simultaneously watching my art time dwindle little by little, until it disappeared. That didn’t mean I suddenly lost interest in having a creative outlet, though.

I think that probably helped spawn my sudden interest in photography – because I miss drawing and creating art. Not to mention, the need/want to capture my family’s life and memories into something spectacular. It doesn’t hurt to have a good enough camera to never pay for portraits again (well, maybe).

My interest in the above is ultimately why I finally made the jump to an DSLR camera (especially since my other camera was failing at life). I wanted to be sure that the memories I am capturing aren’t blurry or grainy. Now, however, I’m cursing myself for not having made the choice sooner. It is almost painful to go back and see the blurry pictures of my older children when they were little, and not seeing every freckle, ever wisp of hair, ever glint in their eye, wishing I would’ve had a better camera all along.

However, with this new camera and my sudden urge to take a better quality photo, I’m quickly realizing how I’m more than a little lost, to be honest. The pictures you see me posting on a regular basis use automatic settings. Tired of having the camera do the work for me, one night, while the sunset was beautiful, I went out to see if i could capture it artfully, attempting to dust off the camera’s manual, take this bull by the horns and wrangle some fanciful picture out of this expensive puppy. Manually.

(Believe it or not, this was taken one after the next, simply switching up settings. Same time of day)

Can you tell I really don’t know what I’m doing? And if you asked me how I did that above, I would tell you I looked at the manual and changed one setting all the way up, and then all the way down, and got the above. TA DA! Technical, huh? I don’t know what fstop is, what aperture is supposed to do, or half of what my camera is supposed to do, or why it does what it does. I’m not technical with this thing, and I’m so lost, I feel like I need someone to Elmo-ize this thing to explain it to me, preschool-like.

Can anyone head me in the right direction, Elmo ABC-style?

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