Becoming a Momtographer!

Way back in the summer of 2011 after finding out I was pregnant with the dragon, I quickly jumped online to join The Bump and found a community in March Moms 2012. Not long after many of our little ones were born, some of us moved to a facebook group because it's a little easier to communicate there than on than the bump. Anywho...long story short, one of the moms has put together a 12 week online photography course. Santa was very good to me this year and brought a Nikon D3000. I've been wanting a fancy DSLR for FOREVER.  Now that I have one, I need to know what to do with it. I am going to try my hardest to blog each week's lesson, on time :)

Week One: Aperture. Basically, aperture size determines how much of the picture is in focus. The aperture number is the f/stop. I'll just link the lesson website rather than regurgitate it all here, but the gist of the lesson was this "Basically, when you use a low f/stop, less of your photo will be in focus. When
you use a higher f/stop, MORE of your photo will be in focus."
http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/class_pdfs/photocourse/weekone.pdf

Without further ado...here are my first attempts at using my camera as more than a point and shoot. The assignment was to take three pictures at different apertures of a fixed subject.

This was taken with f/3.5 (the lowest setting my lens will go)

This was taken with f/8

 This was taken with f/22

We also were to take a challenge photo, so I used my favorite subject...my little dragon!

I took this with f/8 because I liked the amount of blur in the background the best at this aperture. Please ignore the wet spot  on the couch. The dragon likes to bite it as he stands there. Honestly, I took a ton of pictures trying to get the challenge one just right. I'm not super happy with the results, but my "subject" doesn't really stay in one place for long anymore...

Here is the blog from the mom running the course. It's great...give it a look! http://christenheartspinterest.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/12-weeks-to-better-photos-course-week-one-aperture/