My Photography Diary: Why Photography? and My First Camera Lesson – 15th August 2012

Today is the first day of my new personal project as I take you through my journey of learning about photography.

This is more of a record for myself, a photography diary I guess, where I will record each time I pick up the camera, what I have learnt, and I’m hoping it will show me in a few years how far I have come!
I’m not expecting to become Jonas Peterson, I just want to be able to take a decent photo and have a hobby that takes me out and about and hopefully begin to see things in a different way!

I have always liked taking photos, at any sort of function, event or general night out I would be the one with the camera, all be it a small compact number. I could always be found snapping away and then uploading them to facebook for all to share. I also used to love it when people tagged themselves in the photos, often using the photos as their profile picture.

As much as I loved taking photos it wasn’t until I started in my job as a wedding blogger that I really thought about the quality of the photo. My photos were just snaps and to me only the professionals could make them look good. But as I progressed in my job as a blogger I found myself immersed in photography all day. Being sent numerous wedding submissions on a daily basis meant that I started to look at photography in a different way. Some weddings were amazing, while others left me cold, and it wasn’t the content it was the way that wedding had been shot.

It was at this point that I started to ask questions, what made one photo better than another , and what was it about the bad photos that made them bad? was it the photographer, the camera, the lense, or the processing? Well I didn’t know the answer! So I decided that it was about time I found out. I had always wanted a decent camera, but was too afraid to get one as I had no clue how to work it, so last year I decided that it was about time that I learnt.

On the advice of my friend Jon from S6 Photography I bought an entry level DSLR for my birthday, a Canon 500d with a 50mm lense to go with it and I was off!

Well not neccesary off, I have to admit much to the annoyance of Nik my husband the camera stayed in it’s camera bag for about 4 months before I was ready to take it out. Why? because I had no idea what to do! I’m not especially technical, no I’ll correct myself there I’m not technical AT ALL! and to be honest the whole thing scared me. Luckey at that time I was invited to join a facebook group that consisted of mainly photographers, and from this I got to learn a lot more. I was then invited on a Photography for beginners workshop which was run by Jaye at Tux and Tales,a days course run especially for wedding bloggers to learn more about taking good product shots. And it was from that days course where I was bitten by the photography Bug!

I’d like to say that Jaye is an amazing teacher, she explains things so clearly,  she is patient and never thinks you are stupid for asking any sort of question. The days course took place on 15th August and Jaye covered so much ground. From the basis of light, composition, the rule of third, to exposure, aperture, the different functions of the camera, white balance and depth of field. By the end of the day my camera was out of P mode (and no that doesn’t stand for professional) and into AV mode! I learnt so much in a day it was hard to get my head around it all, but what I did learn, is that until I went out and started to use my camera more I wasn’t going to get any better!

Here are a selection of shots I took on the course, it was pretty much all still life, as we were concentrating on taking product shots for blogging.

So that’s my first proper day with my camera, what do you think? That was August 2012, I’d like to think that since then I have learnt a lot more.
I will be adding more diary entries recording my journey in the upcoming weeks.

Kelly xx

Flowers by www.leafycouture.co.uk

•  You can see more of my photography diary entries HERE