American Furniture and House Design

As you know my dream guy gave me my first ever digital SLR camera for Christmas & I am really enjoying learning how to use it.

I have only ever owned a basic point & shoot camera, but even on the auto settings my photo's are sooo much nicer.

I have found some fantastic web sites & blogs that offer so much photography knowledge with tutorials & weekly assignments to get to know your camera better.

I have been playing with the macro setting

I saw a photo taken on a forum at the

Digital Photography School

of water dropping into a dish & thought I might try to replicate it, I was already playing with water, food colouring & would you believe baby oil, trying to do some fun abstract photography,

I gained lots of tips, tricks & inspiration for this image from

The Pioneer Woman

which at the moment she has a wonderful assignment at the moment for everyone on food photography, including a great  post on "Ten things she has learned about food photography" to get you started, some of the images her readers have entered so far are just "delicious!"

I experimented with my macro setting, changing my aperture & even the sports mode on the dripping water.

I have been learning how to use the light meter to adjust the exposure, all three of these pictures where taken one after the other, adjusting the exposure.

I have even learnt a bit about reading the histogram, to ensure you have the correct, or best exposure possible for a perfect shot.

Ive started studying up on adjusting my white balance to suit the light source & ensure optimum colour in my images, like under the shade of these amazing trees.

Ive have gained so much knowledge from a wonderful blog

Life with my 3 boybarians

Darcy has a fabulous series called "31 days to a better photo" which is an awesome resource for us photography newbies

I have also tried to put a lot of focus, pardon the pun, on composition, to ensure my pictures are appealing to the eye.

I must add that NONE of my photo's have been edited in any way, they are fresh from my camera, that would be a whole other skill to master & I am a one step at a time kinda girl!!!

All of the outdoor images here where taken at a lovely little village called Paterson in the Hunter Valley of NSW Australia.

The kids & I went on a photography excursion & had a picnic dinner in the park here, whilst dream child No1 & I experimented with our new cameras.

It was a very fun afternoon & we hope to have lots of little photography picnics in the future!!

I hope these links are helpful for all of you DSLR newbies, or if you have any sites that you have found helpful & inspiring we would love to hear about them!

CHEERS

Trish xxx