Big Girl Camera

My hubby got me a belated christmas birthday present recently... an Olympus OM-D.

Not gonna lie, this camera is intimidating. As an art history student and graphic designer, I like to think I can tell a good photo from a bad one pretty quick. I've skirted the edges of photography, by studying composition, lighting and subjects from art sources. Sure, I've had several cameras before, but I used them on auto, and none have ever had interchangeable lenses.

Since he has become the photo teacher at our school, our interest in Photography with a capital P, has only increased. He's always been a photographer, but was limited to the iPhone. Photography is an excellent hobby, super fun, creative, portable, but terribly expensive if you want to get serious. But like my time making prints in college, it is a challenge that is time consuming to get right and much harder than it looks.

Anyway, instagram is a good place to get inspired and I love to see the travels of Momo and Andrew Knapp.

Hello! Big news: I just released a class I created for you on @skillshare. I'm so stoked and it was so much fun and such a challenge to create. It’s a self-paced online video class, a journey for you to create a photo series using a common theme. Mine, as you may have guessed, is Momo, and here’s the first of the three photos I created for the class; my #makeporchraits series. Enroll here: skl.sh/andrewknapp (link in bio). We worked so hard on creating this class with the amazing @skillshare team and I’d be thrilled if you’d give it a shot, and please let me know what you think of it! I’m making it FREE just for you, this week only.

A photo posted by Andrew Knapp (@andrewknapp) on Mar 1, 2016 at 8:22am PST

His class was free only for the week it was posted, so of course I signed up and watched the 40 minute class, took a few notes and went into the back yard with my own muse of a mutt, Gingko, my 5 year old husky mix. She's not much for posing, but loves to explore the back part of our yard which is a bamboo jungle.

I tried to follow the advice of a theme and trait, while also providing a wide, medium and close shot, as well as take some baby steps moving off of auto and into manual mode! Scary.
Theme: Gingko. Trait: Her exploratory nature

into the unknown of the bamboo

skirting the edges of the forest

target locked

I had a lot of fun with this, and getting up and out for even a little bit at lunch helped combat the constant couch sitting that is my day job. With this camera being so compact, I plan to just keep it on me at all times now. The trips we are planning in the future have just one more thing to look forward to... learning to take some great photos.

Yeah for trying new things! I've started a Flickr page for myself to try to motivate me to share, grow, and keep at it. Check it out if you like.