Friday, March 14, 2014

Get Your New Camera Out of AUTO Mode.

For those emails I get that say, "Dave, I just want to learn how to use other functions besides Auto on my camera, what do I do?", "Dave, what are the best settings to use?", Dave, this camera was as expensive as my trip to the Paris, what do all these buttons do?"

My first question in return is, "What do you want to accomplish with your camera?"  If you just want to take pictures to preserve family moments on vacation, then that camera that you needed to check at the airport is probably overkill.  If you want to get all sorts of creative with your images, then I'd say you probably invested well. (note for purists: you can get creative with any camera).  Ok lets be real.  You want to do both!  You want to  have creative freedom to get great shots with a lot of control AND snap the quick pics of family without a lot of thought.


I'd be lying if I said I never use AUTO, sometimes it's just convenient to let the camera do the work.  Especially when out with the family, but you don't have to let it do all the work all the time.

Enter the DSLR camera simulator.


This simulator is a great tool to learn some things about your camera and what it will most likely do with numerous given settings.  After you "snap the photo" you'll be able to see your result and deduct from there what you can adjust.  It's pretty cool if you're wanting to learn how to shoot in Manual Mode.

The simulator does a great job of explaining what all those terms mean like, ISO, focal length, and aperture.  Most terms that have people looking at you like your on something.

Jon Arnold built this amazing simulator because he loves photography and wanted to equip photography teachers with a tool to help them teach photography to students.

The website also contains some other cool tools to help you learn about your camera and how to make better images using the simple tools inside the camera you already own!  Awesome!

You can have fun with this simulator by checking them out here.  And you have questions or comments, Jon is more than willing to let you contact him...super cool :)  Let me know what you think!

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Kids (the most beautiful of all time suckers)

Back in 2012, before my son Cooper was born, I said to myself, "Self!  Get your act together and start blogging on a regular basis."  Way to go self...FAIL!



You are so excited to have this new little person come into your life and think that nothing will change THAT MUCH, then you just get completely and utterly consumed by them...the changing, the dressing, the feeding, burping, crying, spitting up, peeing straight up in the air, etc...  I admit, I was not the best at sharing the responsibility in the beginning, but as I got more involved...well he became this cute little deserving of so much love and attention time sucker!

And I wouldn't change a single second of it for anything!



Cooper is 16 months old now and he is able to give us a little breathing room when it comes to parts of our day.  Now I'm going to start learning how to prepare and post when I can...on a regular basis of course. ;)

Dave