I got it! I got it!

John and I took a photography class on Saturday, and I finally understand the workings of our new DSLR camera! 

I fearfully turned the camera over to manual mode, where you have to adjust EVERYTHING, which meant A LOT of trial and error to get the pictures to turn out just right.  After playing around, here's a few I came up with yesterday while we were out flying Rhea:

 

 Alicia is sadly not included in these photos because she opted to stay home.

What you don't see here are the dozens of pictures I took prior to these ones trying to get the settings right so the picture would look good.

 

 

 I also learned our camera has this cool continuous mode that means it keeps taking pictures while you hold down the shutter button, which allowed me to capture Rhea in flight:

 

 Food, here she comes...

 Until at the last minute, she decided to bypass it...

 Here she is turning around, thinking maybe it might be a good idea to snag her food after all... 

 In for the kill...

 Okay, so her food was already dead, but you get the idea... 

 One happy bird gobbling up her quail.

I would never have been able to capture all that with my point and shoot. 

 

I also learned how to take indoor pictures, though again, through much trial and error.

We lit up our fireplace last night for the first time in this house, and believe me when I say it took 20 tries of adjusting the camera settings to get these shots:

 

 

Kimberly played around with the camera too.

To give you an idea of what a DSLR is capable of, I was impressed with these photos of hers:

 

 Just snapping a photo without focusing on anything is imaged above,

then the same shot, this time focusing on one thing, gives you this:

 

 

I am in love with my camera, and all of its confusing functions that are now becoming less confusing. I can see why photographers say once you figure out the manual settings, you will never go back to the auto-mode.

 

Also, I figured out how to pull up these pictures I took of the basement wall and ceiling demolition (this doesn't include the rock fireplace demolition)

 



Poor John's reaction to the new mess.  :(

Happily, as you see in our previous post, we are well on our way to making it more like a family room.