Photography Class

So, like I mentioned in yesterday's post, over the weekend, I took a DSLR Photography for Beginners class at the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts. Since I've had this amazing Pentax *istD DSLR for going on three years now, I thought maybe it would be a nice idea if I actually learned how to use the settings on it instead of always going with the automatic settings.

Of course, the anxiety kicked in almost the second I drove out of the driveway. My stomach was so painfully tight that it made me queasy.

I told myself that if I still felt this bad when I got to the Cultural Center, that I could just go to Target or do something else - there was nothing that was FORCING me to go to that photography class.

But, when I pulled up in front of the building, I felt a little calmer, even though my stomach was still incredibly painful to the touch.

I'm glad I went to the class, because after spending two hours learning about how to adjust the manual settings on my DSLR camera, I will never, ever, ever use the automatic settings on my camera ever again.

The class was only 2 hours - which was way too short. My response on the evaluation form was that it should have been a 4 or 6 hour class so that we would have time to actually play with the settings and see what kinds of pictures we got, with feedback from the instructor.

As it was, most of us just started clicking away with our cameras at whatever happened to catch our eye - the pen on the table in front of me, my water bottle, the sprinklers in the ceiling, or this picture of The Beatles that was sitting on the floor across the room...

The next day, I took the camera out with us when we went to collect sap for maple sugaring, and I captured a few nice images:

Then we came home, and I wanted to try to get a couple of "glamor shots" of some of my newest work. To see those, you'll just have to stay tuned...