Photography Class: Autofocus

I'm going to take a long story and condense it.  Here goes.

I wanted to buy a new camera.  I did some research.  I realized that I already had a better camera than anything I could afford to buy.  So, instead, I bought a book. 

My goal, this summer, is to read the book - Complete Digital Photography, Sixth Edition by Ben Long - and practice all the steps.  And, eventually, learn how to use my camera's manual features.

And if I blog about it, then I might actually do it.  So here starts the beginning of my education in photography.

The first exercise was simply to take some photos with the camera's autofocus feature.

I wanted to plant some cilantro, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.  I gathered up my camera, my son, and my son's camera, and we went over to the Gledhill Nursery in West Hartford to take a few snapshots and buy some herbs.

I could bore you with a ton of my photos, but instead I think I'll take a page from America's Next Top Model, and simply show you what I feel is my best shot.

I haven't retouched this at all.  I haven't bumped the contrast or anything.  This is exactly the way the camera captured the windmill and the reflection.

And now here are a couple of Magoo's best shots. 

I love the range of colors he caught in the leaves, from the super lightness of the front leaf - which, to me, is the focal point of the photograph - to the black recessions above and below it.

I also love the way he caught the wood beams on this bridge.  He balanced the space very well.  There's a calm repetition in the wood, but by photographing them at an angle, the diagonals make it more dynamic.

I have a lot of fun taking pictures.  Sometimes you hear people say, Put down the camera and live in the moment.  But honestly, it's the moments of taking the pictures that I like to live in.  But I'm finding that I also really love seeing how Magoo approaches photography.  He sees things differently.  Different things attract him.  And, quite frankly, it's just fun to go out and do something together.