Expanding my horizons

For Mothers Day my husband and kids got me a Canon XS DSLR. It was the camera I'd been coveting for awhile though any DSLR would have made me happy. For the past several months I have been using my fancy big camera in much the same way I used my crappy little point and shoot just with a better lens. In my defense, our summers are crazy busy with dance and baseball and softball so getting good shots of the kids in their activities was my main goal. I consider that, for the most part, achieved. I created my first ever photo scrapbook for Caden's baseball team and I'm really proud of the end result though I did find some mistakes once I had it in my hands.

So now summer is winding down and the kids are heading back to school in 4 more days! I haven't picked up my camera much during the entire month of August. I wanted to take pics of the kids at a local park in the hopes of blowing one up big and framing it but the heat was really bad coupled with my insecurity of being able to capture what I wanted. Every day was too sunny, too hot, too cloudy... you get the picture.

So I decided to talk my friend Colleen into taking a class at the local college with me. Due to our schedules, however, a sit down classroom class was just out of the question so our class is online. Today is day 2 of a 12 lesson course. I haven't looked at it just yet but the first lesson was pretty easy to understand and follow so I have high hopes for the upcoming lessons. What I'm hoping most to learn is how to use lighting to my advantage instead of always fighting against it!

So expect to see some pics over the next few weeks of random stuff that will be the assignments for my class. Wish me luck!