Big thanks & a Photography class review.

I just wanted to take a sec and thank those who commented on my last post- it felt good to get what I wrote off my chest. It's nice to know that there are others who struggle with the exact same thing and to have some reassurance that it's OK not knowing what the heck lies ahead.

1st class review:

5 minutes into class, I had decided that this was going to be money well spent. One of the first thing our instructor said at the beginning of class was that "auto focus is for weenies." Sweet! I knew that I'd probably be taking a lot from this class; the instructor has been shooting weddings and landscapes for 20 years.

I'd describe myself as someone with decent knowledge about photography; I know a lot of terminology from classes in college and reading my camera manual, but as I said before, I want to know the ins and outs of my camera and really learn how to use it. I sat next to a girl who had never taken her camera off the auto setting and had no clue what apertures and shutter speeds were. There is also a photojournalist in class, but felt she could really benefit from taking a class. I think I was in the middle of the road as far as skill level.

I know that a lot of you guys use DSLR cameras so I hope that maybe I can share a few tips along the way. I'm also going to *try* my absolute hardest not to post pictures that have been edited in photoshop. =)

The first night we just went over our cameras and their functions; we talked about all the terms and briefly went over shooting manually. Here's a few pictures I took in manual mode, un-doctered by photoshop:

As you can see, most of these are slightly overexposed or underexposed. That's where my good friend photoshop would come in handy. Regardless, it still feels good knowing that I understand how to shoot, and why images turn out the way they do. I can't wait for next week!