31 Days of Photos

I love photos.  Always have.  I love looking at them, taking them, admiring other's work.  I take a lot of photos and I end up with quite a few good ones.  But it frustrates me (and has for quite a while) that I don't have the skills to take the quality of photo I'd really love to be taking.  So this month I decided to stop saying things like "I need to practice" or "that photo session turned out okay but I could do better if I knew more."  No more procrastination, or waiting for a calmer month or more time or better photo subjects.  I decided I was going to take the 31 days in May and use it to follow along with the 31 Days to Better Photos (which I discovered at least a year ago!) at My3boybarians.  And since I always do better at following through if someone else knows about my goals, I thought I'd share what I've done so far.
Day 1 has a really great motivational message and is all about simply Taking the Photo.  So that's what I did.  I read that blog post then I grabbed the camera and found the closest subject - my 5 year old, who happened to be doing somersaults in the living room :) 

He would stand up tall. Do the roll.  Then lay sprawled on the floor for a second before getting up to try it again.

This one (below) is my favorite as I think it's a fun, unique perspective.

Day 2 told me to get out the camera manual, make sure I know some basic functions/symbols (I did - phew!), then find something I didn't know/hadn't tried before.  I had a bit of a panic when I couldn't find my camera manual in not one but two places it could have been stored, but eventually tracked it down in my scrap/craft cupboard.  As I was paging through it, I was struck by the section on shooting close-ups as I'm usually drawn to most close-ups and detail photographs.  One of the tips was "if you have a zoom lens, using the telephoto end will make the subject look larger."  So out the door I went to try out this theory.

The picture above is with the lens at it furthest setting, the one below is from the same location but zoomed in as close as I could get.

It totally works!  I need a little sharper focus on some of the photos, but I'm pretty happy with the results of my 5 minute experiment.  I think this little project is going to be fun.  I wonder what today's lesson will be...