Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How do you become a "pro" with your DSLR camera?
I know, I know...I need to post vaca pics! 
It's been so hectic this week getting back into the swing of things that I haven't had time to put these all together. I will do that this weekend and share all the fun we had 
Promise...
In the meantime, I have a general question. For you ladies who have DSLR cameras, how did you get familiar with it to be able to take such great quality pictures? I feel the manual I have is way long and don't want to read through it all...call me lazy I know. Looking at some of the pictures from last week, I feel that they don't compare to the pics I have seen you ladies take over the past couple of years. Since we got ours so close to vacation, I didn't have to time to really familiar myself with it so we pretty much shot everything on "auto" the whole time.
My question is, how do you know how to take fab pics, what was the easiest way you learned how to use your camera and how long did it take for you guys to get to that point?
| Olowalu, Maui ~ August 6, 2008 |
| Family of 4 ~ April 2, 2011 |
| Family of 5 - October 24, 2012 |
Re: How do you become a "pro" with your DSLR camera?
The best thing about digital is that making mistakes doesn't cost anything.
I prefer aperture-priority mode and very very rarely shoot all auto. I had 'some' experience shooting with an slr from one class I took in college and some part time work with a photographer but really didn't learn or explore everything it could do until I got my dslr and was able to play with the settings and just snap away.
You should check out the Photography board on The Bump. One of the girls there has been posting regular 'lessons' about some of the basics of good photography that focuses more on improving your composition rather than relying on editing and post-processing to become a better photographer.
I think that also looking at other photographers' pictures can help some people develop an eye for composition. I love checking out blogs and also looking at the different groups on Flickr!
And of course, you should start making your wish list for different lenses now.
There's a whole other world of possibilities once you start to build your collection! You'll find that some lenses work better for landscape photos or others for portraits. If you like macro, there's some great lenses for that as well.
Definitely read your manual. It helped me a lot just to learn how to play around with different settings. I'm like Lisa - I shoot in aperture priority most of the time and I mostly shoot wide open (largest aperture). Mostly because that's what gets you the most bokeh (background blur), which I LOVE. And practice is definitely the best way to learn. I could definitely use more practice and am planning to start recruiting friends to be subjects for me.
One of the best things I learned was how to change the focus point. If you're shooting a portrait, make sure to focus on the eyes. If one eye is closer to you than the other, focus on the closer eye.
| Olowalu, Maui ~ August 6, 2008 |
| Family of 4 ~ April 2, 2011 |
| Family of 5 - October 24, 2012 |