My photography journey...

September 12, 2013 Sarah 1 Comments

It has been years since I fell in love with a camera for the first time. The first time must have been with my moms kodak from the 70s. I loved the square pictures it took and the little flash that had to be switched after 4 photos. I was so proud that I could take it on my school trips. As a teen the photography bug really caught me. I bought a panasonic lumix dmc-fz 16, it was not yet a real DSLR but it helped me in my first steps to shoot manual. Selfies where my preferred way to learn new tricks. I lived on my own most of the time so I didn't really have an other model at hand.

I really loved to do experimental selfies.

If I got bored with the self-portraits I shot pictures for a stock site.

Or I stalked people in the park. And I fell in love with sepia.

Once in a while I got the chance to take pictures for friends or family. My babysit kids loved to pose. At that time I also started to go crazy editing. I even did a black and white with colour detail... Shame on me! And then my camera got stolen...

It took me a few years to fall in love with photography again. This time with a little panasonic point ant shoot. I was amazed how much this little trooper could do! But gone where the days of shooting manual. I started to work in photoshop again and discovered the magical world of actions. Or in other words people got weird skin tones and futuristic eyes.

And then finally I got my own little kid to torture with the camera. After seeing tons of great newborn shots I was sure I would be able to do the same. I'm ashamed to say some of the pics I took had a really dangerous setup even with daddy standing within arms reach. I learned a lot from a monthly photo project I did with Marlow and his stuffed monkey. But wow what happened to his perfect skin colour?!

Taking posed christmas photos is really stressy and most of the times ended up with me really frustrated and hours of photoshop work to make it look fun.

December last year I bought my first DSLR a Nikon D3100. My brother looked at it and said, great camera but if you want to get the best out of it you should learn to shoot in manual. Great advice, so I started to learn. Exposure triangle, how to find great light and how to create catchlights.

During that time I found out about clickin moms and did a free trial period. I was overwhelmed by all the new information I found on the site. Quickly I signed up for my first workshop with them. And it was the best thing I could have done. Trough this class I met some amazing woman, that have become amazing friends by now. I learned trial and error is not the best way to get a good exposure and how to set a good white balance.

More classes followed and I learned about Nichole Van and her amazing digital workshops. I learned to play with light, use my of camera flash, create great story telling and lifestyle shots and risked taking an advanced fine art class. I quickly outgrow my camera and sold it to buy a Nikon d7000.

It was so much fun to finally be able on vacation to capture what I had in mind. My love for story telling pictures really starts to show. Sadly we got caught in a summer storm and my camera got wet and was beyond repair. Luck was on my side and I could buy a Nikon D600.