Baby steps. Mine. In photography.

I always loved to take photos. But, since we have the girls, I'm C.R.A.Z.Y. about photography! My Facebook friends know this so well. Poor guys!...

I want to improve my photos quality and thanks to my cyber friend, Sue, I started to study a great book which teaches me more than the classic point-and-shoot-in-Auto-mode that I was doing until now. The book is: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera. And because of it I'm already mourning my dying camera, an Olympus C770, bought back in 2005. I realize just now what a capable digital camera it is (was?). 


The book is really good. I didn't finish it yet, but, until now, I learned some important things, including:
* the Auto mode is not the only shooting mode my camera is equipped with ;-)
* shooting with the camera set on Manual mode is not such a scary thing as I used to think.
* shooting at dawn or dusk is preferable in order to obtain the warm (yellow) light. The noon provides a cold (blue) light.
* the best portraits (the ones with a blurred background) are obtained by setting the aperture to f/minimum_value.


With these things on my mind, on a beautiful June evening, two weeks ago, I took my family and some friends to "the orchard" (Vulcan). Ilaria is scared by the orchard because of all the insects that roam there, but, thanks God, she still wants to come.


At dusk time, with my camera set on ISO Speed: 100, Exposure Time (shutter): 1/50sec., F-number (aperture): f/2.8, I shot this beauty:

(many thanks to Ramona & Alexandru S. for the flower bouquet! It really adds an important part of beauty and color to this photo)

Then, came home and spent some hours after midnight!, until, with help of Pinterest (source) I found picMonkey, a super user friendly, fast, beautiful and free site-application which helped me to add more color to my photo(s).

This was the 1st. time I ever edited one of my photos. And I obtained my most beautiful photo until now. I ♥ ♥ ♥ the result!

And, since that day, I'm always using picMonkey, because the improvement on photos is great:

I am thrilled on how many people and resources are always involved in order to obtain good results! In this case of mine: Sue, Ramona & Alexandru, Adrian (still willing to leave home in order to chase the sunset light, during the week, after tiresome and busy days spent in the office), Pinterest, picMonkey. Thank you all!
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