Disclaimer

Thank you for visiting my photography blog. It needs to be said that I really have no idea what I am doing for the most part when it comes to using my camera. Up until a few months ago I was completely happy to keep my camera on the auto mode and point and shoot.


Then it happened. I took this picture:

The sun and sky portion of the picture is lovely but there was a problem. This sunset was not orange. At all.

This picture was taken just minutes after the one above and is an accurate representation of what the sky looked like at that time. So I was perplexed. Why did some of my pictures turn out orange and some turn out exactly like I was witnessing them? I figured something just had to be wrong with my baby camera and I headed up to Ritz Camera for some answers.

Silly me. Really. I explained to the camera guy what was happening and he explained to me what the problem might be. He wanted to know what my white balance was set to. Um. White Balance? I knew what white balance was but was clueless as to knowing how to adjust it on my camera. I just smiled and nodded and pretended like I knew exactly what he was telling me about and promptly went home and Googled the heck out of white balance for my camera.

In my studies I found out that my camera was the All Powerful Oz of cameras for amateurs. I kinda knew that to begin with and had been happy in my stupidity for years. Then it hit me: I have a camera that we paid a ton of money for, that has options I had never even thought about using. If I was only going to shoot in auto, I should have saved myself some money and spent $79 at Wally World for a basic point and shoot camera. I owed it to myself to learn how to use my camera properly.

I did more research and learned about white balance and as fate would have it the kids had a concert at the school. For the first time ever, I took pictures that didn't turn out with the famous orange wash-out that signifies your white balance is off. I was ecstatic I could take a decent picture that I didn't have to run through Photoshop to fix.

And here we are today.

In essence I just wanted to state that this blog is more for my use than yours. If you are some Ansel Adams type who has been shooting for years and has converted your living room into a dark room - this isn't the blog for you. This blog is designed for folks like me, the clueless ones who want to learn a little bit more. My descriptions of photography terms are put into a format that I can understand and hopefully I will have taken the technical jargon out and made photography something everyone can understand.

Thanks for taking this journey with me - now get clicking!

~ame