Luca

This morning I had the chance to photograph a pup named Luca! She is just as hyper as could be& could barely contain her excitement. It was bitterly cold this AM& so we snapped a few quick photos then decided to let it be at that. My hands were frozen plus I had actually managed to get a few great shots of her alone& with her owner! It was snowing by the end so the photos of her+ her owner turned out very wintery& awesome. Sometimes I am start to feel like I might be catching on to this whole photography thing ...and then I check out some other photography blogs& am promptly brought back to reality! That being said, I do love the photos from the shoot today so I figured I'd share one of my favorites with you guys.

Linked to I Heart Faces!

How sweet& calm does little Luca look in this? The answer is very ..and that is hilarious because the outtakes from this include all kinds of photos out of focus because she jumped up at me to say hello right as I was snapping the photo. Which proves that photos do lie ;) Thankfully, I managed to get this shot. I just love the colors in it& the look on her face is so sweet! She just adores her owner who was standing exactly where Luca is looking. I will probably share one of the photos with the owner later in the week! Just this one for now.

I think if you look back to some of my earlier photo attempts, this is a giant improvement! I shoot fully manual now ..something I thought I'd never do because I didn't think I'd ever learn. Turns out the learning curve was not too awful at all. So my advice to anyone out there with an SLR still shooting automatic? Just switch to manual& learn white balance, ISO, aperture& f-stop! After you know what all that means ..you simply have to make a promise to yourself to shoot in manual regardless of how awful your photos will be at first (trust me on this. You'll need a bunch of photos of the same thing to get one properly exposed/ sharp)! It gets so much easier& now I never shoot on fully automatic. The switch to shooting manual has really helped my photos. Especially when you consider most photos are taken with the kit lens on my Rebel XS. This photo, however, was taken with my portrait lens. I adore it. Cannot wait to move up to a better camera body& get myself some better lenses.

Side note- some men who swim laps at the pool heard about my photography& suggested that if I ever needed models they were available. I asked them would they were Santa hats to which they replied sure. Who wants to buy a 2012 calendar filled with the handsome swimming patrons of the NSCP?! I hope everyone is having a delightful Monday ..or at least as delightful as a Monday can be!