Playing Around

Sorry I haven't posted much lately.  It's not because I haven't been at the computer.  I have.  I spend WAY too much time here.  Seriously.  It's an addiction...it needs to stop.  But I am OBSESSED with learning and practicing photography and photo editing.  I'm  having so much fun.  My laundry and house cleaning are being neglected, however.  And that's not a good thing.  Anyway...I'm rambling now.  I would like to say that I am now officially taking pictures on FULL MANUAL MODE people.  That probably doesn't mean much to many of you, but I'm super proud of myself for FINALLY learning it.  I started taking pictures with my new camera in February and I was always on auto mode.  The pictures were still pretty good, but I know that any great photographer will tell you to get the heck off of auto!  Pictures are so much better, crisper, sharper, everything on manual mode.  So, I took a baby step and changed the dial to A for Aperature priority.  Which basically means, I tell the camera what f-stop to be at and the camera does the rest.  That helped but I knew I didn't want to always depend on the camera to choose my ISO and white balance.  So, I took the plunge a week or two ago and just went for it.  Went for full manual mode.  Which means I tell the camera what white balance setting to be at, what ISO to be at, what shutter speed to be at, and what aperature (f-stop) to be at.  I'm in full control!  I know I'm not perfect at it yet, I'll be the first to admit.  But practice makes perfect, right?  So, practice I will!
I'm also having a grand ole time playing around with Photoshop.  Have I mentioned yet how lucky I am that Randi got this bad boy for me?  I'm seriously having so. much. fun. with it.  I am in luuuuuuuurve!  Here are some fun shots I took today of the B-man.

I know my ISO was set a notch too high, but I liked this shot anyway.
I applied a "Velvet Cream" PS action I downloaded.

With "Velvet Truffle" PS Action

With "Old West" PS Action at a really low opacity %.

And a couple other randoms from the last week or two. 

These are SOOC, by the way, didn't have time to really do much editing with them yet...

Ceiling fans are awesome!

Loved this shot even though his arm is all crazy blurred.
In order to not use a flash (wich I refuse to use), I have to slow
my shutter speed down a lot when I'm indoors at night.  That results
in too blurry of photos, like this one.  Unless on the rare chance, B is
sitting VERY still....and that just doesn't happen anymore!
Can't wait for my new lens to come in so I can take better low-light photos.
It has a really low f-stop of 1.4, woo hoo!

Hopefully this post made sense to someone....but even if it didn't, that's ok.  I'm kind of trying to document things as I learn them in case I ever need or want to go back and see what I did.  ;)

Also, I found this list on pinterest one night and I think I might give it a go.  Not sure when yet, but soon, I hope!