recent photography

i have been learning photography the past few months. not so much just taking photographs but really trying to understand the camera. i have a great mentor. erin spent months & months learning how to use our 300D. after many shoots and a handful of classes she really knows what she's talking about. she got a 30D last fall and so now i get the 300D. transitioning from point and shoot-automatic cameras to manual SLR's is a big step. here's some stuff i've been learning. most interesting pictures have a low depth of field meaning there is a limited amount of objects or parts of an object that are sharp. the rest is then blurry. i always thought those kind of pictures were done by using a manual focus and focusing in on the thing you wanted to stand out. that does give some effect but to really pull out that contrast you have to have a large aperture. here's some shots from around the house today practising with low light, low depth of field.

this one's my favorite from today.

and here's some low depth of field shot's with the focus in different places.
attie's always a good sport.

i've got to get good fast. we are doing several important shoots here in the next few months and i've got a long way to go. i've already made erin get off work for 2 days to do shoots that i've scheduled... soon she will run out of vacation days and i'll be on my own.