Tag-a-long Photographer Fun: Engagement Style

So, remember how I told you that I was invited to attend a photographer’s retreat? Well, it was like a real life, for real, photographer’s retreat. With real photographer’s. Fancy cameras, lenses, flashes, SD cards, cables out the wazoo, shooting, uploading, importing, exporting, discussing. Phew. It was manic. It was WONDERFUL (despite the unplanned, ill prepared 5 mile run I decided I’d do in the middle of the (hot) afternoon on only 3 hours sleep which induced temporary heat stroke), seriously wonderful. I was so grateful to be able to attend and watch a couple of pro’s at their best. And, I made a leap, friends. I switched to RAW. Holla.

I also decided I’d go ahead and download the free 30 day trials of Lightroom 4 and RadLab. If I can somehow manage to acquire full licensed copies of those two beauties, my life will be complete. Otherwise it will be over in 28 days.

Ashley and Ryan were totally awesome. They are married and their wedding was shot by Molly of Molly Cook Photography. Molly is a total gem and super creative and artistic. If you are in the Greensboro area and are in need of wedding photography or children’s portraiture, check her out! She’s super fun, she is a pro Instagrammer, and she’s got good hair. My kind of girl.

So, since these two live at the beach and we were in need of models, they volunteered to be attacked by 3 crazy ladies with cameras on Saturday morning. I imagine having three cameras up in your stuff was a little intense, but they were great. Ashley totally rocked it, managing to give us each a little eye contact.

I’m probably saying something totally hilarious here like, ” hey guys? how do I focus?” Seriously.

These pictures were all shot in JPEG. I switched to JPEG + RAW for the afternoon session last weekend, and boy what a difference. My shots of a family of three boys on the beach were so much cleaner and better. And, editing those RAW images in Lightroom was much easier than trying to adjust on these JPEGs. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to share them with you, but I hope to show you some similar shots I take next weekend!

These are all still a little off. I’ll blame it on my first attempts at Lightroom and Rad Lab.

So, there you have it. My first attempt at pretending I’m a professional. Though I am not in business and don’t plan to be, I’m so grateful I was able to hang around with these girls last weekend. I learned so much from this morning session above. White balance issues and a bright sky and different skin tones made it tough for me to get a nice clean shot. I am still pretty slow in manual mode and often found the moment had passed by the time I got my settings and focus point right, but I’ll get there.

I have really fallen in love with photography and am so enjoying finding my way through it. Just having the opportunity to ask questions and try new things will no doubt help in my hobby. I’ll be at the beach again next weekend for my cousins wedding and am looking forward to continuing to practice on my family.