Photo Class with Katie Beach!!!

...This afternoon, we had a beautiful day for a photo class at Forest Park! Jenni and I met the extremely talented Katie Beach of Katie Beach Photography. It was a great class because it was a small "class" and hands on. I've taken another class at a local photo place and the room was packed full and you were lucky if you could ask a question, much less have the instructor look at your camera and show you have to adjust your settings. So a big thank you to Katie for your time and expertise! We focused on aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and sunlight.

Jenni and I picked her brain about what settings to use when photographing wiggly toddlers. We really wanted to know how to get the person in focus with the blurry back ground like this:

A big thank you to Katie's daughter, Emma, who was our model for the day. Katie taught us that we we needed to adjust our aperture. The lower the number, the blurry it is in the background. Check out the spine of the book in the next two pictures. The settings on this photo were f/5.6 and 1/1000.

The settings on this one are f/32 and 1/40.

Now on to shooting in the sun. We learned to always have the sun behind your subject and adjust the shutter speed. The shutter speed on this one was  1/1000.

Shutter speed on this was 1/2000.

Shutter speed here 1/2500. Amazing what a small difference in shutter speed will do.

Settings on this one are f/5.6 and 1/2500. I really like the blurred background and the lighting on her hair.

Of course, we worked on action shots too!

More action! I learned how to take action shots without getting blurry hands and legs. Now I'm anxious to try some of this out on AR.

We made Katie get in the pic with her daughter so we could practice and she could get some pictures of the two of them.

I was thrilled with everything I learned. I walked away knowing, and most importantly, understanding much more than I did before I got there.

I told my SIL that I want to re-do their Save the Date cards since now I know what to do. I also understand what shooting in manual means and it's not nearly as intimidating as I imagined. Thanks again, Katie, you rock!!! Oh, and Emma, you earned your McDonald's!