The scarey "M" word!

Well today I took my first steps into the world of manual photography and thoroughly enjoyed myself twiddling all the buttons and watching the changes in histograms. I began to figure out what was going to work and what wasn't, I found it helpful to work in reverse for some reason?? ie I would aim to change the settings so that the picture would be completely overexposed / underexposed. The area I think Im going to have to look at further is the length of the shutter speed, Im really rubbish at maths and keep getting confused to whats a  long exposure and whats a really short exposure. 

Anyway, here are the pictures I took today, I have posted the good , the bad and the ugly ones to help re-inforce things for me.

This picture is my favourite of the day, nature is such a wonderful thing!

How amazing are the colours in these flowers!I think I'd like to have my entire house painted in that shade! LOL 

Another picture that had me lying at very strange angles to try to capture it, Im not sure what plant this is but the flowers are really tiny, so I was quite pleased with the end result

How cute is this Robin! at first I thought it was a fake one as it didn't move an inch when I zoomed in with my camera. Don't know what's happening to my text, its gone blue and is underlined???

A simple blossom flower, but oh so pretty

I like the light shining off the droplet in this picture, good job too because I nearly poked my eye out getting this picture. LOL

At last I found some time!

Well I've been going round and round in circles trying to think of a theme and got nowhere fast! My friend phoned this morning and invited me over for lunch so , wham! decision made... the Gardens! It was a pretty foggy day so I thought I wouldn't get many "keepers" however I was pretty chuffed to come up with these. The blurred background was a style I couldn't get the hang of in PWL course, so I am well chuffed with these shots! I think the histogram is starting to sink in and I will definately play around with it some more. It is interesting though that all of my favourites turned out to be at 200 ISO, co-incidence or not? mmmmm Im not sure??

This adorable little chappie is my nephew Matthew, no doubt about it you will be seeing a LOT more of him!! Although there is a problem with shadows in this picture it is one of my favourites as I love the fact that you can see his tiny little hands from different angles and the beginnings of a little smile. 

Another picture using skills learnt from the PWL course on changing the focus point of pictures, I haven't quite mastered the completely blurred background but I am definately heading in the right direction

This picture was taken at my local beach, I love it! It looks like something from a science fiction film. I would never have taken shots like this before taking the PWL course but now I take them all the time, much to my husbands annoyance as walks now take forever as Im always stopping to click, click , click!

Oh my!! has techno phobic of the year managed to set up a blog??? Time will tell...

This blog is primarily for the photography course PWL via  UKS but who knows, I may just find out that I am a natural blogger and continue on with it after the course ends...