Experimenting Without A Notebook – Kathy From KeppenArt

If you have been following my blog posts about the 52 Week Personal Art Challenge you may remember the notebook suggestion.  The suggestion was to carry a notebook and write down what camera settings you are using when learning how to use the camera off the Auto program.

In the past I would often take a quick shot of the ground when changing from one setting to the next.  Since I wanted to try more than two settings and my camera was on a tripod I decided to put my hand in front of the lens and take a shot of that.  Keeping my changes in order from Macro (close-up) to the Program mode to the Aperture mode and back to the beginning Macro mode I thought that I would be able to know what setting I had used when looking at the thumbnails on my computer.  It was a matter of always using the same order of settings.

However, I also experimented with the focus and totally forgot when and how I had changed those settings!

Did I get any photographs that I could process and upload?  Yes. 

Did I get many more photographs that were pure crap to be deleted immediately?  Yes.

Did I learn anything from this week’s experimenting?  Yes.

Lesson learned: take a notebook and write down when you change settings of any kind if you want to learn what settings work under certain circumstances (like lighting or wind, etc.).

Because, believe me,  there is no way to remember what settings you’ve used on all 100+ photos that are taken each day with seven days in a week!

Until next week enjoy another Hibiscus image featured in today’s post. 

Be sure to comment below with any thoughts or suggestions.

Click here to view a larger version and read the description to learn about the individual parts of the blossom.