When I got serious about crossing the line from photography being a hobby to being want I wanted to do I started to learn. In depth. To be truthful, the whole thing used to go over my head. The triangle of Aperture , shutter speed and ISO,it took some getting used to. But, I was determined to be able to use my camera on manual, to take full control and learn this craft even if it was one day, one image at a time. And it took a while. I would shoot images that I was certain were going to be good and they came out black – or completely exposed. So I practiced on everybody and everything that would let me. My nephew and niece,family, friends, marmalade my cat. Wine glasses – loving the way I could change the depth of field.It was practice all the way.

I can now say that I shoot exclusively in manual. For me this is the only way, knowing that I can control my camera completely, to create the colour and tones of images that I like. I’ve learnt how to position my subjects in better light and use my camera as a tool to compliment that light.

For me, the way this helps the most is in post production, instead of having to edit an image that could be way off  how I like them,due to how the camera saw things, I only have to tweak a few things, maybe a tad more exposure here or a little bit less saturation there. Every image is tweaked slightly but nothing over worked. For me, that’s how I like my pictures to be. I’ve put some examples below to show some straight out of camera shots and then the edited version. How does anyone else edit – have any tips or tricks you would like to share?

And this is more for me than anyone else. I like tracking my progress, it helps me set goals…

On the left is the original and the right is the edited product.