Photography 101

Tonight I took my very first photography class.  The class lasted almost 3 hours so I am still trying to process everything that I learned.  Looking around the classroom of about 20 students, I observed that almost everyone there owned a Nikon camera.  It was quite humorous how some of the students with the biggest lenses knew the least about how to use their camera.  Here are a few of my pictures from tonight.  We'll start out with our main teacher, Brian.  This isn't a great shot of Brian - I'm not sure what I was practicing here - but nevertheless, here he is.  I enjoyed his teaching.  He kept everything very simple (which is what I needed) but also made it very interesting.   

Don't adjust your tv screen....I took this picture with a very low ISO.  

See, I'm just proving to you that I learned my vocabulary.  In this picture I blurred the background:

I know.  It isn't very exciting looking at pictures taken in a dark classroom.  Here's a picture I took with a fast shutter speed.  See how I was able to stop the tennis ball...

Now see how I am able to show movement...

I know...it needs some work.  I really enjoyed taking this basic class and I look forward to the next one.  I think I'm going to wait until Fall to sign up for Intermediate though because I learned so much and have much to practice.  This school offers a lot of different classes and also offers many "field trips" with the teachers to include waterfall expeditions and trips to Oregon.  I look forward to practicing my new hobby.  I will end this post with a picture of a strawberry cake that Scott made this weekend.  It sort of fell, but it sure was AWESOME!  Hungry?