Improving photography

I'm always trying to improve my photography and I decided to take a free 12 week course called 12 Weeks to Better Photos, on http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/. This is a great scrapbooking website, probably the biggest in the world.

The course is up to Week 8, but I've just started Week 1 which covers aperture (AV on my camera). This is the link to Week 1 http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=2456844. The course is led by one of my favourite scrapbookers, Joanna Bolick, and she's a terrifc photographer as well. Some of her work is on her blog at http://www.tuesdaysfrog.com/journal.html.

We have a nature reserve around 1km from home, and here are two of my favourite photos. I've also added the same photo with a smaller aperture (higher AV number) and larger aperture to show the difference the aperture makes. All the photos are taken with Canon D400 and a fixed 50mm 1.4 lens.

Photos: ISO400; LHS: AV 2.2, 1/1250, RHS: AV 14, TV 1/30

Photos: ISO400; LHS: AV 1.8, TV 1/1600, RHS: AV 9, 1/50