Photography and me

As a photographer, we sometimes shoot how we feel we are most comfortable. Use safe settings. Do the same things over and over. And by we I mean I. I am still trying to find who I am as a photographer. I love all types of photography: landscape, night shots, portraits. I've experimented with self portraits too. I've been also been doing wedding photography as you see in my blog. I just love photography, period.

Everywhere I go, I am always looking for new places to shoot. Or if I am not prepared with a camera, I go the whole day regretting not bringing it with me because of all the opportunities I missed of photographing everything. That is what happened to me a couple of weeks back when we went to the zoo. We were looking at all the cute animals and I was thinking to myself "stupid, stupid, stupid." Luckily my husband was kind enough to run to the car and get me my camera and zoom lens and save my day.

Living in So Cal, there are so many things to do! We live so close to everything, which is sooo nice. This weekend we took a little hike in the OC with our close friends, and as always I took my camera. I can't seem to go without it anymore. We were looking for an abandoned 1950's car in what seemed the middle of nowhere by some canyons, and unfortunately we didn't find it. The area has overgrown brush and in a steep hill. Too bad, it would have done for some awesome pics.

Last week I was watching Jasmine Stars Workshop online. She gave me a lot to think about, and will slowly incorporate all her great advice. One of the things that resonated to me was when she said to not be afraid to shoot wide open, so I tried it. Since I was with my friends, and they have the cutest daughters, I started photographing them. Since I was just casually taking photos I didn't pay attention to my RAW settings, and unfortunately or fortunately I shot everything in Jpeg mode. I like to be in control of my RAW setting and this time I had to do with just JPEG. Going back to what I said in the beginning, shooting RAW is my comfort zone. If I mess up I can always go back and fix it and that is not always good. If I just play it safe, I will never advance. So this was a wake up call. Luckily I strived to expose properly and I did. Here are just some pics of sunday. We were just having fun.

Hailey had sad puppy eyes here since she was starting to feel sick.