Practice, Practice & more Practice.

Its amazing what a little practice can do for someone. It wasn't long ago that I was just shooting on auto with my DSLR, heck, I was using a point and shoot most of the time because I didn't want to take the time to learn about my DSLR.

One new baby, a few classes, a couple of books and LOTS and LOTS of practicing and I am out of auto and shooting in manual mode-even turned what quickly became my favorite pastime (outside of being with my boys--all three of them) into my very own little business. One thing that has been constant from the beginning though is practice. Practice, practice, practice. A big bonus to shooting with a DSLR is the fact that you aren't wasting any film, I mean what do you have to lose? You get your camera out, you snap a few hundred pictures, all while changing settings and figuring out what works with what light.

So where am I going with this? I'll tell you, or show you for that matter---

We added a few more strands of lights to our tree late this afternoon and I thought, hey lets take some fun pictures. I pulled up a quick tutorial on bokeh and how to achieve different shapes. 5 minutes later I was snapping away. They are by far not the greatest pictures that I have taken. Heck I normally wouldn't even let anyone see these but I figured that it would be neat to practice throughout the weekend and see the improvement that comes along with all that practice.

And although the pictures could be much brighter, the effect is still pretty sweet. Can you see the hearts we created? And a bonus question for some of my OLD colleagues, anyone guess where this green house came from?