Today Kate & I met up with a playgroup... our "Lens Baby" group! This is a Meetup group for moms who enjoy photography. It's perfect for me! Some members are professional photographers, so it's a great learning experience. Some meetups are in peoples' homes as casual play dates, while others (like an upcoming Deep Ellum walkabout) are excursions for great photo scenery. I'm especially excited about "Bokeh in the Garden" coming up. We'll go to the Dallas Arboretum, and one of the professional moms is going to teach us about how to do "bokeh" in our photographs. (It's the technique where you get neat out-of-focus light blobbies in the background. That's the technical definition, I'm sure you can tell.) How cool is that?

I finally pulled out my camera's manual, and I've been reading lots online also. I'm a bit rusty on my camera lingo ("f stop," "aperture," "shutter speed," etc.) since it was high school when I took my only photo class, so I've been brushing up. It's been nearly two years since I've had my digital SLR camera, and it's about time the dial was turned from auto to manual.

Today we met at a park here in McKinney for a "Bubbles and Pinwheels" meetup. The wind wasn't real cooperative with the bubbles part, but the pinwheels were super cute. In these 2 photos I chose to focus on the pinwheel, leaving Kate blurry in the background. I think they turned out neat.

Shooting on manual is trial and error. More error than success right now. Many of my shots came out over-exposed. Too bad, too, because that was when Kate was being her sunniest self.

Big woops...

Can you tell I'm really excited about this? Too bad it's such an expensive hobby... now I need a new camera bag, a new lens, PhotoShop... good thing I have a birthday coming up!