“For CRIPES Sake!” #01 – Ready…set…fail!

Hey all!  I was going to kick off this blog with a big bang, say hello to y’all and introduce myself, but there was an itty-bitty problem.  You see…my camera is in time-out.

I’m serious!  It is in trouble…big trouble.  And I mean it this time.  Bad, bad camera!

This day I actually decided to take the time, sit down and really start learning “photography.”  I don’t mean the point-and-click-what-button-do-I-push kind of learning, I mean really learning it and figuring out what all those knobs, dials and buttons actually do.  Beyond the basics.  I planned to go all-out.

Only to find out…my camera was so not on board with my plan.

Oh, sure, don’t worry, I know how to take photos.  I’ve even taken some great ones, which I plan to share with you here on this blog!  But that’s only because I’m blessed with a good eye, and I get very lucky sometimes with the right lighting and the one-click of auto-magic.

When these fantastic photos happen to me, the way I figure it is that all the ISOs, apertures, and shutter speeds (my head hurts just saying all that!) must be in total alignment with the universe at that exact point in time, because the good shots I have taken certainly weren’t because I knew a single useful feature on my fancy-schmancy camera. Trust me, if it’s set on anything other than “A” for ‘automatic,’ I’m on “P” for panic and I’m all-out.  I can be a big quitter sometimes when things get hard!

Thus, now you know what happened today.  It all started like this…

I sat down with my hot cup of coffee, snuggled under my warm blanket to ward off the chilly rain outside, opened my laptop and settled in to slowly read Kevin & Amanda’s awesome post Photography Tutorial: A Quick Guide to Understanding Your DSLR Camera (thanks K&A!).  The post is beautiful!  It’s easy to understand and goes over those exact same scary things I mentioned before.  I highly recommend it if you’re just getting started going beyond the basics of your DSLR.

Now, here’s where things started to go wonky.  You see, Amanda had this great idea and suggested we follow along.  So I turned the dial to the terrifying all-manual ‘M’ and off I went.

Things were going GREAT for a while!  I was so happy to finally learn and fix why my photos in Manual mode were solid black, and I learned how to get the right lighting in low-light conditions (which is a must for me).  And then…well…all you-know-what broke loose.  Somehow, some way (don’t ask), I must’ve hit two buttons simultaneously that put me in an ultra-custom-menu-hidden-top-secret mode I couldn’t get out of, and that was that!  If you were listening, you probably could’ve heard me screaming!

I’m traumatized, and I still haven’t recovered.  And yes, just in case you’re wondering, even after hitting reset, I’ve got wonky settings going on.

So, into time-out the camera went.  And she’s going to stay there, too.

I think she looks like she’s copped an attitude.  Don’t you?

 

Stay tuned for next week’s photo post to see what I’ve learned and if we’re back on speaking terms!  Don’t worry, I promise a great photo next time, even if it is with a new camera.

I hope you join me as I learn.

Cheers!
Kristi