Old photos...

This weekend I took down my most favourite photo of Thomas. This one:

... and replaced it with this one:

It made me start thinking about where I was then and where I am now. This photo was taken by my wonderful PhD student Ice just before I went back to work after maternity leave. He sent me a message one day asking if he could come and take some photos of Thomas as he had a new camera lens. Sure! When he sent me the photos I was so excited!

"Ice - can you take photos like this because you're a good photographer, or because you've got a good camera?"

"It's just the camera" he replied.


Now, three years later, I know he was kind of half telling the truth. Yes the lens matters but there is more to it than that!



These photos are the ones which made me go out and spend a small fortune on a dSLR. I figured in the long run, if I could take photos as good as these, then I would never have to get professional photos done!

My beautiful new (refurbished) camera arrived. And I took some photos. Fully automatic. Maybe just a bit clearer than a point and shoot.

"Oh no", I thought... "have I wasted my money?!" [don't tell my husband!]

I messed around with the camera a bit for the next year, taking 'OK' photos some of the time and pretty rubbish ones the rest of the time.  The one day I read a blog post on beginner basics [it doesn't exist any more or I would link it] and decided to try and go manual.

It didn't work so well to start with. I even wrote a blog post about it!

Then I started to get a bit better...

Practice practice practice...

And then of course, along comes the perfect subject to practice on:

And now I get it. I can know what settings I need before I take a photo. I can almost always focus on a moving object (as long as it isn't too fast). I don't over-edit and I try desperately to capture Thomas without him saying 'cheese'.

I'm moving forward and upward with my photography, both with the images I capture, and the photography business I've set up...

All because of that one set of photos taken three years ago!

Thanks Ice!