So, my online class starts tomorrow and I’m SO excited!!!  And nervous…and intimidated…and wondering what the heck I’ve gotten myself into!  I FINALLY received Bryan Peterson’s two books, Understanding Digital Photography, and Understanding Exposure yesterday.  I thought I’d get a little background into me before the course starts.  Thank goodness I did!  I read through the entire Digital Photography book yesterday afternoon, not being able to put it down.  Some of the concepts led me to take out my camera’s owner’s manual and discover secrets that have been hidden from me.  Big Girl kept giggling at me because I kept exclaiming out loud, “Oh, WOW!!!” and “NO WAY!!!  COOL!”  as I discovered the many treasures.  Mind you, I have owned my Nikon D40 for a year and a half, but in my defense, way back when I read through the owner’s manual I was extremely clueless.  I had never heard of apertures, exposures, shutter speeds, and whatnot, so kind of *ahem* skipped over those parts.    *ducking head*  Then when I started playing with the P setting, I just kind of fiddled and had a hit and miss sort of experience.  It wasn’t until very recently that I started to understand more about the whole aperture/shutter speed relationship and realize that I need some real training to take full advantage of my equipment…thus the class.

SOOOO…..I realize now exactly how ignorant I am, which is making me more nervous about taking this class!  BUT I am more excited than ever because I suspect that I am about to have all the dots connect. 

I spent time flipping through my Flickr stream this morning with my freshly learn-ed eyes, and I couldn’t help but think of some lost opportunities.  Chalk it up to the learning curve…I suppose it’s encouraging that I’m seeing those missed opportunities already.  Gives me hope that if a book can do that, a class taught by the guy who wrote the book can do more. 

Now for that Rule of Thirds.  Ever since Shrew posted the next Challenge, I have seen this topic crop up everywhere I look…funny how that happens, isn’t it?  So, while looking through my photostream this morning, I tried to find some photos that demonstrated the “rule.”  I was disheartened to find few.  But there were a couple that I thought stood out, so I thought I’d share them with you.

I must admit that all but one of these photos was cropped…(the sun through the mist is not.)  I have to work much harder on “getting it right in the camera” as Mr. Peterson (and I believe some guy we know named Scott Thomas?  😉  ) says. 

So, Happy Shooting everyone!!  I will try to keep my whining frustrations to a minimum throught this process!