Depth of field

I may have said this before - taking pictures is helping me learn about photography basics more than sitting down with a book! Here's why... I found my crayons while unpacking this morning & decided to indulge in some artsy coloring. It doesn't take much now-a-days for me to decide to take pictures. These pictures were taken on auto mode - I use a canon A530 powershot to take pictures and didn't see the manual aperture adjustment (am I missing something?) on it.

So here's some color in my life! If you will, pay attention to the subject in focus and how many parts of the picture are out of focus due to the low depth of field...
And here's the art... a top view.
Then I decided to try another angle - a very low one. Here the camera has decided to put everything but the middle portion of the picture out of focus. If you look at the next picture, the bottom part is out of focus while the rest of it is in focus.A low depth of field throws most of the stuff, other than what it thinks is your main subject, out of focus - a great way to do portrait/ people photography. But if one wants everything in the picture in focus, a high depth of field would be necessary.

This one would have turned out to be a fine photo if not for the bottom out of focus part. Oh well...

Digital photography for dummies!

Finally I bought a photography book - the obvious choice was Digital Photography for Dummies. I figured it was high time I actually learned a few things about photography than just being a clicking maniac! I did take a quick class about photography basics a few months ago, but I need something more - like a quick guide with comparative examples - what happens when you take a picture at 1 fstop vs. another.
Another beauty I found was this book - Digital Macro Photography by Ross Hoddinott: This dude is apparently a leading nature photographer who is into macro and has won a lot of different competitions. I liked the book because it gives a lot of examples with particulars about how the picture was taken. The language is easy and the book has great tips to improve shots considerably. Now on to actually reading the book...

The beauty of macro photography

Even after deciding to write every week I'm coming back to this blog after 3 weeks. I took this picture moments ago with my digital camera. I was on auto & macro settings. I tried a few times with manual setting by changing the fstop (aperture) and shutter speeds (exposure), but somehow I still don't have the hang of those! The picture keeps coming grainy - I guess that's my clue to fiddle a little more with shutter speed. I should keep trying - as my digital photography teacher keeps saying - but I haven't done that yet. Maybe this'll give me a good practice.So, coming back to my love of macro photography - even without the auto-macro setting or manual changes, I've tried to take these kind of pictures. I think I like macro photography because it shows the inner workings - its as close as you can get to your subject! With a bigger, better & meaner camera I guess this picture can be taken even without the macro setting. But I'll only know more about this if I keep clicking :) So here's to the hope of doing/learning/achieving something other than what I will call "work" in my life!