Wasn't it lovely

Knit Nation 2011 was lovely!  I thoroughly enjoyed the market place and bought way too much yarn (definitely not a surprise, I knew I would and everyone who knows me knew I would as well.)

And Franklin Habit's class 'Photographing Your Fibre' was brilliant!

I tend to cycle through my hobbies.  Knitting has been the thing for the last two and half year when it was other things before.  Photography is one of them.

So I've been wanting to get better at taking photos for quite a while.  The Knit Nation class sounded great: combining two of my interests in a class given by someone who's blog I read and like a lot.  Brilliant combination!

It was fantastic.  I finally know what a f-stop is and what it does!  Hurrah!  It's about depth of field!
So if you've got your lovely model wearing a fantastic jumper you knit and want to showcase then an interesting backdrop is not a bad idea.  If however said background is so very busy that it crowds out the model let alone the great jumper, then that ain't such a great thing...

So if you set your f-stop setting to a measure that will reduce the dept of field so that the background is no longer in sharp focus but gets blurred out a little, then that's much better!

I learnt so much - about the types and sources of light.  I found out that trying to take photographs on a sunny, cloudless day is not the best way to go about it, and that a bit of cloud cover is much better because it diffuses that direct sunlight a bit.  Or you can have your model in a deep porch with the sun to one side.

Another very good thing to remember: keep the sun over your shoulder (if you're the photographer, ahem) to make sure that the sunlight lights up your model's face instead of framing a perfect silhouette if the sun is behind your model.

I really liked the fact that Franklin made the technical information about the settings on a photo camera so accessible and letting me connect them in my head with what I am trying to achieve.  The whole photography subject just doesn't seem quite so complicated any more!

Isn't that fab?

Now the only 'problem' is that I need a new camera... Not just want but need. My old one has been getting increasingly dodgy and I now know that it only boasts some preset settings (macro, portrait, mid distance and landscape, I think) and doesn't allow any further choice. Not something I can practice my newly won skills with!

I saw someone else's camera that allows you to display the settings you used to take a picture.  Now that sounds like an eminently sensible function to have!  I didn't know of this, I was already considering whether I needed to write up little cards with setting notes to include in the photo - while I'm practising. This is much better!

Yes, I do believe that I -need- a new camera...

Photos of the yarns I got are to follow.