Chris Moore on Fstoppers

I'm Chris Moore, currently in Riverside, Ca. I have always been interested in photography. My first camera was a Kodak 110. I always had a ton of undeveloped film because I had no money to get them developed (I was 12).

Then came digital cameras. It took me a while to convince my then husband to get one. He was Army & I wanted to document our travels.

A couple years ago I purchased a Canon camera and lenses someone was selling. I took a lot of pictures of my daughter at her FFA (Future Farmers of America) events, playing with the different settings. I like continous when the kids were in the ring, moving. While visiting my Mom & taking night pictures of the lighthouse on Lake Erie, I realized I REALLY need to take a class to learn how to use the manual settings. I couldn't get a clear picture. I took a class. I was EXTREMELY disappointed. Basically, it was, "Here's BDE, now let's open Photoshop". I thought we would venture out & practice using manual, as a class. Get direction. It was a 2.5 hr class, 2X a week, and we spent 99% of it creating fake pics or manipulating real ones. When we did show our own, he said mine were perfect (histogram, etc). He said auto setting is automatically wrong. It's funny, all my "perfect" shots were on auto. He was a 30+ yr pro.

I want to get off auto. I shouldn't let this color my judgement, but it makes me leary to take another class.

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