Class Catch-up and A Big Duh

As I've mentioned, I'm taking a couple of classes at BPS. I'm loving them! I'm taking Photography 101 with Barbara Carroll and also Have More Fun with Stacy Julian. They also just released a FREE class, 10 Summer Photos To Take Right Now, that's instantly downloadable. Sah-weet! Check it out, it's fun. Since I was sick and then our internet was down, I have a lot to catch up on!


And I thought I'd share one of my "Oh, duh!" moments. I've always been a cheapskate when it comes to printing; I don't really know why this is. I'll download something and just look at it on the computer and then it will stay there forever on my hard drive instead of as a hard copy (which is not necessarily a bad thing--I'm all for saving trees!). But with the photography class I found my eyes glazing over after each page... it's a lot of new info to wrap my little brain around; aperture and shutter speed and ISO, oh my!

So I decided to print out the lesson and then refer back to it over the course of a couple of days. HOLY MOLY! I liked having those hard copies in my hands so much, and I looked at them so frequently, that I decided to print out the handouts for Have More Fun, too. HOLY COW! Wow, I'm actually doing the assignments because I can take the handout with me to my workspace instead of running back and forth to the computer and getting distracted 18 times along the way! Imagine that!

So, yeah--DUH. {Insert slap on forehead here.} Today I printed out 52 pages of handouts and e-mails. That is more than I printed in the entire year of 2007, I would bet. And I can't wait to go through them all!

Notice in the above photo how the title on the "Photography 101" page is more in focus but the edges of the pages in front and the title in the upper right are less in focus? That's because I set my aperture to as high as it'll go on this lens (which means the smallest number) so that I had a shallow depth of field. Holy crap I'm learning something! I was beginning to wonder if aperture would ever sink into my brain!

Lots to do today. See you domani for Favorite {Photo} Friday! And let me know if you're playing along with Stella and Kerry and me!