Hi Duncan – thanks for the critique!
The shallow depth of field was intentional…I seem to be drawn to it. I am looking forward to grabbing my tripod and playing with the manual settings as you suggested – it might be a couple of days but I’ll post a couple shots as a reply to this thread.
I think the blur and murkiness was likely caused by a bit of camera shake in low light and I was definitely close to the object – I didn’t crop the image much so that’s what I’m thinking. Speaking of cropping, I love your idea of the square aspect ratio and will do that when I play around with it again.
I don’t import into Lightroom – I do have an old version of Photoshop kicking around somewhere but I haven’t experimented too much with it. So, that said, I don’t process my photos. That’s likely something I should play with instead of just shooting a crazy amount of pictures trying to get the colours and lighting just right. Do you have a software suggestion? I am open to learning if you think it’s worth the time investment. I didn’t know what shooting RAW was until you asked, so I googled it and I don’t think I am (though again I’ll look into that for when I play around next). According to my camera, I’ve taken just over 10,000 pictures but it’s mostly of my two little girls and I tend to take WAY too many shots at a time. It’s just now that I really want to focus on improving my skills and knowledge of photography so I can take the beautiful pictures that I’ve always had a passion for.
I really look forward to going through this course too, thanks again for the suggestions!