Hey PhillyPhoto!
Welcome to the student forum.
Your first photo certainly meets the criteria of this firs assignment. You’ve taken something mundane and more it appear more interesting by simply changing your perspective and adding some color.
You’ve tried to shoot in manual mode and set your white balance manually all of this is great! You just need more practice.
In this case the depth of field is very shallow and only a very tiny part of the image is even in focus as a result. But that’s just settings that you will work on and improve over time. For example in this case you shot this is what looks like a relatively high ISO 800 in a somewhat low light situation. Given the nature of the image you could have shot this at ISO 100, had less noise, and a nicer looking image. That is if you can hold your camera steady enough to avoid camera shake.
[attachment=1:17yuuzhh]_MG_2320_critiqued.jpg[/attachment:17yuuzhh]
The soft background does look nice although it does feel as though your avocado could be a little more over to the right for a better composition.
There are a few things you can learn here right away. One thing is that take note of how things that appear to be in focus when you look at a really small image are actually out of focus like this:
[attachment=0:17yuuzhh]_MG_2320_small.jpg[/attachment:17yuuzhh]
This is really only important because if you need to make prints your photos may not quite turn out the way they appear on the small screen on your camera. If you want to know why this happens read this. But just know that you need to check your focus because your eyes may deceive you.
Another thing you can take from this is to notice how important color is in your photographs.
All of this stuff will be covered in more detail as you progress through the course but I think you’ve done a nice job here for your first lesson.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions right here or make comments.
Also a fun thing you can do is post a photo for this month’s photo contest.
See you on the next assignment!