Travel Tuesday: Cultivating New Skills

Ever since Charming bought me my wonderful camera I have been avoiding the manual setting. This is apparently a bad thing. In an effort to improve my knowledge of its inner workings Charming and I are taking a photography class. This is no ordinary photography class as it is being taught by none other than Charming's father who gleefully gave his children homework for the week. This week we were told, among other things, to take pictures in black and white that haven't been photoshopped that way afterwards. 

Now it is fairly common knowledge that I dislike to take photos without people in it. For some reason it feels like I have taken a useless photo when I do. Unfortunately for me, when I finally found the time to pull out the camera there was no one around to model. This hiccough was not enough to hinder my determination to take portraits so I decided to take some selfies!

Behold my studio!

First I needed a tripod to hold the camera at a decent height. Since we don't have one I improvised a tasty tower of boxes from my pantry. 

My too often neglected Swiffer became my focusing double. It did not mind at all to be unceremoniously tossed out of the way as I ran around to take its place.

And finally to add a little extra interest, I borrowed Charming's box fan.

I ran back and forth many times with many failed pictures, some with distracting hands and others out of focus. 

Practice improved my off-centered poses.

 And eventually I came up with a shot worthy of a facebook profile.

I can't wait to see what's next in this adventure!