So I've learned a few things in my 3 short photography classes, primarily just enough to be confused and realize that to achieve the best effects of what I've learned in the easiest, most user friendly way possible, I would need a lot of money's worth of equipment.  This is not an option but using what my camera already has is.  I'm going with that.  Things seem so simple when the teacher explains it but when I'm trying to practice with the camera I'm all thumbs and can't remember what buttons lead to what options that will give me what feature.  Oh, the moment passed.  Ugh.  With practice I know I'll get better but I'm just going to enjoy toying with what I've learned.  This class is VERY basic, it's really more of a "get to know your camera settings" more than an actual photography class.  It's all about buttons, menus and features and next to nothing about actual photography, style or composition.  That would be a separate class all it's own.  I'm just happy to be shooting out of the "auto" mode.

I took Elyse to a train track near our house this morning hoping to get a few picture perfect shots (no trains run on this track until about 3am so I knew we were safe).  I knew based on the time we went that the lighting would not be ideal but I wanted to try it out anyway.  I had no idea how much the tracks would upset her, they were hard to walk on and I feel bad even posting these 2 shots.  She wanted nothing to do with it. 

She calmed down for a bit when I told her she could throw some rocks.  Hey, whatever works, right.  You may also notice her little friend snuggy clutched tightly in her left arm.  Snuggy isn't normally allowed to leave the house but just in case something like this happened I stuffed him in the camera bag at the last minute.

This one made me feel really bad after the fact.

 I really like how this one came out.

After the train tracks we walked on a bridge over to the park.  She spotted a rabbit in the woods and this is her peeking at it.

On the bridge.  We learned about lighting last night so I toyed with that in these shots.

About to go down the slide.

I'm still very clueless and know just enough to give a false sense of that someone else may think that I think that I know what I'm doing or that I think I'm good at this.......not true at all, but I am having fun and getting some good pictures of my kiddo in the process.  Win, win.