Our Nikon Baby

I adore taking photos. Always have. But it isn't something I had ever really thought much about, other than for family snaps. This changed when I was asked to run a professional development for the teachers at my school on what makes a good photo. How to capture the moment and the engagement of children. How to tell a story with photos.

In my work setting taking photos is a big part of my job. These photos are used to tell stories of the children's investigations, discoveries and development. They are used to share relationships and celebrate the joy of children. Also to empower parents to see the importance and worth of children's play and communication. To see that their investigations have a real purpose. These photos are highly valued by the parents that I work with, and they always enjoy what a celebration of their child they become. Due to privacy issues I can't share these photos with you, so will have to just show you my beautiful children :)

I have always had a point and shoot camera and I snap away happily, every now and then I capture a beautiful shot, but I often feel frustrated that they don't have the richness I know photos can have.

Also in the modern day of smart phones, I rarely bother taking my camera out with me. My phone takes equally as good, if not better shots and it is always with me.

  

We have an adventurous holiday coming up (more details later) so I though this the perfect excuse to buy us a new camera.... One that can challenge my photo taking abilities, use Nathan's photographic study and hopefully give us rich and engaging photos!

So we did some research into entry level Digital SLR cameras and decided that the Nikon D3100 twin lens kit was the camera for us! We shopped around for along time to find this baby on sale. It usually retails for over $900 but we knew we could find it for less. With the current stock take sales it went down to $750 but we wanted more!!! We eventually took the risk and brought it online for $620 - bargain!

Yesterday it finally arrived!!! Boy have I been keeping it busy! The kids are being great models and allowing me to experiment with all the different settings. They are obligingly posing in the bright sun, dark rooms, and in strange positions. They will run super fast to see if I can capture them clearly by changing the shutter speed and jumping high into the air to see how we go capturing movement.

 So far I'm in love with my new baby and hope she supports me through a photographic learning curve. I am open and ready to learn! She has a great tutorial mode that is teaching me about how to get the effects I want. I want to challenge myself to make use of this camera and use her to her potential, not just as a fancy point and shoot... as she's a little big to fit in my pocket  :)