A Winter Mantel and an Online Class in Photography

Books…Candles…Pinecones…Action!

I was so late in taking down my Christmas decorations…and I finally decided that today I was going to de-Christmas my mantel as well. I’m still loving the wintery look, so I used some greenery, pinecones, candles and mercury votive holders but I added some books to the mix this time. Winter is a time when I read a lot more than I do the rest of the year, so the decoration fits my personality in the great room.

 Putting my favorite $12 sunburst mirror in the center, I filled out the rest of the mantel with a collection of antique books and some “new” antique books, candles and evergreen sprigs from my backyard.

 I am taking an online class in Photography now and specifically for the camera that I have – the Nikon D3100. As I was going through the class, the instructor was teaching how to change the White Balance, ISO and many other settings on the camera. He made some suggestions on settings to change also. So, now I am not so happy with most of my shots. I had been pretty happy – although I knew that I needed to learn a lot more about photography (which is why I decided to take the class!). Shooting in Manual Mode has its challenges…but I hope to one day conquer it!

These are nighttime images, so the glow of the candles warmed up the shots a lot, which I do kind of like because it’s closer to what it actually looks like in the room. I had to also change the ISO setting (I had it 100, so I upped to 400). – the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the camera will be to low light situations. You don’t want to use a high ISO number because the picture will get too grainy then.

But I had so much trouble with the White Balance – I kept getting cooler “green” shots and that was so wrong. I realized I had to fiddle with (notice my grand photography lingo here!)…or rather “adjust” the colors on the White Balance setting. I had had it on auto – but that wasn’t working. I finally changed it to shooting in “incandescent” because I did have some lights on…and then there were the candles! I warmed up the shots by adjusting the temperature setting that comes up.  

I have a long way to go but hopefully you will learn some things along with me. Let me know if some of my photography issues (and how I figure out what to do!) is useful to you. I know there are bloggers out there still using Iphones and point and shoot cameras…who do want to venture into the DSLR world. Let me hear from you – I will post what I learn!