Sunkhaze Wildlife Preserve

In Aperture Mode!

Mostly.

I took a few snaps in AUTO to be hopeful something might come out fairly decent if I totally failed this exercise.
But the plan was A mode.
No chickening out!

This adventure was a Sunday Snowshoeing trip with Tom last weekend. We had only found this location before in summertime . . . driven by on the way to Some Place Else. 
Fishing usually. 

The trail we took was a wooded path that looped out to a platform and back around to the gate. Mostly dark old forest growth, without much to point a camera at. It seemed.

Newly fallen snow made snowshoeing easy although the camera needed protection from an avalanche of snow coming down from the tree tops. Completely buried me and the camera at one point. Not good!

I'm not sure which, if any of these were actually auto mode.  I was uncertain how to find out photo details after the fact. Turns out trying to remember what I did as I practiced in A mode didn't go all that well.

I downloaded software from Nikon's website yesterday so now I should be able to tell.  I had been letting Windows open pictures from the camera but it wasn't very satisfactory.

Winter Finally Arrived

Snowshoeing Adventure

Sara and I headed to Hirundo Wildlife Refuge. She was practicing on new cross country skis and I had the camera around my neck.

Still in AUTO mode but the camera seemed to do a pretty good job until the sun sunk behind a cloudy sky.

Settings. We need to learn them!
 

When There's NO Snow

 Letterboxing in December! 

The girls and I went looking for local hidden treasures soon after Christmas.  Since I tend to get us lost whenever I'm in charge of the clues, I'm not allowed to hold them. Which works for me! Taking pictures and getting used to the new camera was my priority.

I was still in AUTO mode because the minute I get outside anything learned from watching tutorials or reading the owner's manual has gone out of my head as soon as the lens cap comes off.  It was quite dark along the forested trail. It seems clear neither one of us knew what we were doing.

We only found one of the two hidden boxes, but we may have followed the trail backwards according to the clues.

NOT MY FAULT.

Giving it my BEST SHOT . . . ?

New Nikon D5500
I got a new camera for Christmas! 

I've watched a lot of YouTube videos esp. this one  . . . over and over again. It takes a while for things to sink in.  Now that I need reading glasses, seeing the menu on the camera is a bitch without them. I hate it!

My plan is to practice taking pictures and to blog a few of the keepers to document my slow learning curve.  As with most things that needs to be learned all over again, I intend to give myself a break. My favorite advice from one of the video tutorials to date: "You'll take a million BAD pictures before you become good at this..." Or something like that. 
I'm up to about 500.

Most of my trips outside have been either walking our trails here at the house or snowshoeing some of the local nature preserves.

My goal from this batch was to end up with a four season series of photos in more or less the same spot halfway down our field. 

The first fall photo with lots of color (when this plan was first hatched) was taken with my old Canon Powershot. 

The frosty morning pictures were taken with my new camera... I think. Probably in auto mode. Winter snow-covered attempts have included too little sunlight, a dog's butt and our tracks messing up the imagined "best shot".  Getting out of auto mode is the goal.

Snow is predicted for this afternoon and tomorrow.
Yay . . . another shot at it soon? 

(Wandering Camera Project link up! ;)