First Photography Class

I recently started taking a photography class called "Digital SLR Essentials" on Monday nights. I will be learning how a camera actually works as well as the basics on how to use our fancy new camera. For the first class, we were instructed to just "take some pictures" to practice using our cameras. My friend Brianna (who is a fantastic photographer) taught me the basics on how to shoot in manual a few weeks ago. So I practiced shooting in manual this weekend to take a few pics for class. I was working on trying to get one object in focus while the rest of the photo stays out of focus (with the exception of Lily's action shot below). It takes me about 5 minutes to get the camera ready for each shot, so I don't see myself shooting in manual too often. But the class will teach us about all other semi-manual settings that will get us the same result. So here are the first pics I took for class (these were my 5 favorite out of about 100). It turns out that Lily is a much easier "subject" to work with than Evan. She will do just about anything for a treat :)