I LOVE photography and I adore taking snazzy images so you can imagine my delight when my husband gave me a very swanky (and expensive) camera for Christmas a few years ago.

I’ve used it loads since then. It’s travelled to Florence and Rome, captured Elsie as a newborn, snapped our loved up friends on their wedding days and more besides.

But here’s the thing. Besides pressing the button and looking through the window screen thing (technical ey?) I didn’t actually know how to use it. Properly that is. In fact to hell with that. I’ve been scared of even attempting to use it. Playing with dials and pressing loads of buttons? No thanks. I’ll just stick to auto!

Anyway over the years I felt a little bad about this, after all a fancy camera (a Canon DSLR if you’re interested) deserves to be used to its potential and so when I was kindly invited by Joe Blogs to attend a photography workshop, well, obviously I just had to go. Anything to get rid of the guilt!

So on Sunday, I spent the day with a brilliant bunch of bloggers who’d travelled from across Yorkshire to attend the workshop at the Copthorne Hotel Sheffield. The workshop was led by Yorkshire based photographer Pandora Maund, who also runs Going Digital Yorkshire and was – to be frank – brilliant but also mind boggling. What can I say? It seems there is much more to this camera lark than simply snapping away!

Pandora very kindly talked us through how to take our camera off ‘auto mode’ (scary stuff I tell you!) and explained how to use our camera properly, by showing us the main camera functions and talking about things like exposure, composition and white balance.

And once we’d found out how to do lots of fancy stuff? Well, naturally it was time to put our skills into practice!

As the hotel is located slap bang next door to Sheffield United we went outside to snap the Bramhall Lane stadium, and each other, in all of our glory. Here are some pics that I took, as I attempted to put Pandora’s top tips into practice, completely unedited I hasten to add! No filters. No nothing! Ok, so they might not be AMAZING but hey I got my camera to do stuff. And I’m proud of that I tell you!

And my lovely model? The adorable Lemon Freckles who I had so much fun with on the day. Just look at her fabulous hair! Green with envy or what?!

So did the workshop help I hear you cry?!

Well, yes, I think it quite possibly did! Getting to grips with my camera’s functions was certainly not as easy as I’d hoped but now I kind of know what I’m doing or at least know what I’m supposed to be doing, I do think with plenty of practice, that my camera skills will most definitely improve.

And I’ve already been putting them into practice! *pulls proud face* Here’s a few I took of my favourite ‘subject’ on Monday, spurred on by the workshop. *Note – I have edited these because I love them so much!

So will I be putting my camera back on auto mode? Well, I can’t say for sure but I do know this.

Thanks to Pandora and her patient explanations, I’m definitely happy to at least leave it off for a while and see how I get on. David Bailey, you had better watch your back ;-)

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Many thanks to Pandora, the team at Joe Blogs and of course the Copthorne Millenium Hotel in Sheffield. You’ve made a photography lover very happy indeed! And here’s the olibigatory group shot! (Quite clearly NOT taken by me). 

With love (and pouts),

Katie