Snapshots and Beyond

Something I've been casually interested in the past few years is photography.

 

I've never had a formal class and to be honest, I haven't invested a great deal of effort into trying to understand a lot of the detailed information in getting the best performance from my camera which is a Nikon D5000.

 

 This past year, I have just started playing around and my 2018 goal is to be more competent and have more technically skill in the camera compared to just random lucky shots.

I am not particularly interested in being a professional, but rather improving another skill set.  I've joined a few equine photography groups and it is nice to see some generally helpful individuals sharing settings and offering feedback to all the aspiring equestrian photographers and hobbyists out there.  :)

One other thing that I'm excited about this year is that I received a nice Tamron F2.8 lens for Christmas so I should be able to hopefully play around in some lower light (read: indoor arena) situations and try to maintain some quality of images. 

I am also interested in slowly beginning to understand how to manipulate images in a more useful format in Lightroom and Photoshop.  A coworker and avid photography hobbyist is doing a self-based online class with LR & Photoshop and her insight has been a big motivator and inspiration to just push beyond just randomly clicking buttons, to hopefully one day understanding what I am doing and to be able to take simple objects out of the background like unattractive fencing.

We will see how it goes!

Any other photography enthusiasts out there?  Any resources you like to share or input for a hobbyist that would like to take the next jump?  :)