Here's the story... Last weekend I happened to get chatting to one of the photographers at a horse show near us, told him about my interest in photography, talked about my camera/lenses, gawked at their enormous cameras, impressed him with my knowledge of IT - was able to offer some advice on his laptops & NAS setup and so on.
Anyway, he invited me to join them at a Cross Country event yesterday, with the plan to bring my own camera, find a jump and take some shots- just to see how I did. So I picked a jump and shot around 40 images. I brought the pictures back in, he was really impressed with my composition - but I was let down by having the background in perfect focus but the horse was out of focus. He said this wasn't my fault, but I should look into finding out whether my Canon 300D is capable of continuous focus- so that when the horse appears in the frame the camera focuses on that instead of the jump itself.
That being said, he put my images up on the NAS drive along with the other photographer's, for the general public to browse and I ended up selling 3 of my own pictures which I was absolutlely made up about!
That really was one of the best confidence boosters I've ever had. He said the difference between an amateur photographer and a professional, is that you're only professional once you've sold a photograph - which I have! 
At the end of the event he handed me his Nikon D2X with 70-200mm uber-lens - and just let me have a general play around... it has to be said that camera is gorgeous and if money was no object I would SO buy a D2X!
Anyway this week as I'm on holiday Brian has very kindly offered to meet up with me, bring his Nikon D70 along and give me a bit of a lesson with a view to making me a more permanent fixture at the events he covers
In the same vein I'm going to look into some upgrades we were talking about, like getting his network up to a gigabit to cope with the volume of data transferred while the public are browsing the images.
I just wanted to share that, as I'm really excited and just can't wait to get on and take more photos!!
Anyway, he invited me to join them at a Cross Country event yesterday, with the plan to bring my own camera, find a jump and take some shots- just to see how I did. So I picked a jump and shot around 40 images. I brought the pictures back in, he was really impressed with my composition - but I was let down by having the background in perfect focus but the horse was out of focus. He said this wasn't my fault, but I should look into finding out whether my Canon 300D is capable of continuous focus- so that when the horse appears in the frame the camera focuses on that instead of the jump itself.
That being said, he put my images up on the NAS drive along with the other photographer's, for the general public to browse and I ended up selling 3 of my own pictures which I was absolutlely made up about!
That really was one of the best confidence boosters I've ever had. He said the difference between an amateur photographer and a professional, is that you're only professional once you've sold a photograph - which I have! At the end of the event he handed me his Nikon D2X with 70-200mm uber-lens - and just let me have a general play around... it has to be said that camera is gorgeous and if money was no object I would SO buy a D2X!
Anyway this week as I'm on holiday Brian has very kindly offered to meet up with me, bring his Nikon D70 along and give me a bit of a lesson with a view to making me a more permanent fixture at the events he covers
In the same vein I'm going to look into some upgrades we were talking about, like getting his network up to a gigabit to cope with the volume of data transferred while the public are browsing the images.I just wanted to share that, as I'm really excited and just can't wait to get on and take more photos!!