Amateur Photographer?

Ever since Stella was born I've wanted to invest in a really good quality camera. I've been doing research and found that the Canon Rebel T3i was a good camera for a beginner. I wanted something simple because let's be honest, I have no idea what to do with a DSLR camera. All the cameras I've ever had were just point and shoot. Easy, decent picture quality. But now that Stella has arrived, only the cutest baby ever, I wanted something to truly capture her in all her glory.  
So for my birthday I received the funds (thanks to my parents) to make the big purchase. And thanks to Amazon Prime the camera arrived yesterday and has basically been glued to my face ever since. My face actually kind of hurts from closing the one eye all the time.

I've been watching some video tutorials on YouTube to try to figure out what the heck I'm doing. It's been fun playing with the setting and trying to get a feel for how it works. 

Here are some of the pics I've taken over the last day.

This is the original shot, way too bright. Pedro Sanchez Ashmore-Pants

After editing.

As you can see I've been playing with editing also. I use Photoscape, it was a free download and it seems to do a decent job. (In my non professional opinion, of course.)

The two pics below are unedited. 

The following pics are examples of my amazing editing skills. Haha! (I'm so kidding!)

Original

Edited.

Original.

Edited.

So, I've been having a lot of fun with my new camera. And to my photographer friends out there I'm in no way trying to take away from the awesome job you do! Your work is amazing and I can in no way compare my pics to ones taken by you. I still plan on have professionals take pictures of Stella in the future. 

I hope you enjoy seeing better pictures on my blog from here on out!


Update: You may notice that I've begun to put my blog name in the pictures and sometimes they are close to, if not on faces. I've done this because unfortunately there are creepers out there who steal pictures off of blogs and claim them as their own, for whatever reason. So this is in an effort to deter people from doing that.