Stepping out of my comfort zone part 1

This weekend I have been obsessing that my photography is not going well enough. Well I am improving. that is what I have to focus on, not the what if I had a new lens would I get better photos. So I put the question to the 2peas about how to get the most of my kit lens and on board flash. The responses were incredibly helpful and really helped me to try something different. So this morning as the sun rose I took Tyler to the park to try some different things including light, directing him to face the right way, certain areas to play etc. I was actually pleasantly surprised how easily he listened and tried for me. I got quite a few photos that I was really happy with and a few that I can see how to improve. here are a few (ok quite a few!)...

 

Too much light on his face unevenly as well as being a bit overexposed. I tried to get him to face into the sun - Not happening, then stepped the other way  - ? is this backlighting/side lighting

is this better? I am not sure if I like the haziness of this though.

I really like these. the only pp I did in LR was to change the WB to daylight

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  (adj vibrancy as well with this one)

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I shot mostly in Aperture mode today to try and get a feel for the light rather than full manual. These were all taken with the 75-300mm lens, f4.5, ISO 800, focal length 75mm with various shutter speeds over 1/125s . The only thing that I don't like is that I had to use ISO 800 to get the exposure into the centre as this seems to be quite grainy. The last photo was with the flash as well.

enjoy J