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Hi, my name's
John Peterson and I love digital photography. Like
many I tend to take tons of digital photographs. Unfortunately, most of them look lousy. I mean I took around 5000 pictures during a year long trip
round Australia (and that doesn't count the ones on the camera that
was stolen!) Out of all those maybe a dozen or so were decent photos.
As much as I wanted to take photos that preserved the memories of my trip, I just couldn't seem to capture the scene before me.
I also wanted to use the photos to share the experiences I had with my friends and family. There's nothing quite like a good photo to bring a story to life for the listener.
On the other hand, a bad photo is boring at best, forcing your friends to stifle yawns as you ramble on.
Now that I've learned the secrets of great digital photography, I have to admit that most of my old pictures were just plain bad.
Fortunately all it took was a little proper coaching to change all that. Here's my story on how I went from photo hack to skilled photographer in just two weeks...
My Old Approach Failed.
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| One of my old photos - flat and lifeless. |
Because I take so many pictures - the "scatter gun" technique - some of
them do turn out pretty well and I'm very happy with them but it's so
much of a hit and miss affair. I lack consistency in quality results
and end up disappointed more often than not. I would blat away with
the camera like a maniac and probably end up with something like 1%
of the end results anything like what I wanted.
I was pretty
fed up by this and the gigabytes of mediocre to poor photos
cluttering up my computer's hard drive so I decided to search out the
information I so badly needed. I thought I would need expensive digital photography
lessons or books to make any progress. I started to search locally
for lessons and on the web for information on lessons in my area and
for good books to buy. Well, I didn't find many lessons at all and
the odd one or two I did find were way out of my budget. Most of the
photographic books were also expensive and the few I did buy either
left me more confused or fell short on really explaining to me how I
could use my digital camera to achieve what I wanted, they all seemed
to insist I spend thousands on top of the range digital SLR cameras
with a baffling array of lenses.
My Breakthrough Moment.
I thought I was condemned to
a lifetime of photographic mediocrity until one day I stumbled across
a web site by a very talented Australian amateur photographer called
Amy Renfrey. What Amy has produced is a pair of electronic books -
ebooks - which were exactly what I needed. They explain everything,
all the technical terms I didn't understand, how to compose photos,
light them, get the colors right and everything else. Now my digital
camera is pretty good but it's just a compact, not an SLR but Amy
confirms that this is OK, there is no need whatsoever to have
expensive equipment, all the shots you will see in the books were
taken with her old compact digital camera and quite breathtakingly
stunning they are too. Just take a look at the shots on her web site
for proof of that.
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| Vibrant colors even on an overcast day. |
Prior to reading Amy's books I longed to
take great night shots but they never came out as anything more than
blurry messes with "squiggles" of light wiggling their way
though the frame. Now I take compelling, sharp, night shots with
confidence. I'm stunned by my own results, I keep on looking back at
my pictures and say "did I really take that?" I'm totally
blown away by my own new found ability. I find the moon and stars
fascinating but never succeeded in taking a single decent shot of
either until I put Amy's information into action.
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| Not bad even through a moving car's dirty window at a moment's notice! |
I bought her
basic digital photography book first and devoured it in short order, I couldn't put it
down, I even missed a meal I was so excited with the results I was
getting on my camera just sitting in my chair with the ebook and my
camera. I bought the 2nd book as soon as I'd finished the first and
this was just as good. To be honest I think my family thought I was
a bit obsessed, a man possessed and I suppose I was! These books got
me excited about photography again, I'd be getting pretty despondent
before but that changed as soon as I read the books. Now I've
started selling my shots my family think it's terrific.
Further Success, moving forwards.
Yes, I
did say selling my shots. I started to submit some of them to online
galleries and to my shock and amazement people started buying them!
I'm starting to get a reputation for my photographs and people are
asking me how much I'll charge to shoot their wedding!! Wow! How
things have changed in such a short time. I'm even thinking of
putting on a small exhibition soon, I just love showing people my new
work whereas before I was ashamed of most of it.
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| Full of life, cascading water - very dull day. |
But back to
the books, once you've read the first one I'm sure you'll feel you
have to have the 2nd one so I would recommend you buy both at once,
this will save you a fair few dollars as Amy does a discount rate for
the "package deal". They are amazing value at well under a
hundred dollars for the package but that's not good enough for Amy,
no, she wants to provide massive value to help you attain the skills
and results you desire. She has included some excellent bonuses you
get free when you buy the books, the bonuses are valued at $99.91 all
for free! If that weren't enough she also pledges to give you email
support, should you get stuck all you have to do is email her. I
have exchanged several emails with her and she's terrific to deal
with, so helpful and her replies are in plain English that make even
complex topics easy to understand. Then there's her iron clad 100% guarantee so there really is no reason not to buy
Here's why I recommend
it.
I can't believe what good
value these books are (perhaps I shouldn't say this in case Amy reads
it, comes to her senses and puts the price up). She shows you many
techniques to avoid spending on fancy equipment and when you compare
the price to even the most basic photographic course it's many times
cheaper and in my opinion many times better quality of
information.
And let's just take a moment
to re-iterate that quality information. The easy to understand
style of her writing puts you at ease and makes the learning process fun and effortless.
The number of "Aaaaahh!" moments I had as I "got" something new
which explained why my old photos looked the way they did.
Do yourself (and your camera) a favor and rush
over to Amy's site and buy her books, you won't regret it.
Yes - I want to easily learn how to take stunning digital photos with my existing camera
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