About

Hola, I am Claudia from Mexico City. Sabrina is the name of my Camera 🙂

I am self-taught in photography. This site was created (thanks to my husband Ali) to share my photos.
Email: claudiatahbaz@gmail.com
My Gear:
Canon 60D
Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II
Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM
Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Manfrotto 190CX3 3-Section Carbon Fiber Tripod with 322RC2 Grip Action Joystick Head
Manfrotto 7322YB-BB Tripod with Ball Head
Remote Switch RS-60E3
Remote Control RC-6
Lightroom3
Canon Speedlite 580EX II (February 2013)
 

How I started

I got my first DSLR a Canon 60D with an 18-55mm lens at the end of 2010. I started reading the manual that came with it immediately and oh my, that was bad.  I found lots of photography terms that I didn’t understand, needless to say I kept reading and then I got scared.  I had this nice camera with lots of buttons that could take photos like the ones you see in magazines and the only thing I could do was to set the camera in Automatic and shoot.  The photos obviously came with a better quality than with my Point and Shoot but now I was stuck carrying around a big camera that I couldn’t fit in my handbag and what was worse is that I knew I was wasting the money invested in the camera. I felt so bad and overwhelmed by all of the photography terminology I was trying to learn and understand.
At that moment, I decided to skip all the other settings and go straight to Manual. In retrospect, I think it was a good decision because it really forced me to learn but it was a very tough road. Most of my photos were pitch black and if I was lucky enough to get whatever I was photographing in the picture it wasn’t even in focus.  During my learning process I kept browsing on line and seeing photos with a nice and sparkly blurred background but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
After 6 months and lots of bad images I was finally able to take photos in Manual mode with the focus where I wanted.  I would say it took me 1 year of reading the manual, books, on line tutorials and playing with my camera to get comfortable and more or less get the results I wanted.
It has been 1 ½ years now, I do have a very long way to go and still so much to learn but at least now I can see the results of what I have learned and it feels good.  I still get dark or overexposed photos but I have an idea of what to do to fix it. Now, I feel a bit more confident about changing my settings and following my intuition. I have just started to discover and to enjoy the possibilities of being creative now that I don’t have to focus as much in the technical aspects. I love not being afraid anymore of breaking the photography “rules” that I have read about during this past year.
I look forward to all of the things I have yet to learn about photography and to share them here.