One way to fast-track your photo skills is to try shooting in situations that force you out of your comfort zone. My comfort zone is, or seems to be, shooting in raw format, using white balance presets, auto-focus, and aperature priority. Quite often I use natural light or diffused on-camera flash. Recently I wanted to challenge myself to sharpen my skills in shooting situations.

One way to do this is to shoot manually. I took it a bit further and decided to shoot manual focus, jpeg format, off-camera undiffused flash. I was shooting an engagement session and was able to convince the subjects (a really fun bride named Kathleen and her fiance Michael) to let me play a bit. (A friend of mine pointed out that most people would be better off to experiment with practice clients instead of real ones...what can I say?...I live on the edge!)

Here are some of the results...I was happy with them and the bride was extremely happy with them. :)