Learning to Photograph without "AUTO"

What a hassle photography is.

A joy, when it works out, sure...but a hassle none the less.

I've assisted a photographer friend in many weddings, and photoshoots and I've watched her fiddle around with the ISO, the shutter speed and aperture. All foreign terms, and frankly, my job was to make sure SHE was well taken care of, as well as the subjects of the photo...knowing how the camera worked, was never my concern.

So in deciding I wanted to find out.

OH MY GOSH. 

What a job.

Photography is hard, folks.

Now for starters, I don't own a DSLR.
I own a bridge camera.
It's a Fujifilm Finepix F1500. It's considered a "bridge" camera because has more capabilities than a point & shoot, but doesn't have the removable lens like a DSLR, amongst other things.

But lets be honest...in the 1 1/2 years I've owned it, I've never used it as anything BUT a "point & shoot".

Then Shannon at Aka Design wrote this post.

I felt so silly. I had assumed her photos were due to fancy schmancy DSLR like all the other bloggers seem to have, and here she was, sharing about how she has a camera EXACTLY. LIKE. MINE.

Wait? What?

You can take photos like THAT, with a camera that I OWN ALREADY?

You've got to be kidding me.

So I decided to do what I always do.
Listen to no one, read nothing, and fiddle.

Fiddle I did.

But really, I need to take an online course and read some books, fiddling is taking far too long to learn.

But here's some before & afters!

I tested on my dining room converted to a playroom/office bc it's got the worst lighting and I can never take photos in it.
All these were taken in NATURAL LIGHT, NOOOO flash!

BEFORE:

 AFTER:
(chalkboard is from this post)

Same room, now with the focus on my super clean *cough* work desk.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I haven't edited them ONE BIT...I really wanted to show you all how a little adjusting on a camera and using it in manual can make a difference.

WOW.

MUST. LEARN. MORE.

I also took photos from the streaked cupcake post in manual too.

Yah, I'm pretty darn excited.

Any tips you all wanna share with me?!