My parents are visiting from North Carolina, my dad is trying to get my daughter Kira to smile for a picture and she is very weary.
That's priceless! Love it!
And
selina, thanks again for the kind words. As far as courses go, I took one, about a year after I seriously started taking photos (which puts the class three years ago). It was an introductory, continuing education course on digital photography at the local community college. It spent a lot of the time on the technical aspects - how to operate a camera, shutter speed, aperture, exposure, etc. On the artistic side, it touched on a few basics like light, color, shape, depth of field and the "Rule of Thirds". Basically, it didn't offer a lot of information that couldn't be learned from a book or youtube video.
The value, to me anyway, was from the assignments the professor gave - and his subsequent critiques. Those tasks challenged me and forced me to be a bit more deliberate when I'm shooting. So I did get something out of it. Otherwise, it's been a lot of repetition. I recently went through and organized my Lightroom (the program I use to "process" my photos) catalog and realized I have roughly 30,000 shots stored in it.
So yeah, a lot of practice, and a lot throwing pasta at the walls to see if anything sticks. That's one of the benefits of digital photography.
As for the two Empire State Building shots ... I'm very happy with them, but I have to also concede that there was no small amount of luck involved in them (having a beautiful clear day while being in Manhattan, having a moon rise during the day, a plane flying by at the opportune moment, a flock of pigeons that decide to take flight as I'm turning down the block). Fortunately I was there, with my camera, and actively looking for a good shot.
