On my own

Yesterday I did 7 hours of photography. Throughout the day starting at 10am, I took pictures of the same object so I could get used to using the manual mode on many camera. I took pictures at, 12:30, 3:30, 6:30 of monkeybars down at Ponderosa elementary school, which took about an hour all together to get the pictures and play around with the modes. Later, I picked up Sara and we went back to the place my mentor took pictures of me at so I could try some on my own. I started off by doing the warm up pictures with Sara such as the walking and simple sitting pictures. After, I took other pictures of her against the wall. Then we both changed into our prom dresses and took floating pictures, which is when you take a picture of the background without anything in it and then you take another with your subject in it. After you put it in photoshop and edit it so you look like you're floating. After we did that for a while, we changed back into our regular clothes and took some pictures together. Since it was getting darker, we decided to go home. Once we arrived back at my house, I downloaded Lightroom, which is an editing software, to edit the pictures in. Once the pictures were edited I called it a night.
The hours I spent taking pictures was a significant learning experience for me. When I would take pictures I would just throw it on preset settings and let my camera do all the work for me. This time I was actually in control of how my pictures would turn out. Also, I always thought manual mode was too complicated for me to use but I learned it really isn't to bad after all. Another reason why it was a good learning experience for me is because I've never really photographed people for portraits. It gave me a good idea of what I need to improve on for next time.
I posted some of the pictures I took and edited below.