I am often asked about what kind of camera I use and what lenses are my favorite so I thought I would go ahead and answer those questions in this blog post! Photo enthusiasts, I hope you find this post informative and helpful :) But guess what? If your goal is taking beautiful and creative high quality images the most important thing is not the camera or even the lens....it's YOU!
 

Visual examples are the best! Notice the difference in attention to details, exposure, and color balance in these two images?
 

I think these two images demonstrate very well, the effect a few years of practice and experience can make! There are a plethora of tutorials, videos, books and blogs that the serious enthusiast will find extremely helpful, a simple google search is a great starting point ...but the most important ingredient is practice! As my photography skills grew and I learned how to "get the best" from my tools, I decided It was time to upgrade...so I've basically been "growing with" my cameras. The awesome part about the upgrading process is that I was able to "earn" each new lens or camera with the proceeds of my photography work...a great way to go! Another neat thing about spending a lot of time with your camera is you begin to find your "style"...the signature aspects of your work that are specific to you, consistency to your work is major sign of progress. My camera progression started several years ago with the Canon Rebel, (which I highly recommend as a starting point to beginners), then the 7D, and finally I worked myself up to my Canon 5D Mark III...which I love for it's low light ability and snappy focusing.
 

One great investment you can make in your photography progression is a fixed focal length lens (commonly referred to as a prime lens) with an aperture capability of 1.4 or 1.8. The picture quality of these lenses are hard to beat and allow you a lot a creative freedom with the ability for selective focus and blurred backgrounds. They also give you a lot more light to work with, which is a big bonus.
 

So what about editing? It's been a gradual learning curve there as well! What's the number one thing I've learned? Less is more! Getting the image as close to what you'd like it to be in camera is my number one editing tip! One thing that's helped me a lot is shooting my files in RAW versus JPEG, I am able to have a lot more fine control of exposure and color balance, "developing" the RAW file when I open it in Photoshop. There are a lot of great editing tutorials available online If you are interested in editing techniques. Spend plenty of time experimenting and you will learn what works for you.
 

Hope all this helps one person even a little bit! Below I am sharing some images and the settings, cameras and lenses used.
 

Happy shooting! :) -Danae
 

Camera: Canon 7D
 

Lens: 50mm 1.4
 

Aperture: F1.6
 

Shutter speed: 1/200
 

ISO: 100
 

Focal Length: 50mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
 

Lens: 70-200mm 2.8 IS
 

Aperture: F2.8
 

Shutter speed: 1/640
 

ISO: 500
 

Focal Length: 190
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
 

Lens: 35mm 1.4
 

Aperture: F1.6
 

Shutter speed: 1/250
 

ISO: 640
 

Focal Length: 35mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 35mm 1.4
 

Aperture: f5
 

Shutter speed: 1/2500
 

ISO: 400
 

Focal Length: 35mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
 

Lens: 70-200mm 2.8 IS

Aperture: f2.8

Shutter speed: 1/640

ISO: 400

Focal Length: 110mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
 

Lens: 85mm 1.2
 

Aperture: f1.6
 

Shutter speed: 1/160
 

ISO: 320
 

Focal Length: 85mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 85mm 1.2
 

Aperture: f5
 

Shutter speed: 1/200
 

ISO: 400
 

Focal Length: 85mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 70-200mm 2.8 IS

Aperture: f2.8

Shutter speed: 1/160
 

ISO: 1250
 

Focal Length: 1250mm
 

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 50mm 1.2
 

Aperture: f1.8
 

Shutter speed: 1/200
 

ISO: 500
 

Focal Length: 50mm
 

Camera: Canon 7D

Lens: 50mm 1.4

Aperture: F2.5
 

Shutter speed: 1/320
 

ISO: 200
 

Focal Length: 50mm