#NikonMOMents, Part III: Horseshoe Resort (sponsored post)

Being a family travel writer for Canadian Family means that we get to visit some pretty awesome places. We’ve created so many memories this summer that it’s hard to choose a favourite, but ask my kids and Horseshoe Resort would be at the top of their list.

We spent an amazing couple of days checking out as much as we could cram into our short stay, and I carted around my trusty Nikon DSLR to capture it all.

I’ve put together a little slideshow at the bottom of this post to show you all of the fun activities we did and yummy food we ate during our visit, but first I wanted to share a couple of before and after photography examples. One of the features I use every single time I’m taking pictures with my D3300 is the exposure compensation button. It’s literally the difference between well-lit and crap-lit photos. I now shoot right into the sun thanks to this little button, which means my subjects aren’t squinting or covering their eyes because the light is behind them. 

Now, I personally love a very bright photo. Sometimes I go overboard and my pics wind up WAY too bright, but I just play around with the exposure compensation and take dozens of photos and assess the outcome later once I download everything onto my desktop.

This first example is in the stunning Slopeside Suite that we got to call home while we were at Horseshoe. It was filled with so much natural light that the first photo I took made the room look much darker than it actually was. I increased the exposure and decided that it was still too dark, so I increased it once more and got a photo that was representative of how incredible the main living area of our suite really was:

For my next trick…I went out onto the balcony.

Here, my camera was overwhelmed with sunshine and the first pic I took was so ridiculously bright that it appeared blurry. I checked my aperture, significantly reduced the exposure compensation, and voilà:

There’s no way I could have achieved either of these shots in so little time with a point-and-shoot. And leaving my DSLR on “auto” (like I did before I had a crash course with Nikon Canada) would have meant that I’d probably have gotten a pretty good shot but not the perfect shot. And when you only have a few minutes because your very busy children are dragging you from one thing to the next, you need to be able to snap that perfect shot quickly.

We’re already looking forward to checking out Horseshoe Resort this winter (we’ve decided to become a ski family), but until then, feast your eyes on all that you can experience there in the warmer months: