Photography 101

I've been posting since January 3rd or so and everyday tring to work on something or another. I recently got a new camera, so although I knew how to operate my old camera, figuring out this new one is like knowing how to drive a car in automatic then switching to a standard transmission. I highly recommend the standard transmission (car and camera!). I know how to shoot in manual mode but often prefer aperature priority with fast children so I don't have to fiddle so much. But lately my AV hasn't been cutting it. I think with the backlighting in my house a lot of my images come up dark. Manual seems to be the way to go. I find myself switching to manual more often right off the bat. The goal of mine is always to have less post processing. That being said. After finishing "Understanding Exposure" - great book, by the way, I really starting to get a grip on correct exposures. My next goal is focus. Auto-focus - ha! I've tried different methods to get the crisp, clear images that seem so alusive but now think that I'm finally on to something. My camera has 9 focus points so I decreased them to just one (the center one) and would use back button focus on that one point - point it on the eyes, focus, then recompose. You'd think the eyes would be in focus, right. Wrong. Very frustrating. Today I learned that Canon does not recommend recomposing your images but chosing a focus point that works for the particular image. This seems quite daunting since I'm already chosing iso, ss, f-stop and now a specific focus point to aim right between the eyes...all while chasing down fast toddlers!
Well, today I placed my kids in a chair so they wouldn't move too fast and practised on the selective focus points. I think it worked! My depth of field on the first image was a little shallow and I only got focus on one eye, but hey it's just practise. Also, all of these were taken with iso 640 (that's why it's a little grainy)If you actually made it to the bottom of this post, I apologize for rambling...but just wanted to let you know what I have been working on.