One step at a time

What seems like "basics" to most people who have had an SLR camera for more than 6 months, myself on the other hand took a while to get to know my camera. The fact that there is an "auto" option has prevented me from really exploring the possibilties of my camera. Last weekend I went to a "Basic inroduction course to your SLR camera", and after they showed us how to take it out of the box and switch it on, we looked at Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. I've read about these things before, so I knew exactly what it was, I just never played around with it before. Why would I, I have an "auto" option remember? I did however realize that there are a couple of things I wanted to do in the past that I could never achieve with my point-and-shoot, and that if I don't play with the camera's manual settings I probably would never be able to do it with this one either. One is making that weird water flowing effect. Somehow I could never grasp the relations between Shutter Speed and Aperture, so when my water was "flowing" then my picture was too bright. So, after my course my first attemp was to see if I could get this right, and the closest flowing water I could find was in my fish pond. Here is my results. I'm taking it one step at a time, ok?!