Photo Class Homework

Last night was my last beginners' photography class. As before the instructor made a slide show using our homework photos. He frequently asked "Who did this one?" and then went over why he liked it so much. I found it interesting that many of the shots were done by the same few people.

One of our assignments was to do another outdoor portrait, one without a flash and the other using what's called "flash fill". These did not make the slide show but they are regulars on my computer wallpaper (I have so many I change it almost every day!).

Another assignment was to take a photo employing "stop motion" or "freeze action". Or is that "stop action" or "freeze motion"? In any case this photo of Clyde did make the show. The class got a good chuckle when I explained how I had to try this about 50 times over the course of several days before I finally got the shot I wanted. I love digital photography! (Good dog, Clyde!)
Another exercise was to "tell a story" using a series of about 5 or so photographs. One person showed a young kid making a bowl of ice cream with sprinkles, chocolate syrup, and a cherry. He ate half of it and suddenly had an "ice cream headache". The final shot was the empty bowl and the boy's face with a big grin and chocolate sauce all over.

A big ego booster for me was when my first story shot came on screen and the teacher asked his question, "Who did this one?" I raised my hand and he asked if it was done by someone I knew or myself. You all know the answer to that.

For my story series I decided to make a quick mosaic and the following are the pictures I took during the making (this one is about 7 3/4" square).

I got a lot of compliments at break time for that one.

We also had to practice taking night photos, of which mine were so-so. But I think I've figured out since how to make them better. It was funny that I thought I was going to be so original when I took a night shot of the refinery and during the slide show there were about four really good shots of the refinery. Not taken by me.

Our final assignment was to pretend we were visitors to Bakersfield and take pictures as if we were tourists using some of the techniques we learned. I submitted eleven photos for that assignment, and six of them made the slide show!

I'm not going to put them all here but if you want to see them and some of the ones I didn't turn in you can go to my Yahoo! site. I'm showing one photo a day starting on September 28. Yahoo! is a little retarded sometimes and often goes immediately to April 10, 2008 for some reason. If you hit your "refresh" button (sometimes you have to do it a few times) you'll eventually get to the current date. You can click on the calendar to get to specific dates.

I really enjoyed the photography class and I'm more thrilled than anything that I actually finally learned something. It's finally sinking in! I highly recommend to anyone that may be thinking about it to go ahead and take a little class like this and maybe later something more intensive like at the local community college. Our instructor told us one of his students took this class about five times and she is now a professional photographer. I wonder if she's the one who took my sister's family portraits?

In any case I need to see if my head still fits through the door.