Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jan 27 BW portraits











Had a short photo shoot with a couple of friends and one of my daughters. I'm really starting to love black and white shoots. At first I, like many thought B&W was a way to hide the flaws both on the model and from the photographer. I'm beginning to see now that it's a whole different world all it's own and painting with light is starting to have real meaning. Here are a couple of the many shots I took, I haven't had time to process many but it's a taste.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

How much land in a landscape?




Really I have no idea! I have to do a landscape for this assignment and I don't want to do the normal thing that everyone does. I want to add or subtract from the norm to make it my own. The question is how much land is in a landscape? I don't know. Anyway on my search I took some pics that I know won't qualify but I wanted to share them.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Summit Park







Went up to Summit Park which Jason told me had some interesting trees. It's great there, so many narled up branches. I'll definately go there when it's not freezing out and I have my kids with me. haha.

Still got a few interesting shots. Very little thinking or planning went into these but let me know what you think.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

New assignment

I have a new assignment. I need some black and white photos for this one.
A landscape, so far I'm thinking a forest with sun beams gleaming down through the canopy.

A low or high key image, probably I'll use a model for this one and see what happens.

And architecture, for which I'm hoping to find a very ornate ceiling in an old church or mansion for.

I'm starting to learn though that even though I need to have a plan and a picture in my head, once I'm out there the game plan can change quickly when looking at a scene. Sometimes when I get to the place I had in mind and look at it critically the idea doesn't seem as good as it did. Then I start walking around looking at things from different angles and going to completely different places getting new ideas. So we'll see what I end up with. I'll post the shots good and bad and welcome any comments.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Reflection


Like many people I am very fond of black and white photos. High contrast lighting, low and high key images are very striking to me. I think I'll work quite a bit in this area soon.


The photo here is from the other day when I picked my kids up at school, I thought it looked neat when reflected.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Photo assignments




























































































I'm taking a class again, and I have to submit photos of all different types. Some are graded assignments and others are to demonstrate understanding of the different rules that make eye catching photos.

This will be my first post with photos so I'll throw several up that I took over the last week. Most are showing the rule of leadin lines, the idea being that you can lead the viewers eye to the subject in an interesting way.

The rule of thirds is a way of avoiding having the subject right in the middle of the picture surrounded by wasted space. Funny thing, after I started looking back at pictures I once thought were good because they were correctly exposed I noticed that I had been consistantly placing the eyes of people right in the middle of the picture making the overall photo uninteresting.
There are also examples of framing, and rythem up there.

Please comment on my photos and let me know what you think, I want nothing more than to get better and the only way is to understand how people view pictures and what is or isn't appealing.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Journey to great pictures

The idea I have is to keep a linear record of some of the photos I take on my journey to becoming a professional photographer. I'm quite sure for most people this blog will be of little or no interest unless they happen to be in a picture that I post.

For me though I'm hoping that as time goes on there will be a definate change in the quality of pictures that I'm taking, so that one day as I look back I'll be embarrassed to look at the pictures I took and read how proud I was of such garbage. haha