Photography 101 - Assignment 1

 The first step in our photographic journey is about familiarization with the camera, self assessment and composition.  Here are the instructions (edited slightly to remove steps only applicable to the actual class students):

1. Choose a subject of interest to you, and under daylight conditions, place that subject at least 10 feet from the camera. Make two or three exposures.

2. Move nearer the subject (5 feet). Reframe, refocus, and reshoot. Then move 2.5 feet from the subject and shoot some exposures.

3. Download your pictures or process your film using any film processing service that offers digitization of 35mm negative film so that the images can be displayed on the Web.

4. Review the pictures, and select four (4) images that you feel best demonstrate your abilities associated with this activity.

5. Post a brief self-critique of your photographic exercise (about 1–3 paragraphs). Describe the photos, how you carried out the exercise, what worked and what didn't, what you like about the photos you selected and what you would like to do differently, etc.

For my photos I chose a flower bush in the bed in the side yard.  In the 10 foot distance photo I like the angle the bricks run across the photo and how it aligns with the angle the two bushes make across the siding.  I don’t care to have the electric meter in the photo, but oh well.

Moving into five feet, the composition suffers some.  The bush with the yellow flowers consumes half the photo and the siding and shadow create a negative space that pulls my eyes away from the the subject.  

At two feet the final photos show nice detail in the flowers and leaves and I like the contrast between the yellow and green.  In keeping with the spirit of the first exercise in the first photography course, I used Program mode on my camera and didn’t change the settings on my camera.  I think I would like the last photo more at a wider aperture and only the flower closest to the camera in sharp focus and less depth of field.

That’s all for this exercise.  Not bad, but not great.