Photography III, Assignment 1

So, I thought I would share what I cam up with for my first assignment. We were to take a larger picture, outside & in daylight. Then within that larger picture we were asked to find 5 more interesting shots.

Below is what I came up with.

:) Roon-bop

Class begins November 1

So, with Photography 2 done and out of the way, I'm on to Photography 3. I'm not really sure what to expect with this one, whether its more camera stuff, or continuing with Photoshop.

Class starts this SATURDAY! This will be my first (but not last) Saturday class. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Its from 9 am - noon, which means, no sleeping in on Saturday morning, but being done at noon is better than 1-4. At least I still have much of the day left once I get back home.

Here is the course description:
This course covers both the art of photography and digital image manipulation – two important and extremely useful fields of visual communication in the rapidly expanding digital world. Explore composition, lighting, point of view and subject matter, and examine the technical aspects of cameras and computer interfacing. Expand on skills acquired in PHOT 9038 (Digital Photography II) by manipulating images in Adobe Photoshop.

I suspect that it will be both learning more about the uses of the camera and Photoshop. One thing I have to admit I very much like to get out of classes is the teacher's inside information and experiences as a photographer, that I otherwise would not have known. I like to hear them complain about certain things, or praise others. More than anything, that's what I am looking to get out of this. Any one can pick up a camera, a book, do research on the Internet and figure out how to be an amazing photographer. Through school, I hope to learn from the people and find my way through this crazy career.

:) Roon-bop

First Photography Class!!!

Well, I had my first official photography class last night and again it was better than I was expecting (I must have really low expectations or something). It's a lecture format, but I really think I'm going to learn a lot from it and the teacher (Jane McMichael). We didn't really go into any details about types of cameras for purchase, but I finally understand lenses and what the mm's mean, so at least now I know what kind I'll need.

Also, she told us which stores to price shop at:
Henry's
Downtown Camera
Vistek
Black's
She said most places with price match and even price beat, so it's really important to look around. Curtis and I are going shopping this weekend, so I'll have it in class next week.

We started watching a National Geographic movie called "The Photographers". We've only watched about the first 15 minutes, but so far it's been good. She also suggested another film to watch "Manufactured Landscapes", which I'll probably watch at some point.

Again, the class is diverse. There is one guy who has been taking pictures for years using a film camera and wants to learn more about digital (I'm sure he'll have some great shots) and there is one woman who just bought her camera and doesn't know how to "put it together" and doesn't know how to burn a CD. We'll see how it goes.

Probably the most exciting part for me was the following:
Earlier yesterday while at work, I was showing some of my new colleagues a picture of Dimi, which happened to the the window shot of her, where her reflection is looking right at the camera. One colleague said "Wow, that's such a great picture, you should enter it into a contest" I dismissed it and thanked her for the compliment. So then I'm in class and the teacher is showing us some Photolife magazines and explains how they have contests, "for example the contest ending May 16th's theme is Reflections" I did that head thing dog's do when you call their name. Afterwards I asked the teacher about it, and asked her to take a look at my photo, which strangely enough, I decided to bring last minute. She told me that she thought it was good enough to get into the magazine (maybe not win, but maybe an honourable mention). So I'm going to enter it in the contest. The biggest problem is that they want it to be JPEG compressed, like I know what that means!!! So I'll just make sure that it's under 3MB (requirement) and go ahead. I don't expect to win or be published, but the events leading up to it were so crazy, that well... I have to try. Results will be in the Sept 2008 issue, so I have a while to wait.

Until next time!

:) Roon-bop

First Day of Class

Well, I am back home from my first day of Intro to Digital Imaging and I have to say that it was better than I was expecting. I thought for sure it would be completely remedial "This is how you scan a photo"; "This is how you get a photo from a CD", etc. But we jumped right into to Photoshop. We learned a few of the basic tools (nothing you wouldn't find in the Paint application). But we took some images and cropped and layered. It was really great! The teacher Derrick Haynes, was very good at going through things. I think that I picked up on it pretty well and I'm really excited for next week's class. Now all I need is Photoshop C3 so I can practice at home... but of course, its SO expensive!!! I'll have to see what I can do about that. It's fun. Most the class time was him showing us things, but at the end we were given some time to play around. Attached you will see my first Photoshop picture... I didn't have a whole lot of time, and there are some pretty obvious mistakes (some cropping, some size issues) but whatever, here it is none the less.

Things to note about the picture: The crop of Hilary & Barack was mostly cropped using an auto crop and the picture of Curtis and Dimi was done all by my hand. I wanted to ask the teacher how I can use the delete function in small areas where the brush stroke is too big. I'm sure if I had more time to play around with it I would have found a place to adjust that, but alas...

My biggest thing is that I need to be more aggressive in getting the teacher's attention. He tends to focus on students who didn't understand what he was teaching, but I have questions about how to make things look better, etc, trying to learn as much as I possible can. I just need to maybe speak up and schedule time after class to stick around and ask questions once the people who didn't get it are gone. But of course, all I want to do is get home to Curtis and Dimi... so I'm just going to have to remember that there are only 7 classes, 7 weeks, so I think I can put in an extra half hour or so at the end of class.

Stayed tuned to hear all about Thursday's class: Intro to Digital Photography!!!

:) Roon-bop