Twelve weeks to better photography: week five

Well, it's a good thing for my blog that this photography lesson has taken place or else I'm pretty sure my blog would be marked "dormant" or "non-existant" to some. But I'll be back... sooner than later. Sorry for my lack of posting.

Week 5's lesson is all about composition. Putting aside all the technical stuff this week, the 'teacher' gave us some tips and "rules" to go by, in order to produce a good picture without a lot of editing. Sounds good to me, considering I don't know how to edit well and don't even own an editing program.

Tip #1 -- Keep it simple by eliminating distractions in your photo. You can remove distracting elements from your photos by physically moving them out of the scene, repositioning your subjects in a better location, taking a few steps forward for a close-up shot, or decreasing your depth of field.
Tip#2 -- Apply the Rule of Thirds. I love this tip and use it frequently when I take pictures. The rule of thirds capitalizes on the fact that our eyes are naturally drawn to a point about two-thirds of the way up (or over) on a photo.
Tip#3 -- Keep an Eye on the Horizon. Place the horizon about 2/3 of the way up on the photo to keep the focus on what is below it (such as land or water) OR position the horizon about 1/3 of the way up on the photo if you want the focus to be on what is above it (the sky.)
Tip#4 -- Frame your subject. Use elements in the foreground of your photo to frame the center of interest. Architectural elements (such as arches or fences) as well as those found in nature work well for this.
Tip#5 -- Fill the Frame. Another tip that I use frequently. In addition to eliminating distracting backgrounds (tip #1) it's also important to eliminate wasted space in your photos. Allow your subject to dominate the photo (fill the frame) to give it more prominence.
Tip#6 -- Try a New Perspective. Make sure to examine your subject from different angles - a new view can change the perspective of the whole photo.

This week's challenge was to take a picture and use at least one of those "tips" in your picture. So here we go:

In this picture, I used Tip #1 by keeping it simple. A few of the original pictures I took had trees in the background, so I asked the person flying the kite to move to an "tree-free" area so I could reshoot the picture. I think I also used Tip #2, even though it might not be exactly 2/3 over in the picture, it is still more dominant on one side of the picture than the other. And lastly, I used Tip #6. Instead of shooting this picture standing up, I laid on my back in order to get more clouds and less other distractions.

The end! Can't wait to everyone else's pictures too!

Twelve weeks to better photography: week four

I was half-tempted to skip this weeks lesson, because I hate using the flash and I thought even in the lesson that her pictures that she took with flash vs no flash actually looked better without. But, I decided to be a trooper and stick to it anyways. See Week 4's Lesson here.

Not much to talk about this week because she was mostly saying how you can properly use your flash as a "fill flash". Basically, a fill flash is your normal flash. But in scenarios where you already have ambient light, your flash is merely "filling in" the areas of your photo that may be shadowed or poorly lit.

I also couldn't go outside like she requested because A.) i've been sick and B.) it's been snowing and is freeeezing here. So I stuck to indoor pictures and took them of my fav little man. Anyhoo, on to my pictures...
{no flash... much better in my opinion}
{with flash... overexposed and see the shadow in the background? not cool.}

I re-read the lesson and noticed that she talked about moving your subject away from the wall and if they had to be in front of a wall putting them in front of a dark wall. So I guess I failed this week. haha, oh well. Always next week. :)

Twelve weeks to better photography: week three

Woohoo... chuggin' right along, aren't we?

Lesson three is all about light. I don't know anything about light, in terms of photography, other than I hate using the flash. This was a great lesson focusing on how to set your Custom White Balance. If you're anything like me, before you read this lesson you were like "custom what what?" So I was excited to learn something new this week... especially if it meant learning how to take pictures with better lighting without using the flash.

Basically if you set your camera to AWB your camera will select what it thinks is white. So in a room where there is not a lot of natural light and you are having to use artificial lighting, your pictures will come across orangey and have a yellow cast to them. This is where learning to set your white balance comes into play. White balance is simply a fancy way of setting the color temperature of your image. The human eye is very adept at compensating for color changes in light and allowing us to view light in a very large spectrum. Most film cameras handle white balance in the film itself and you simply purchase film to match the lighting situation. Camera sensors, however, are not quite as intelligent, and they must be told what color the light is for a given situation in order to compensate for that color. To help with this, digital cameras come with some pre-set white balance settings such as Auto (AWB), Daylight, and Tungsten, among others. Properly setting your white balance for your lighting situation will greatly increase the impact of your photos and decrease the amount of time you spend editing them.

This weeks challenge was to take 3 pictures. First one with the AWB setting, second with the Tungsten setting, then the third you would set your own custom white balance. And without further ado... here's my pictures:

{AWB setting}
{Tungsten setting}
{Custom White Balance}

A HUGE difference, right? It's not always the most convenient thing to carry around a big piece of white paper in order to set my custom white balance every time I'm out taking pictures, so that's why the camera has lots of different settings for you to choose from, instead of always defaulting to the auto white balance. But for the important pictures, you'll definitely see me sportin' a big piece of white paper. :)

I am seriously loving these lessons and seeing all of my other "classmates" pictures too! To see their pictures, go to "our host" Meredith's blog and see her post along with everyone else's!

Twelve weeks to better photography: week two

Week two's class {located here} is about ISO and shutter speed. Because I took a photography class in high school I knew a little bit about this, but again was not taught back then on DSLR cameras, so a refresher course was just what I needed!

Here's the short break down: The higher the ISO, the quicker the image will be captured and the less light that is required. The lower the ISO, the longer it takes for the image to be captured and the more light you will need. A little confusing, but basically for me it helps to just imagine myself outside and knowing that the more natural light I have, the lower my ISO number. And if I'm inside and need help with light to crank that baby up to a higher ISO number, although my images will be more grainy.

Your shutter speed is how quickly the shutter, or the little door that opens in front of your film or image sensor, operates. The numbers that you see representing shutter speed like 60, 120, 250, 1000 represent 1/60th of a second or 1/120th of a second, and so on. So the higher the bottom number on the fraction, the faster the shutter speed. The smaller the number, the slower the shutter speed.

As for this weeks challenge, we were to find our kitchen sink - (easy enough right?), then find an object to "block" the water. Turn your camera to the "TV" mode, and take 1 picture at 1/80th of a second, then at 1/1000 of a second. Here's my pictures:

{ISO 800, exposure time 1/80}
{ISO 800, exposure time 1/1000}

I don't have a tripod, so I couldn't participate in the bonus challenge... boo!

One last thing... I tried operating in the "M" mode for the end of the lesson where she was giving you 5 steps and talking about setting your f/stop, ISO, shutter speed, etc... and all of my pictures were black. I turned up the ISO number and it didn't matter, all of the images still came out completely black. Any of my fellow students have an idea why? I figured out how to change the shutter speed but couldn't figure out how to change the f/stop and I wasn't sure if that was the reason or not. I'm stuck.

See ya next week! :)

Twelve weeks to better photography: week one

Saturday while I was at work, I was on thenest photography board and ran across a girl talking about a 12 week challenge she found that she was apart of in order to enhance her knowledge of her camera and her photography skills in general. I thought it would be a great idea considering how much I love my camera and taking pictures and how I really desire to be good at it. I took a photography class in high school, but we obviously didn't have DSLR's so I don't know as much about my camera as I'd like to.
So... Imagine my excitement today when I stumbled across Meredith's post talking about how she (and a handful of other bloggers) will be doing the same 12 week course together! I am going to join in... and what perfect timing, starting today!

{Feel free to join in or if you'd rather just read the tutorials, here is week 1}

So here we go! Week 1's lesson is on aperture (f/stop). The lower your f/stop, the less of your photo will be in focus. The higher your f/stop, more of your photo will be in focus. So naturally you think you'd constantly want to use a higher f/stop, because who wants blurry pictures? But this all depends on the photo you're taking... if you're trying to really focus on one particular thing in the photo and want to blur out the background, you'd want to use a lower f/stop, where-as if you want everything to be in focus, you'd use the higher f/stop. Make sense?

The challenge this week was to take 3 pictures... one with the f/stop at the lowest setting it will go, mine is f/4. The second picture at f/8, and the third at the highest it will go, which for me is f/22.

Here are my shots:

{f/4 -- everything in background completely blurred}
{f/8 -- everything in background "mostly" blurred}
{f/22 -- almost everything in picture is in focus, making that ugly satellite really stand out and taking away from the tractor, which was the 'subject' of this photo}

Pretty cool, right? Loving this already!