Introduction to Digital Photography/Class #1 April 27, 2010

“You learn to see by practice. It's just like playing tennis, you get better the more you play. The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.”

Eliot Porter

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In my fantasies I learn to shoot photos and create beautiful works of art. Since I'm actually in reality I have to accept I'll be fortunate to one day shoot halfway decent photographs. With that in mind, I figured it's best I get an inkling as to what my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi can actually do. :-) That, in and of itself, is going to take a while -- so bear with me.

I signed up for classes at the Charleston Center for Photography. Each course is six weeks long and my first instructor is Kenny McKeithan. So far, so good. There is only one other person in this class and she was unable to make it due to some sort of scheduling conflict. This worked out great for me as my first class ended up being one-on-one. Kenny is very nice and is great at explaining things on a first grader's level, which came in handy when teaching me. I'm sure he can go beyond that level also, but he quickly grasped his audience's photographic capabilities which included being able to turn the camera on, attach the lens and nothing much beyond.

In the first class we discussed aperture priority, shutter priority, manual exposure and program mode. I remember about half of what I was told and need to read, read, read and study, study, study and practice......

My first assignment was to:

1) shoot two photos of one subject with foreground and background a) with a shallow depth of field and b) a maximum depth of field;

2) Shoot two photos of a moving subject with a) fast shutter speed to "stop action" and b) slow shutter speed to "motion blur"; and,

3) Shoot two photos of one subject outdoors in open shade at a) the lowest ISO setting on my camera and b) the highest ISO setting on my camera.

I haven't taken the ISO setting photos as of yet, but have included some practice of the #1 and #2 part of the assignment in a separate post dated the same as this post. Below is more practice........

This first photo is with a faster shutter speed to stop the motion (1/2500, F5.6, ISO 1600)

By the way, just click on the photos twice to get them full-sized.....








Then, the one below blurs the motion/water more making it sheet-like with a slow shutter speed (1/15, F22, ISO 100).......

The star dogwood below is shot with a maximum depth of field or higher aperture number (Av22).....

Then the same shot below with a shallow depth of field or lower aperture setting (Av 3.5), which makes the star dogwood blossoms more detailed and the background/brick and iron fence slightly blurred.... I only have the kit lens so far, so the aperture only goes so low. If I could make it even lower with a different lens, there would be more of the blur effect of the background images.