09 10

18 September 2008

Photography Exercise

About two weeks ago I discovered Me Ra Koh Photography Blog. I just love her pictures. I decided that since I am in need of a photography teacher, and Me Ra posts tips and exercises, she's going to be my new teacher. One of these days I'll buy her DVD. In the mean time, I tried some of her stuff yesterday while we were outside doing our Outdoor Hour nature study/play on the SWING stuff. Oh baby oh baby, did it ever turn out well!!



This is bark on the tree in our front yard. It's a maple. Up close and very personal. I just love the narrow depth of field, which is exactly what the settings were supposed to be for.



This little squirrel was so incredibly cooperative. I've got several other shots of him that didn't turn out as well. Monkey stood right next to me and told me about the squirrel and his eyes. All animals have eyes. Monkey announces that pretty regularly these days. I couldn't believe how close he let us get. I don't have that big of a lens; just the regular stuff that a nice camera come with. I was right under him.

Ma Ra Koh said what settings to put your camera on:

All the above images were shot with my Sony 350 and 35mm lens. The 350 is a great DSLR that is super easy to travel with and has fantastic color! I was at a 1.6 aperture for extreme blur in the background. My shutter speed was 1/500 or 500th of a second. When I was outside shooting the blue steps and molding, I could be at a 100 ISO. But when I came in the house, I lost light and needed to bump up to a 400 ISO.


So that's where I started. And a whole bunch of my pictures didn't turn out. But the ones that did. Let me just tell you how happy I am with these two pictures! The last 4 pictures of my Outdoor Hour post are using her directions, then playing with the shutter speed to make the picture look like it'd have enough light. I have never felt so competent using my manual settings! This stuff is exactly why I've been wanting to take a photography class. Only this is more fun: I get to choose what I'm shooting! I'm not sure that this will be directly useful in doing Kate's wedding pictures, but it's definitely making me a better photographer and that can't possibly hurt!

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