Photography, photography, photography

Well, what can I say about the last few lessons in my photography college course.
First off we were learning about landscapes, depth of field, aperture the best lenses to use etc.
Do I have any examples to show you.....urmmmm. No.
You see the problem is no matter how interested in photography I am and how much I want to take endless pictures to get better at it, life continually gets in the way. Last week I ventured out with Kara (2 and a half year old daughter) to Tooting Common with the full intention of letting her play in the play ground and then taking some shots. Unfortunately she insisted on using her scooter on the way so it took us over half an hour to make the 15 minute walk, then she wanted to be behind the camera every time it came out of the bag and eventually the sun was too low to get any decent shots. Then through the week as we all know here in blighty, at this time of year we go to work in the dark and leave work in the dark. So theres absolutely no chance to get any thing done through the week.

The last lesson I had we covered portrait photography. Once again we played with the basics like framing (never frame your subject at a joint. Knees, elbows as it looks weird) and focus (always focus on your subjects eyes no matter where in the frame they are) as well as some new stuff like exposure compensation and flash intensity. All adjustable from your dslr's menu.
It was a very interesting lesson from both a practical side and theory. Example, put your camera in portrait photography mode (not the, do all your thinking for you, setting on the top dial but using the picture type selection in the menu) this will disable the flash, causing shutter speed problems in dim light. But, adjusting the exposure compensation by knocking it down a notch or two and this will increase the shutter speed. Its these little tricks that I'm really interested in learning.
Once again I have no examples to show you but this time it isn't because of life getting in the way. I do have quite a lot of portraits that I shot in the class of all my class mates but, without their permission, I'm not about to splash their faces all over the interweb. I'm sure they wouldn't mind but its wrong to do it without asking them. I'm sure you understand.

Focus, Smile then Click

Its been a while since my last post but things have been a little hectic here in the Abyss. Holidays, family crisis', darts and college have kept me quite the busy bee these last couple of months.
The title of this episode refers to the college course I'm attending. Every Wednesday evening I drive over to Putney School of Arts armed with my DSLR ready to be versed in the finer points of photography and I am happy to say that slowly, but surely, the complex manual controls of the camera are becoming clear to me. So with Canon EOS450 DSLR in hand its off to college I go.

Weeks 1 & 2

During these lesson the possibilities of shutter speed were shown to me, so over the following weeks I experimented with the many different uses of shutter speed, combined with motion, low light and a few other factors to try and make it interesting.

This picture was taken in the Sample Room at Young's Brewery in Wandsworth. The brewery has been closed for a few years now but due to the long history of brewing on this site (500 hundred years and counting of continual brewing by one establishment or another) the owners and developers of the site have kept a micro brewery going in order to carry on the brewing legacy. The Sample Room is where this small amount of ale is made available for consumption to the chosen few. The picture was taken using f/3.5 1/8 second ISO400. It was my first attempt at indoors photography in low light with no flash.

Personally, I think it turned out quite well.

Weeks 3-6

The following few lessons explained the use of different ISO settings, aperture settings and a brief explanation of Servo AI.This picture was taken on the north bank of the Thames just East of Putney bridge. The picture was taken using f/11 10 second exposure and ISO200



Finally we were asked one week to take some shots of things that were a particular colour. My colour was black.

This picture is of (in case you hadn't guessed) a coat hanger hanging off a door. f/5 1/60sec exposure ISO1600



For this one I drew lines on a blank piece of paper to try and make the picture more interesting than just a pen on paper. I experimented with crazy scribbles, horizontal and finally vertical lines. I consider this to be one of the best ones, the lines guide your eye both to the pen, then the lid and beyond. f/4.5 1/60 sec exposure ISO800

Finally this picture was taken using f/5 1/80sec exposure ISO1600

Can you guess what it is.

If you have any questions regarding the pictures don't be afraid to ask and if any of you out there are avid photographers I'd love to hear any tips or advice you would care to offer.

Till next time......

The voice has spoken.