Photography Class: Week 4

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I finished up my final week of photography class although the virtual classroom will be left open for a couple more weeks so that we can decompress.   As of right now, there are 10,062 posts in the classroom!  Don didn\’t this we would break the previous record from the last class of 10,000.  This is from 30 students, teacher, and assistants.  It was a pretty active and involved group of students.  This class has changed how I shoot and I will never look at photography the same way again.

This week we used all that we\’ve learned in the past 3 weeks and added some new compositional elements to our toolkit.  Our goal this week was to look through past photographs and find images that meet the compositional criteria and edit them in a new light, getting rid of distractions etc.    Looking back through my photographs was a little depressing because now I see all the faults.  It was a tough pill to swallow and a hard week to get through.

Here are my images from the week.  sooc = straight out of camera (no edits)

cr reflection sooc

My edit.  The hardest part was \’stretching\’ the canvas to create more negative space on the left side.

cr reflection edit

Bowling sooc:

bowling sooc

Bowling After:

bowling after

Chelsea sooc:

chelsea chair sooc

Chelsea After:

chelsea chair color

I was starting to run out of \”good\” images to edit and another student posted something about Barcelona and I remembered this image.  This is a good example of having \”framed\” the image and leading your eye from left to right up the path.  The arrow doesn\’t hurt.

door sooc

door bw

I was pretty much \”done\” with all my previous images and was hitting a real creative block.  Quinn and I were having fun blowing up water balloons on the front porch and this shot came to mind.  I think it reflects my sad feelings about the day and my happy go lucky 4 year old.   This was my submission for critique.

sooc:

walking out sooc

my submitted image:

walking out

The instructors critique which just made my day.  This kind of image really isn\’t my normal style but I\’m happy that I was able to create an image with some real depth and meaning.

Amy, this is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. It\’s a beautiful, incredibly emotional image. The handholding and the way he\’s looking up at you … oh, it just makes me heart want to burst!! Description: http://www.clickinmoms.com/forums/images/smilies/heartpump.gif Once I get past the immediate emotional connection between the two of you here, the most interesting part of the image is the stance of each of you. He\’s holding onto your hand, and he\’s looking at you with adoration and trust and a clear need to have the physical connection … but look at the feet. You are grounded. You don\’t even appear to be moving forward — perhaps it\’s a cautious stance, perhaps it is that everything is a bit more deliberate. But look at his feet — one foot up, ready to go … it\’s almost like he\’s guiding you out. He\’s not bouncing out the door, pulling you along — there\’s still a gentleness in his stance, but he\’s gently prodding you forward, too. It also brings in the reflections/shadows … there\’s the break between the child and his — yours is completely continuous. I am guess since this is a SP that that positioning and snapping at that exact moment wasn\’t deliberate, but oh what a story you captured. Description: http://www.clickinmoms.com/forums/images/smilies/heartpump.gif

I like your crop because of the simplification of it — and standing alone, I wouldn\’t have any reason to ask for more … but the pullback is still very clean and nicely composed … and (now that I\’ve seen it) I actually prefer the complexity of that … the various paths here. We don\’t really know where you and your son are headed because of the blown out door (which was a good choice, though I wish it was about 1/3 stop more deeply exposed just to preserve his face a little more), but in your pullback, there is a trio of doors, two closed, one open … lots of metaphors to be found in that … plus four directions from which the subjects may have come … left, right, behind the camera, down the stairs … and there\’s an uncertainty as to whether they\’ve been journeying together completely or whether they converged at the door and opted to go it together from there (a scenario which I quite like). The composition is strong, and the scan paths are not so very different (for me, in your final — lead in to door, child, hands up to you, down to the reflections, back to the child, and cyclical from there; in your SOOC — come in at the banister, up along the reflections, door, child, hands, you, and back around … but once we make that first scan, there\’s a lot more to explore — none of it distracting). All you\’d need to do is convert and clone out a light switch and an outlet cover (btw, my edit was a simple conversion as a point of reference — yours is much more polished …. I love that you deepened those shadowy reflections): 


And my final image based on her critique.

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Photography Class: Week 3

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We had a break last week in photography class which was a much needed breather after 2 weeks of intense shooting, editing, and posting.  This 4 week class has 30 students and we\’ve already posted 9,000 messages.  Wow.  It\’s been intense, educational, and enlightening.   I\’ll never photograph the same again.

This past weeks lesson was all about finding dark in the light and light in the dark.  This is all very new to me so another step out of my comfort zone.

Here is the image that I posted for my final critique.   This was shot in the complete dark on the dining room table.  The camera was on a tripod and I used an app on the ipad for lighting.

And here\’s the teacher\’s critique.

Amy, what I love about the Buddha image is that you have taken someone else\’s art and used light to transform it into something of your own — your use of light here is wonderful. The crop, however, is very abrupt for me and counters the peacefulness that I\’d associate with the Buddha. If your goal was to be a bit subversive, then throwing me off works – but even then, I\’d question if this was the most effective way to do that … the crop just doesn\’t feel entirely deliberate to me in its placement. 

I want to critique #1 because this one really speaks to me. You have given the artichoke life and a little bit of personality — there\’s something playful about the image, like it just rolled in from the shadows. The light is fantastic, and the reflection is wonderful. I like that you have kept the \”horizon line\” (the foundation on which the artichoke rests) above the halfway point. I wonder about the top edge placement, though — what was behind that decision? I\’d have been inclined to place this one lower, though I see an argument for the upper placement suggesting a little more movement. For comparison\’s sake, here is the lower placement: 
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You asked about some of your technical decisions and how those might have been approached differently. Am I correcting in assuming you were shooting from a tripod or beanbag with such a slow shutter speed? If so, as a general rule, the only reasons why you\’d need to choose a relatively high ISO are a) you want the noise/grain for artistic effect or b) you\’re impatient.  I\’m guessing this may have been a case of the latter? You could slow the SS down even more and go for increased clarity with a lower ISO. Similarly, there really are no limits on the available apertures. IT looks to me like your frontmost leaves may be a bit OOF, so I\’d advocate closing down here for sharpness from front to back on the subject. Shallow DOF is kind of irrelevant here artistically — your background falls into total shadow, so background blur is a nonissue.  I also think you could have gone 1/3 stop darker, as it looks like you\’ve blown a few channels on the highlight edges.  

Great work!!


I had also posted this image as she lets us post more than one and she will pick the one to critique.

And here are some of my other images from the week.

(This is a pullback of the shot above.  The things I will do to ge the shot.  I lit if from above with an ipad)
This is my ghostly self portrait cleaning up the kitchen at the end of the night.  I think I had a 30 second shutter speed on this shot.  

This was completely unstaged.  Quinn was hungry and decided to do a little late night 
grocery shopping in the fridge.  

I think this one is my favorite from the week.  It\’s just so Quinn.  But I have too many distracting things in the background to make it really great.  It\’s the kind of shot only a mom/grandmom/etc could love.  

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