The first assignment for lesson two is

Take a landscape photograph using each available aperature on your camera, while using a 1/60 second shutter speed for each shot, similar to… the example in this lesson.

I was hoping to have a nice day around here somewhere so I could take advantage of one of the zillion gorgeous landscape views that are around my area.  Unfortunately, I was at a funeral last week on our one nice day and I was too anxious today to wait any longer.  It was frigid here today so I settled on taking my pictures for the assignment from my back deck.  They aren’t terribly exciting but I think I get the point of the assignment.  ISO is set to 100 for all of these photographs.

Below – 1/60, f 22

Below – 1/60, f 20

Below – 1/60, f 18

Below – 1/60, f 16

Below – 1/60, f 14

Below – 1/60, f 13

Below – (we all recall that they should all be at 1/60 so I’m going to stop typing that now.) f 11

Below – f 10

Below – f 9

Below – f 8

Okay, so we all get that these are getting more and more blown out as I go along, right?  I don’t need to upload f 7.1, f 6.3, f 5.6, f 5, f 4.5, f 4, f 3.5, f 3.2, f 2.8, f 2.5, f 2.2, f 2 and f 1.8 for you to see that they get whiter and whiter as we go along until the final two images are completely white.  Do you trust me that I did my assignment and I took them?  I just don’t want to sit here all night uploading each of them as I’m sure you don’t want to scroll through each of them. 

Anyway, it’s a good experiment to see.

By the way, for those of you who don’t think ISO is so very important (like me a few short months ago) I offer the two following pictures.  Initially, I had my ISO set at 400.

First, I offer you this picture.  ISO 400, 1/60 sec., f 22

and compare that with this one.  ISO 100, 1/60 sec., f 22

If you’re still with me (you have to admit this is a fairly dull post), I am pretty excited to share that some of these concepts I’ve been struggling with for so long seem to finally be taking root in my head!  I am beginning to think shooting in manual mode may actually happen for me some day after all!  That’s pretty exciting to me.

Stay focused!

-A 

Sorry I’ve been MIA all week.  I got the flu on Tuesday and was not functioning until today.  On to Assignment two – which is…

take pictures of a subject from various viewpoints (near, far, from above, below, behind).  Post… along with an explanation of which you think is most visually appealing and why.

We woke up to an ice covering this morning here where I am.  This assignment started out with me taking a series of random photos on my back deck to capture the ice for my photo a day blog.  When I pulled this one up on screen, I thought it had potential for being the subject matter for this assignment.

I went back outside (this time with my ISO set at 100 instead of 800!) to see if I could capture the ice from interesting angles.  Too bad it had begun to melt so it was a bit fragile. 

Since I was on a deck, I couldn’t go too far out from the subject matter.  Also, I was using my 50 mm fixed lens so I couldn’t zoom in or out with anything but my feet.  So, I played with different depths of field.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

And then I attempted to move a chair to get more angles and CRASH.  We were done.

I think number three is my favorite.  Probably because the repetition of the ice.  All of these pictures are ROOC.

I don’t think this is what the teacher had in mind for the assignment so I think I’ll probably attempt it again with another subject matter but it was fun trying before the ice fell! 

Assignment number one is to

take at least one abstract photo based entirely on some of the compositional rules we talked about.  Subjects should not be recognizable.

The compositional rules discussed in lesson one were

• The Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean
• The Triangle
• The Frame Within A Frame
• Leading Lines
• The Circle
• Rhythm
• Negative Space

For the Rule of Thirds this was my take

For the Golden Mean

The Triangle

Frame within a frame

Leading Lines

Circle

Rhythm

So, are they unrecognizable?  Probably not.  I’m sure you can figure out what everything is.  I’m not very good at finding the abstract in the ordinary but it was a fun assignment to try to "see" things that way.  I plan to watch the world around me to see if I can see more ways to apply the rules.  Thanks for looking!