My photography course.

[Tracey]

Over the next 10 weeks or so I am enrolled on an "intensive" photography course. I thought I would create a thread sharing my learnings and experiences on the course... my hope is that it will dramatically improve my pictures and post production... and who knows, maybe it might help someone else


So "stay tuned" for further information

[Ed Geraghty]

I'll certainly be following with some interest - maybe at the end of your course I'll understand some of what is said on these forums

[Willie]

It should be great to flow your learnings.  Please share with us.

[Tracey]

OK. I'll see what I can put together... I dont think it will be easy to write my thoughts in an educational way, but I'll do my best, and answer any questions you may have

[Grendel]

I did an ol level in photography as a general study at school and failed spectacularly (as did the whole group) we were taught by our physics teacher and had all the technical side down pat - but not an ounce of artistic interpretation, we failed as our pictures didnt impress the artistic temperament of the markers.
Grendel

[Hedgehog]

Photography, like most art, is one of those subjects where you should learn all the rules then ignore them & follow your heart. The technical side of it is what you need to become familiar with so you can plan & achieve the photo you want, but some interesting effects can come from not having a clue what you're doing.

[Tracey]

I did an ol level in photography as a general study at school and failed spectacularly (as did the whole group) we were taught by our physics teacher and had all the technical side down pat - but not an ounce of artistic interpretation, we failed as our pictures didnt impress the artistic temperament of the markers.
Grendel

This course (at first glance) seems to be well balanced and run by a group of people, some form a technical background, some from an arty background so it may be the right balance.

[Tracey]

Photography, like most art, is one of those subjects where you should learn all the rules then ignore them & follow your heart. The technical side of it is what you need to become familiar with so you can plan & achieve the photo you want, but some interesting effects can come from not having a clue what you're doing.

I think I have the most trouble with the technical side of photography, especially the processing of the photo. When I used to do photography years ago, you had to make sure that you took the photo you wanted to see, and the lab used to process according to their "magic formula", but now those decisions are mine to make, and it takes some getting used to!

[Tracey]

So far so good. I now have Elements installed and working 

This week is/was all about interesting images, and what makes an image interesting. This has involved critiquing other peoples images (and having mine critiqued by others  ), as well as finding different ways to photograph an object of our own choice, trying different angles/viewpoints/crops etc.

For me, the hard part of this first week has been learning how to critique a photo. I'm guessing that the idea behind this task is learning what looks right and what doesnt with other peoples photos, and by doing this you start to learn what works and what doesnt.

Its hard to give open and honest feedback instead of the regular "FAB!!!" and  "Great shot!" type comments, but giving and receiving the "try cropping it" type comments are more helpful than just a "fab" in a general sense, or we'll just go and make the same mistakes over again.

Anyways, enough for now... heres my effort from this weeks assignment... any comments and suggestions are welcome

[Ed Geraghty]

FAB!!! Great shot!

[Grendel]

from memory composition of good shots is something to do with thirds, but for the life of me I can only remember that bit and not what is supposed to happen in the thirds, still your picture starts in the bottom 'third' and ends in the top third of the frame, so it must be great! (I think). Ah well i like the picture anyway.
grendel

[Hedgehog]

You've made life difficult for yourself & the lens by shooting up with such a bright sky as a background... the lens is showing a lot of aberrations from the extremes of light & dark & the sensor has blown out completely on the sky... so that's the technical bit out of the way... compositionally I think it works really well... the trunk winds around leading the eye towards the canopy... & the texture in the bark is good. Overall I'd agree with Ed 

[Tracey]

Thanks Hedge
I think I might try the same shot on a less bright day and see what difference it makes... Thanks for your comments. (I particularly like the bark on the tree, and I didnt really notice the aberrations... sometimes you get carried away when you get a photo you like)

Grendel, there is a rule of thirds, but personally I think it doesnt always work. I've got the gridlines on the software set up for thirds, and it seems to help with any editing/cropping.

Ed, thanks for your critique   

[Grendel]

You could stop down the lens and if you shot in RAW mode you would be able to process in 32 bit and get some of the dynamic range back, I use the levels tool to get back some of the darker details, but then I am more used to playing with astronomical images where you want to get the mid range detail out, without oversaturating the white, (stars) and still keeping a decent black background, for that the levels tool is a great boon :confused:Just thought does your camera have a raw mode?
Grendel

[Grendel]

what abberations are visible are centred in the picture , if you had cropped offcentre they would have made it look wrong I think, I quite like the look of the leaves fringed in colour as they are.
Grendel