Confession: I was voted teacher's pet in high school. Yeah, I was that kid. I have always liked school, or I guess I should say I've always liked learning. (School does not always = learning). Maybe that was why I became a teacher. Something about being a lifelong learner, and guiding students to share my love for learning called to me.
Fast forward to my adult life. I still crave learning opportunities, but they are not as readily available as when I was in high school or college. Luckily, when I purchased my DSLR camera, the camera store offered 18 free classes to help new DSLR users get acquainted with their cameras and the basic principles of photography. The courses are offered on Tuesday nights, and due to the fact that I coached on Tuesday nights until this week, this was my first class.
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| My first day with my baby |
I kind of jumped into the middle of a series, skipping over the basic classes, and right into "Light, Inside and Out." This worked well for me, since I borrowed a book from the library before our trip to Oregon to learn about digital photography.
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| I'm a photographer |
Our instructor walked us through the ins and outs of the direction, quality, and temperature of light. We discussed what time is best to take photographs, depending on what your subject is and what outcome you are looking for (detail vs. depth and texture). We also discussed the merits of using flash, slow flash, and rear flash.
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| One of our photos from Salem, Oregon |
One of the biggest things I took away from this session was that there is a lot the photographer can do to improve the quality of her pictures with a knowledge of light, and how it can be manipulated to work for you. Hauntingly beautiful side note: the word photography comes from the Greek words for "light writing."
I am really looking forward to future classes, and playing around with the settings on my camera! I used to think photography was just people with expensive equipment snapping artsy pics. Turns out, it is so much more complicated than that! Aperture, ISO, shutter speed, exposure, then putting it all together to form art...still with expensive equipment though.
What type of class would you like to take just for fun?
Keep dreaming, dreamers!
