Day Three - Still Life in the Classroom

Today's objective was maybe the most difficult yet. Still life photography, where you  arrange an object or objects and then attempt to take an artistic photo might seem easy, but the reality is that it is very difficult. Today, the students nailed this difficult task. The idea today was that the students would use multiples of things we had in the classroom, arrange them effectively, paying attention to light, shadow, background and anything else, then take their photo. We also introduced some new post processing ideas, those being vignetting and sharpening. Nobody found this to be an easy task, but everyone did very well.

Jim takes a very cool look at a bunch of pencils, showing very strong lines and a very interesting look overall.

Annie does a very cool job on some tarot cards. Very smart how the cards alternate between face up and face down.

Kailynne makes a bunch of rolls of tape much more interesting than you might imagine possible.

Benjamin creates a beautiful message from simple office supplies.

Yvonne shows us that candy isn't just for kids; it's for photographers too.

Kerriane created a lot of color and contrast with her arrangement of paper clips.

Celine used the tarot cards too, but created something quite different, yet just as interesting as Annie.

Susan also went with paperclips, but she went in nice and close to do so.

 OK, that's it for another day. Big plans for tomorrow too; let's see what the weather allows us.

Day Two

Today, we went back to the basics and talked about the most easily understood, yet also one of the most helpful ways to make photos look better. Today our topic was the Rule of Thirds and the students used this to quickly make more sophisticated photographs.

Yvonne has done very nicely to move the pigeon out past the rule of thirds point, giving it lots of room to look into the middle of the picture.

Susan got up really close to get this shot of a pigeon. Again, she did well to keep the eyes out of the middle of the photo.

Lauren got a classic shot, along with a nice reflection of a Black Crowned Night Heron.

Kerrianne got in nice and tight to get this action shot of a brown squirrel.

Lush, lovely colors and a group of turtles here in Kailynne's photo here.

Jim did a great job to get a nice, very sharp photo of a Black Crowned Night Heron.

Not only did Celine get the goose closest to us on one of the Rule of Thirds points, but she also managed to get the two Little Egrets on the opposite point as well.

Ben has done a great job of putting the goose just where it works best in his photo.

Annie not only did very well in using the rule of thirds very effectively, but she also used another topic we covered today to perfection. There are tons of effective negative space in her photo.

New Summer, New Group - 2013 - Day One

OK, the summer of 2013 is here and with that, the Columbia Photo Class has sprung up again. This time, there is a mixture of new students, along with some experienced veterans. Today's first class suggests that there will be lots of great photos again this summer.

Day one was dedicated to the photographic staple of focus. The irony of the digital age is that with the modern, ultra sophisticated autofocus on cameras today, sometimes making your camera focus on what you decide, rather than what the camera decides is more difficult than ever. With that in mind, the job of the students today was to show that they are in command of their cameras, and show us good focus in two different photos. On their first photos, their subject was simply to be the closest thing to their camera, have it be nice and sharp and then let the background go out of focus (blurry). In there second photos, the subject still needed to be in focus, but they were also to make it so that there was something in the foreground, in front of their subjects, that was not in focus. Many digital cameras will automatically try to focus on what is closest, but the students were taught, and quickly learned how to control their camera and keep their subjects sharp.

Here are today's results.

Annie has a nice, bright flower in her foreground, while the foliage in the background is clearly not in focus.

Annie again, using the out of focus leaves very near to her to frame the Buddha in the background.

Celine, again with a bright, vibrant flower really close to us and a background that is out of focus so as not to draw our eyes from the flower.

Here, Celine uses the blurred color of the flower to highlight the sharply focused leaves.

Kailynne here chose to focus on the leaves, while leaving the rose blurred and indistinct.

Kailynne again, this time with the foreground plants and flowers being nice and sharp with the flowers in the background fading blurrily away.

Kerrianne's take on the flowered foreground with an urban landscape in the distance.

Kerrianne's foreground tree here is a nice framing device for the things going on in the background.

Lauren has the leaves in the foreground, with nicely indistinct background.

While here, Lauren uses the tree on the left to nicely show off some very interesting light coming into Daan Park.

Lovely, bright little flower in front and a blurry nothingness in the background of Susan's photo here.

Susan shows a very blurred leaf close to the camera, with one much sharper a little further away from her camera.

Yvonne shows us some nice, sharp, new growth  on a tree; doesn't it know that spring has past and we are now into summer?

The base of Yvonne's statue is nice and clear, but the flower in the foreground is nicely blurred out to counter it.

Benjamin shows a nice sharp tree, with some interesting light and nice softness in the background.

Benjamin went with the statue of Buddha as well and the flower in the foreground, even though it is not the focus of the shot ads a nice burst of color.

A bright, vibrant flower certainly leaves no doubt as to what Jim's subject was here.

Jim's second submission uses the leaves in closer to use to frame the red flower the middle.

OK, that's it for day one. Tomorrow is another day, one where we get into some compositional guidelines of what makes a great photo. Expect great things.