Early Practice

On June 4, 2011 I took a beginning photography class at Gallery Arts in Bountiful, UT. That afternoon I took my girls to a new park and tried to practice what I'd learned. I took tons of photos just to get these two but I am proud of how they turned out and want to make sure and include them on this blog.

The professional photographer teaching the class basically said to keep the ISO as low as possible, put it in Aperture-priority (Av) mode, and use f/2.8 for a single person portrait.  So I put in those settings and tried to get the girls to smile.  I had just purchased my 50mm/1.8 lens (the only lens I have that can make an aperture of 2.8), so it was fun to experiment but I felt I had to really get in the girls' faces to get as close as I wanted to.

(ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/1000, Av mode)

We were told to put people's eyes as close to the top of the frame as we could, but I also wanted to capture Kenzie's tuft of hair.

(ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/800, Av mode)

Sydney was peering through a little window for this and I loved the leading lines but when I got home and examined it, I saw how the lines on the top are out of focus and a little distracting, the pink person in the back is unnecessary, and the teacher repeated that the subject's face shouldn't be right smack in the center of the photo, so I cropped it.

I was a little nervous about cropping the photo so close and taking out part of her head, but by putting her eyes in the top left power position, the photo is more interesting, her eyes look more piercing, and the leading lines of the wood are more purposeful.  This picture makes me smile!

(ISO 200, f/2, 1/80, Av mode)

At the class we had a teenager act as a model and we first practiced taking his picture inside by a window.  When I got home I wanted to recreate that lighting and composition since I can't always be outside to use natural light in photography but my girls can't hold still and I really wanted to update my Facebook profile pic, so I decided to try a self-portrait.  I opened the curtains in my bedroom, sat a stool by the window, turned off the bedroom light (so the color of light would be uniform), set my camera on a tripod, and had Sydney hit the shutter repeatedly as I repositioned myself.  When a person leans forward, it conveys a feeling of interest and I know I need to have my face at a slight angle to the camera to be more flattering so this is my favorite of the pictures we captured (and one of the few that wasn't blurry from Syd moving the camera as she clicked).  When I posted it to the Gallery Arts Facebook page and asked for critique, they replied that it has great lighting and positioning but my arms are in a masculine position.  A woman can do masculine or feminine poses but a man can't do feminine poses.  I believe it's the closed fist facing the camera that makes it masculine.  A feminine hand would be open and more delicate.  But I like the strength in the pose because I feel it conveys my personality.  I asked how to learn more about posing and was told that's in the intermediate class (which I hope to take soon!).  When I put this photo on Facebook, I had several people say they loved the photo and a few that didn't like it being off-center.  I'm quite pleased with it though!