This semester my fellow sophomore graphic designers and I are taking Basic Digital Photography. With a total of six people in my class it is perfect for one-on-one time with the professor, and more personal critiques. The first project to get use to our cameras and shooting in manual mode was to take over 36 images of a female or male figure outside. The goal was to end up with good exposures and experiment with varying camera angles, distance, f/stops, and shutter speeds.
Our professor went on to explain the importance of bracketing is to ensure the best possible exposure. Especially for beginners, it is extremely important to go out and learn what f/stop and shutter speed to use for the certain light conditions being photographed.
For Project One my bath mate kindly agreed to model for me. Right away I had to select the most appropriate settings for the weather conditions. Then I went on and changed the camera settings to allow myself to take more photographs at different settings to find the best exposure.
As long as I can take the best usable image during the photo shoot then I can use Photoshop to enhance it. The trickiest part about photographing people is that facial expression are always changing. The perfect shots are the candid ones (I believe) because they reveal the individuals to the viewer. With bracketing I can then be confident that I will have better chances of finding the perfect image.
The next day of class everyone exceeded the amount of photos required making it that much harder to narrow the selections down to five to edit in Photoshop. Then out of those five we got to choose our best two to print. The featured image is one of the five I decided to edit in Photoshop, but did not end up printing.
With just two weeks of Basic Photography I am already leaning a lot. I can’t wait to advance on my skills since photography is another art form that I love.
Editor’s note: Art majors at Marywood generally have the opportunity to take at least one photography class either as part of their major requirements or as an art elective. Some students even choose to add a minor in Photography. To learn more, check out our Photography page. and our art minors page.
