Saturday, August 27, 2011

Week 42 - Seminar in a Book - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of this "Photo Workshop" book I'm reading is titled "Ways of Seeing the Natural World" and talks about learning to see like the camera sees and how to focus your attention.  It also teaches about planning ahead and previsualizing the finished photograph.

The assignment at the end of the chapter was to pick a spot, spend an hour and take 20 distinctly different pictures of something.  I went out back and found a volunteer sunflower that was growing under the bird feeder and worked my may around taking at least 20 different pictures.  It was an interesting exercise and forced me to look at angles I wouldn't normally have thought about like the first picture below which is a side view of the tips of the petals.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Week 41 - Seminar in a Book

I am currently working my way through a book series (well, one of the books anyway) called "Photo Workshop" by Wiley Press (photoworkshop.com).  The book I'm working through is called "Nature Photography" by Nat Coalson.

At this point I've read the first chapter and done the first assignment which was to take a picture in my backyard or local park with an eye to finding what inspires me.  I opted to use my backyard as a location rather that one of the local parks like Kokanee Glacier figuring the point of the exercise was to find a nice photograph in what I would normally bypass as an unlikely place.

Since I already know what sorts of nature photographs inspire me (sweeping landscapes like Ansel Adams or Darwin Wiggett, or the more intimate closeups like I have taken for this assignment), the take-away for my was more about learning to look in unlikely places rather than learning about my style and taste.

Next week, chapter 2.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Week 40 - Eli is Home

Okay, this weeks post doesn't have a lot to do with photography... today we picked up our new puppy.  He's a black standard poodle named Eli.  10 weeks old and 13 pounds.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Week 39 - Best of Project 365 - July

Having looked once again through my pictures from July I have to pick the picture that I loved from the first time I looked at it.  Maybe it's just because it's a picture of Eli, our soon to be new member of the family.