Photo Class

I have been wanting to take one of the photography classes at Meadowlark Gardens ever since I got my new camera last Christmas, and on Saturday I finally was able to make that happen. The guy teaching the class is a professional photographer and he teaches a whole range of classes, from beginning to advanced, as well as some specialty classes, like wedding photography, and flower and nature photography. I took one called Exposure: Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO--Basics for Beginners. It was really great, and I learned a lot, and especially found that I have a lot more to learn! The whole goal is to get yourself away from the automatic settings and to the manual mode on your camera, with you in control of the camera. So after 2 hours of class and giving us a lot of information, he took us outside to take some pictures. First we played around with shutter speed.

Too high, underexposed

Too low, overexposed

Just right

Next we played around with aperture, trying to blur the background (I learned this is called Bokeh).

He kept stressing that there are no perfect settings, we are in control of the camera , and that the right picture is the picture we like. It's interesting how different settings make such different photos, below.

So now I have lots of practicing to do, and lots of pictures to take. I'm going to try for a week of only manual setting and see what I get.