In Module Two we will survey different types of digital cameras that are in widespread use today, discuss their different capabilities and characteristics, and help you determine which might be most appropriate for the uses you plan to make of your photographs. Whether you need to make photographs to capture the important moments of personal experience with friends and family, or need to make photographs for purposes related to your employment or small business, you will find an overview of information to help you here. Along with the time you spend learning about cameras, you should continue to experiment with your own camera and your own interest in photography!
Assignment - Working a Scene in Program Mode
Set your camera or smartphone on Program Mode. Choose an ISO that will allow you to use a shutter speed of at least 1/60 second to help avoid blur from camera shake or movement of things in the scene. Discover a "scene" in your own neighborhood and "work it" in the same manner that Prof. Glendinning did in his lecture example. Your goal is to recognize what attracts you to a scene, and then discover a range of unexpectedly different pictures within that same scene. It may seem silly to have to state this, but please only submit photographs made by you yourself!
Work outdoors quickly and intuitively, taking no more than 10 minutes for photography, but making a lot of photographs as you hunt for new images in the space. Be very aware of how different vantage points give you different opportunities for composition and content changes. For some pictures use the "PLUS" and "MINUS" controls to purposely under and over expose a set of pictures of the same scene, so you can experiment with darker and lighter versions.
Pick two photographs to upload: one should be titled, "FIRST," which should be the first photograph you made of the scene that attracted you as you began this exercise. The other should be titled, "BEST," and it should be one of the photographs you made during the exercise of "working the scene" in which you found new content that is different from what first attracted you.
Your "best" photograph will have the following characteristics: it is well composed; the content of the picture is quite different from the first photograph of the scene; the tonal values of the scene are appropriate to the content of the photograph, whether dark, or light, or normal; the vantage point from which the picture is made plays an important role in its success. (JPEG FILE FORMAT ONLY, please no TIFF, PDF, or others!)
Finally, upload a Statement in which you give a brief description of what attracted you to the scene at first, and a description of the new content that you discovered in your "best" photograph after having worked the scene. Share how it is different in content, not just in the way it looks, from what attracted you to the place at first, whether that difference is subtle or large.
The first shot, taken in program auto mode of a corner of my Mother's house.
This was about my tenth photo of around twenty that I took of this particular area.
TITLE: Working an Outside Corner
DATE: December 30, 2019
I was attracted to the busy nature of the area in particular. It was a fairly compact area, tight, in that it was not a wide area of view. The tools looked interesting piled up against the wall in the corner, each one leaning and resting against the wall at their own angle. My first shot was a wide angle shot, a shot that took it all in, an establishing shot of sorts. From there, I worked in closer and got shots at different angles and heights, as well as at different distances from the objects. Eventually, I choose the shot I did because of how it was somewhat abstracted. It made you wonder a bit about what was there. It's not totally abstracted in that you can still identify the hose reel, you can see part of the top of the shovel. But the rest are just handles that create different leading lines take an eye in and out of the photograph.
There is not a lot of blurriness in the photograph, other than that created by the shallow depth of field (the wall I notice is slightly blurred as is the handle of the garden tool furthest back from the camera.
I took photos that were of the top of the handles, but they seemed to just sit their in the space of the photo. Photos of the tools resting on the ground felt a bit more interesting, but I could have pushed in closer I think, and gotten right onto the ground, even placing my camera on the cement. The middle again, was interesting, in part because of the flow from top to bottom. You can see the top of one handle leaning against the wall, and part of the bottom of the shovel. There was variety in the colour of the handles including the complementary combination of the red handle and the green handle. So it's kind of interesting overall. Maybe not the best but better than the original photo as it makes you look more.
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