photography lesson 2

The photography class was much better today. It got off to an inauspicious start when the teacher was a good 20 minutes late, but she apologized profusely and continued the class 20 minutes extra to make up the time, so I have no complaint.

Once she did get started, it was a good two hours. It was what I had hoped the class would be (and feared we weren't going to get at all after last week): the teacher explaining basic principles of lighting, defining terms, and answering questions. Just like a real class!

We still have the problem that some of the students have way more experience with the subject than others. But I guess that's inescapable in a class like this, with no skill prerequisite. She did a pretty good job of quickly answering the one very advanced student who tried to engage her on more advance theory issues, without letting him derail the discussion at hand. (It seems like there's always one guy like that, who doesn't really need the class & just wants to talk about his particular interest. Which, I must say, really annoys me. If you have something esoteric you want to discuss with the teacher, that doesn't apply to anyone else, wait until the end of the class!)

On the other hand, I got the distinct impression that some of the advanced students were annoyed with the beginners (like myself) who didn't intuitively grasp the concept of converting among shutter speed, f-stop and ISO values, and actually needed to have it explained to us. I guess they felt the same way I felt about that one guy: that we were derailing the class by needing to spend time on something so basic.

She had brought props for us to take photos during the class, but we spent so much time talking that we never got to that. Instead we did an exercise where one person had to sit with the light from the windows falling on only one side of their face, and we took light readings on both sides and compared our readings.

(Coincidentally, my dad just emailed me that he is putting his light meter in the mail for me tomorrow. I should have it by the next class. So exciting! Best of all, I got outbid on both those meters on Ebay. So I don't have to pay for a superfluous meter. The Sekonic that I had bid on ended up going for $86!)

Our homework last week was to write down our personal lighting challenge, and bring 1-3 photos that illustrate this challenge. Well, my personal lighting challenge is that I don't know a damned thing about lighting. Which is what I wrote and turned in. For the photo I found this big stone carving of a magnolia on the ground at the Duke Gardens. It would make a great collage element. I took a photo of the center of it (it's too big to get the whole thing without a ladder), and wrote a note asking how I could make the image more contrasty since it is in full shade and will never get much sunlight. Also I turned in a couple of photos from the Houston art car parade which illustrate a problem I've been having with taking photos in low light.

She had asked me to bring in some examples of my collage to show her, which I did after class. I talked to her briefly about my photo needs, which are a bit odd -- I need to learn how to take photos of small objects and interesting shapes or textures that I happen to see, to use as collage elements. I also need to learn how to expose a variety of objects consistently, so I can piece them together harmoniously in one collage. Learning how to compose and light a perfect shot would be nice, but that's not really why I'm taking the class & a lot of my photos will look really bad from that point of view.

She seemed interested in this & gave me extra instructions for our homework -- this week we're supposed to "bracket" our photos, meaning take a light reading, take one shot at the correct exposure, then take one a half f-stop up and a half f-stop down. But she told me to do three levels of bracketing: go .5, 1, and 1.5 f-stops up and down for each shot. Woo hoo, I have special homework!

I was all excited about my homework so Georg and I went out to the Duke Gardens this afternoon and took some photos. Almost all of which were atrocious. But hey, that's the only way to learn, right? Part of the problem was that it was overcast, with nice soft light, when we left home, but turned sunny and too bright, just when we got there. If I have time, I'll go back and retake some of the photos before the next class. I also need to buy nice inkjet paper so I can make decent prints. I wonder if Wal-mart will make prints from a CD?