This week I had my first photography class. It was quite different and exceeded my expectations!
We started by introducing ourselves, our interests in photography, our country. The teacher told us a little bit about himself and started with photography.
This semester’s goal is to think photography. Although he said he didn’t want to categorize photography, he gave us 3 main photography “ways” – documentary, art expression and wild photography. He wants us to try out the last one!
- Street Photography – go on the street and take pictures of anything we find interesting.
- Think – Is this important to take a picture of?
- No limits – Do not limit ourselves on the things, objects we take pictures of.
- Find simple themes – For example “a cup” and do a series of pictures with that.
The teacher also mentioned that we have to stop constantly comparing ourselves to other (like it happens on social media) and just discover ourselves and what really interests us.
Analog vs. Digital
We were explained that most of really old analog cameras still have more definition of contrasts than digital ones. This semester we can work with both but I decided to work only with analog because I just like it. Next lesson we will understand better analog photography because the first lesson was only introduction. I believe that analog photography is now trendy and that some people just do it because they like it and it is nostalgic but for me there was always a kind of magic into it… and I want to understand more about it!
Research:
We were told to search about HDR phoography, EV numbers and Raw-Therapee.
To explain us about HDR photography he handed out this postcards he made with his own picture:
So, in a normal situation, with a digital camera, these contrasts wouldn’t be achievable. We would have to chose between having the rocks in detail but a really dark, almost black sky or, have a detailed sky with the clouds but a really dark ocean and rocks. HDR solves that problem with the contrasts. HDR – High definition (or dynamic) Range. So HDR as I would describe it now is a way of achieving what the human eye sees.
EV numbers – Exposure Value numbers. Apparently it is a combination of the camera shutter speed and the f-number. I researched a bit on pinterest:
I hope to understand more about this on the next class.
Raw-Therapee – a raw-image processing program that they have in the university and that we should “play with”.
At the end of the class we were given a task for next lesson:
- Try to learn how to “feel the moment”
- Choose 1h of my life and document it with 3 pictures only.
- It doesn’t matter if it’s with the camera phone. It is just a small exercise.
So this is my task! 🙂
Just one last thing,
I took a picture of the studio because it was so different and comfy. We even had tea during the lesson! Apparently it’s something normal here…
