very simple

In my now ever-present availability of free time that I’m trying to enjoy while staving off panic attacks about the fact that I don’t have a new job yet I decided to sign up for a photography class. I had been thinking about it for a while, and taking a months-old recommendation from glark, I signed up for a class at photo manhattan. Classes were pretty reasonably priced (certainly as compared to the apparently self-indulgent crap that goes on at the ICP), and I started last week. While I’ve taken film photography classes in high school and college, I really remember very little, and never learned quite a bit of stuff having to do with my digital SLR that I bought 2 years ago. Sure, those pictures of India were pretty, but I took at least 4 times as many pictures as the ones that are actually posted, and the other 3/4 were crap. So I’m taking the Intro to Photography class, and the first class last week was pretty basic. and very helpful. In the interest of keeping content on this blog, I’m going to post my homework here as I go along. The first assignment was purely technical – it was about understanding how light gets into your camera and how it’s read.

1. Find a completely monotone surface (like a brick wall). Take a picture with lightmeter centered, and keeping aperture constant, change only the shutter speed to stop up 2 full stops and stop down 2 full stops.

2. From inside, take a picture that is half window and half wall with the lightmeter centered.

3. Early evening or overcast day. Stand on a busy streetcorner. Take 4 photos at the following speeds: 1/15, 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2. Lightmeter should remain centered for all photos, so will need to compensate by adjusting aperture settings.

Tags: photos