Photography Class

The year-long online photography class with Ricky Tims that I'm taking is in week two and I'm liking it very much.  Each week has a focus and a challenge.  The first week's topic was depth of field and after reviewing the video and downloads that Ricky provided I took a gazillion photographs learning how to focus on a single object within a group of objects, changing the aperture setting to change the point of focus.  

This is the photo I submitted for the week one challenge.  There are 250 participants in the class and only a handful of the submitted photos are critiqued by Ricky, but after reading those I see that my photo isn't straight and that there's too much going on in the lower right corner.  

This week the topic is "line," which is, of course, one of the elements of design.  We are to become aware of all the "lines" that are out there if only we will take the time to notice them and then submit a photo of one of these lines.  Ricky wants very simple compositions with the focus strongly on the line.  

I like this one I took but it is too complicated.  I could crop it quite a bit but we aren't supposed to be relying on cropping at this point.  Not to mention that I took it with my iPhone, which is a no-no since I'm supposed to be learning to shoot with a DSL.  Oops!

    

  

I also like this one, but again, I think it doesn't meet the "very simple" requirement.  And the white spot on the table leg is distracting. 

I'm crazy about this close up of Spikey's skin, but there's a lot going on here, too.   Today I'm going to do some more shooting and see if I can photograph one good line, nice and simple. 

 Meanwhile I keep grabbing a camera --any camera-- to shoot whatever strikes my fancy.  Yesterday I went to the Longmont Museum to see an exhibition on Charles Russell and Frederic Remington and asked my companion to take a snapshot of me and this fabulous life-size buffalo.  

And this morning when I awoke the light was so beautiful that I had to go right outside and try to photograph the amazing sunrise.  

There is something wonderful about just capturing the moment, and I think that will always be the main appeal to me of taking photographs.  I want to learn to take great photographs with a great camera, but I think that snapshot photography will probably always be my real love.