Delaware Art Museum Class # 6: Shooting Manually, Equivalent Exposure, Light Painting

This was a GREAT class!  At least for me, our teacher answered some of my nagging questions and gave us something really fun to work on. 

I'll start with the fun thing. Light Painting!

I think the whole class really enjoyed this exercise.  Our teacher set up a camera on a tripod.  We set it to manual at these settings: 10 second shutter speed, f22 and ISO 100.  We used a 2 second timer (which prevents the shake of my camera so you get a very still shot) and then turned out all the lights.  Then he took a flashlight and shined it only on the basket and the fruit.  As you'll see below, depending upon where you shine the light on the fruit you'll get different effects.  The above bowl of fruit was just sitting on a basic brown school type table.

We added the sheet of paper to demonstrate that your table is a different then of course it will not have the same black (sitting in space) appearance.

We all took turns trying different shots. The person who constructed the above shot, shined on the fruit from predominantly behind and then faced the flashlight at the camera.

 What's interesting about the above picture is that the flashlight created a square reflection on the table. Very fascinating.

The picture above is with the flashlight shining on only one side of the basket.

We called this picture "The Midnight Fruit Thief."   The hand is blurry, of course, because it's a 10 second shutter speed and she is moving.

This foggy picture isn't a very good picture, but it demonstrates something.  While this picture was being taken over the 10 seconds, I was moving my hand in front of the camera in a circle, but because of the long exposure my hand is not even perceived.  Just creates this foggy look. (This has nothing to do with the light painting, as the lights were on for this one, just thought it was interesting).

This is really fun to play around with!  Enjoy!

Delaware Art Museum Class #2: (Part 3 - Looking for Diagonals)

In addition to teaching us about the shutter speed, the aesthetic composition pointer was to look for diagonals. Namely, look for lines that go from one corner of your picture to another and even have a secondary line coming off of the diagonal like this picture I took of my daughter while walking by a nearby creek, spinning her new found walking stick...

 This happens to be a large rock that has apparently been there for as long as my husband has lived in our neighborhood, which was since he was a child.  It used to be referred to as the poke-a-dotted rock, but as you can see, it is no longer pock-a-dotted.  But, it's natural shape creates a diagonal!

 

There is also something called "an implied diagonal" which can be understood in this picture of my neighbor playing in the snow, who, after falling when trying to catch the ball dropped the ball at a diagonal from his body... This picture was take at an ISO of 3200 because of the snow, and the exposure was 1/200 of a second.  I think I should have made the exposure longer as it is too dark.

 Here are two other picture that demonstrate a diagonal, but nothing exciting on the shutter speed.  The basketball hoop was an ISO of 400 and shutter speed of 1/30 of a second.

I like this picture.  I'm not really sure why.  My daughter is relaxed next to my husband watching a show.  1/8 of a second exposure and ISO of 1600.

 I think this one demonstrates the idea of a diagonal (the log), and something branching off of the diagonal (my daughter's feet and legs), pretty well.

These were taken at a farm in Chadds Ford, PA.  Curving Roads help with the diagonals and as well as farm fences, crops in the fields, sloping hills and railroad tracks.  Children playing with horses make a nice implied diagonal..

One more diagonal...

One final thing he said was that where the eyes are looking can create a line as well!  So, pay attention to the direction of your subjects eyes.

Delaware Art Museum Photography Class #2: (Part 2: Shutter Speed)

The second thing we explored in our second class was shutter speed.  The range of my camera is from 30 seconds to 1/4000 of a second.  I can keep my shutter open longer with a setting called "bulb" but I haven't explored that too much yet (but that is how you would take a pictures of the stars in motion and that kind of thing).

Near by me, is a dog park.  I figured dogs in actions would help me test my faster shutter speeds. This beautiful, big, white dog was giving his head a good shake!  This picture was taken at 1/1250 of a second shutter speed and an ISO of 3200.  So, when I shot at a quicker shutter speed, the ISO needed to be higher in order to make the camera more sensitive to light so that I could get the picture clearly. But when I got much beyond 1/1250 the picture became too dark.

Mr. Beagle was hysterical.  Everyone else was playing quietly, but boy did he let us know he was there! I kept hearing him but wasn't watching him when he was baying.  Right as I was getting ready to leave, I kept my eye on him and out it came...

 I was curious about shooting fire at high speed as it is beautiful to watch but in the past, my fireplace shots have always been washed out because my flash would come on and I didn't know how to correct that.  This first shot was set at 1/80th of a second, hand held, with an ISO of 3200.

1/125 of a second, ISO of 3200...

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I tried using my tripod and taking a longer shutter speed.  The first shot was taken with a 25 second shutter speed and an ISO of 3200.

And, this one was 30 seconds with an ISO of 3200. Which, although brighter, are much grainier.

Capturing the motion of water is always fun, and I think beautiful. These were taken at 1/500 of  second shutter speed and an ISO of 1600.

And, I was excited to be able to capture glistening ice on my Japanese Maple at night time...

Delaware Art Museum Photograph Class #2: Shutter Speed and Looking for Diagnols (Part 1: Special Effects)

I found this class to be particularly amusing and of interest.  One of my biggest problems has been being able to shoot at night time and capture the effect of light at night without flushing it out with the flash.  For example, the lights on a Christmas Tree. 

The setting "TV" on my camera stands for "time variable", which basically means I can set the amount of time the shutter is open (shutter speed) but the camera automatically sets the ISO and the aperture.

One of the things we learned is that you can generally hand hold your camera at 1/80 of a second without blurring the picture unless you have a stabilizer on your lens at which point you can usually do 1/8 of a second for a hand held shot.  But, if you want to have a longer shutter speed than 1/8 it's best to use a tripod or to stabilize the camera with something. There are other ways to stabilize your camera if you don't have a tripod.

A fun exercise we did was setting our shutter speed at 3.5 seconds and then moving the camera around in circles to get a blur.  I went home and did this with a few different things.  This may seem obvious, but I actually had to think about it.  When you have a longer shutter speed, the first click you hear when you press down is the main portion of the picture and then for 3.5 second whatever you do with your camera is what gives the effect.  I wasn't sure if the effect comes first and then the final picture, but that is not the case.  Here are a few samples of this kind of "art."

Below, I was trying to write the letter "L" in cursive in the frame.  At first I was making the "L" motion too large so it exceeded the scope of the initial shot.  Once I realized that I got something closer to an "L" in the second picture below....

 

 

Our instructor told us about a shot he did at a Mexican food restaurant.  While shooting the strobe light signs, he moved his camera around and it made a really interesting effect.  Apparently strobe light flash on and off, unperceived by your eye, so it make an especially interesting picture which apparently is hanging in a museum in Germany.  A fun thing to play around with!

Delaware Art Museum Photography Class #1

After years of taking pictures automatically, and not knowing how to properly take them manually, my dear husband gave me the gift of a photography class at the Delaware Art Museum.  I hope to post here the things I am learning so I don't forget and to reinforce in my own mind what I'm learning.  I'd value your thoughts and feedback on what you like, don't like, tips and the like.  There is so much to learn, I'd love to hear what you know. 

In our first lesson our teacher Danny Schweers began by teaching us about ISO and what is commonly understood as the rule of thirds.

To focus on understanding ISO our teacher had us set our camera on P, which is Program Mode.  On Program Mode the camera sets the shutter speed and aperture for you and allows you to change the ISO.  What was interesting to me was that the higher ISO captures motion better, but you will observe more noise.

For anyone interested, I shoot with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i.

Here are my homework submission for this class.  Wasn't really working on beauty but rather understanding what the ISO in motion. Here is an example of my daughter playing the piano.  At a lower ISO (first image) the motion is very blurry but the higher I got, the clearer she became...

ISO 100

ISO 400

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

Another example I thought was interested was shooting my fireplace.  The higher ISO showed more detail on the wood...

ISO 100 (if you look closely at this one, on the left of the picture, you'll see a spark that shot up.  The shutter was open for 1 second so apparently that is what the spark did - shot up and made a loop - in the course of 1 second.  Pretty fun!

ISO 400

ISO 1600

 ISO 3200

That's all for lesson number one.  If you have any thoughts, or suggestions, I'd love to hear!