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October 17, 2006
Sometimes sunflowers are just too obvious
When you take a beginner's class I guess it's to be expected. Still I found the first assignment a little lacking. I suppose it was just to get everyone in the groove of uploading, etc.
Basic SLR Photography
First assignment: Learn what your camera can do using a checklist. (Helpful, actually, for newbies like me. I learned all kinds of stuff. Not that I will ever use 90% of it, but still.)
Take a photograph of color in nature. Shoot the photo, look at it on the LCD screen, adjust your shot, and retake. Submit two before and after shots and tell what you did to make the shot better.
Perhaps I am just too cynical these days. But I for one went out and took mostly lousy first shots that I knew were terrible and then took a better shot. Also we haven't really gone over aperture and shutter speed, etc so the only way I improved my photos was to get closer, apply the Rule of Thirds, or shift things around a bit.
And I submitted a flower shot. I can't explain it except to say that I got desperate. And the shot was really cool on the huge screen on K.'s MAC and then when I resized it and saved it as a JPEG and uploaded it for the assignment it looked lousy on the Web. Just another flower shot.
Please don't get all defensive if you love flower shots and you take them all the time. I just think they are pretty obvious. Flowers are inherently beautiful and colorful. After the fact I just wished that I had tried to find some other color that was more interesting and a bit less obvious. Oh well.
The instructor chooses one photo from each student that she likes the best and puts it in a folder called Photos of the Week. And she put the sunflowers in there. I liked the mossy photo better, but the sunflowers it is. I feel so lame. Gah!
My Flickr Photoset for Assignment #1
Here's the worst part. I am enjoying the class immensely. But it is a lot of pressure to take the "perfect" shot for each assignment. I go over and over my shots and never feel like any of them are good enough to submit. And. This course is making me really competitive with the other students. I'm not proud of it. At all. But it's hard not to want to take the shots that everyone loves. You all know that I'm a bit skewed and my vision of the world is way out in left field so it's unlikely that anyone will find my shots all that interesting until I do some serious work learning techniques and developing my own personal vision and style.
Posted by grrlTravels at October 17, 2006 4:13 PM
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Comments
Hm. Well, you may think that flower shots are cliche (and I can see where you get that) but I still don't think that a really great flower shot is all that easy to take. I can see why she chose your sunflowers for a photo of the week. The colors are gorgeous, of course, especially with that brilliant blue sky, but I think what I like most about it is the shadows on the leaves. There is such dimension there. Plus, the sunflowers remind me of three slightly dimwitted people standing around waiting for a bus or something.
(And this is why I'm not a professional photo critic.)
Posted by: Mrs Figby at October 18, 2006 11:50 AM
I agree. Flower shots are so cliche. But as cliches go, that is a damn fine sunflower shot. Good enough to be on dorm posters everywhere with the words "bloom where you're planted!" underneath it. Nice job photogirl!
Posted by: Toni at December 7, 2006 7:23 PM