week four.

Ok, I don't just randomly put band-aids on my fingers with smiley faces. I had a legitimate excuse for this one. That day in Forensics class we were doing blood typing and we had to test our blood. Therefore I had to cover the "wound" with a band-aid.

The pink socks are my socks and the argyle ones are my mom's socks. When I don't know what to take pictures of I have a tendency to take pictures of feet. This one actually worked too. :)

This week I struggled with what I wanted to take pictures of. I like taking pictures of nature, but there are only so many snowy mountains I can take pictures of. Also, in order to take nature pictures it requires me to be outside, and it is negative degree weather outside! I took pictures at a bridge in Eagle River and I was only outside for about 10 minutes when I had to go home. Luckily things turned around on Monday and Tuesday. Instead of moping around not knowing what to take pictures of I decided to try to take some still-life (not nature) pictures. When I went into Dan's studio and he looked at my pictures he liked the still-life ones the best. One of them I didn't even mean to put on the thumbdrive because it was just a picture of my band-aid with a smiley face on it. I think I was just thinking too hard about what makes a good picture. Now I know that the daily little things in life are the most interesting things.
Today I went to my first PPA meeting. PPA stands for Professional Photographers of America. The photographers in Alaska come together on most Tuesday nights and talk about the different aspects of photography. Tonight we went to a fellow PPA member's house and when we got there there was a room full of people, probably about 16. When Dan and I stepped into the room they were discussing how they all price their Christmas cards. It was mind boggling to think that if I pursue this career further and when I'm older open a studio, I'm going to have to price everything and deal with the financial things. One piece of advice they gave to a new photographer was to start with prices low when you first start your business, then as it grows raise the prices. I think it is so cool that they have an organization that allows photographers new and experienced to come together and share advice with each other. They have Show and Tell during thier meetings where some of the photographers can choose to bring in a piece of work that they are most proud. After they show thier work and everyone praises it, it is time for the critiques. There was this one photographer there who, from my impression is a newbie. He thanked everyone for thier praises about his work, but he really wanted them to critique it so he can grow as a photographer. I absolutely loved his picture. It reminded me of Twilight. He took a family portrait down at some port in Anchorage. The family wanted something different and crazy, which is exactly what they got. One of the critiques he got was to make sure that other people know the story of the picture. They said if he was to enter that piece into a competition the judges wouldn't understand the story like he does. The parents had thier backs to the camera while the children looked as if they were walking away and leaving the "nest". The meeting lasted about an hour and a half from the time Dan and I got there. It was a really great experience to see how it all works. I want to go back to another one sometime, because it gives me a better idea of how the whole photography business works in a larger scale with competition.

Robert Bergman: A Patient Man.

During my last meeting with Dan we talked about Robert Bergman. He asked me to anaylze/ talk about his pictures. So....here it is.

1) (SIDE) I think the colors in this picture are absolutely exquisite!! The blue and the red on the background really make her face POP! Just the serene, fierceness of her facial expression makes this picture great. She is just a regular person, not a model--- an average human.This is my favorite picture of his so far that I've seen.






2) (BELOW) The lines of this picture are great. There are vertical lines on the wall behind him and he is wearing horizontal stripes on his shirt, which make us look at his face. He is a normal person. That is what I really really love about Robert's work. He shoots real people on the street, not models that are all spruced up. His pictures show a story of the person he photographs.

3) (BELOW) Another thing I really like about his pictures is that he knows how to utilize color with his composition. The red of her hair and the red of her lips connect with the rust background behind her head. It makes her skin come off the page, her face, and outfit. He is a color genius!!

Three pictures shown were taken by Rober Bergman.

week three.

I kind of stumbled upon this log pile on my way back home to get my tripod. When I take pictures I try to look for the different textures in the plants or elements compared to the background. 

One thing that I need to keep in mind when taking pictures this winter is that snow and white trick the camera. It underexposes the picture because all it sees is the bright white and decides to lower the exposure. As a result it underexposes the picture or in other words, makes it darker than it is. In order to fix that problem it would be best to overexpose it a stop or two. For a gray, cloudy day as a rule of thumb (for me at least, because I have to shoot at an f-stop of 5.6) it is good to shoot at an ISO of 400 to let enough light in. When shooting pictures (for me) , the ISO is probably the first thing for me to change, then the shutter speed (SP). This next week I am going to work on my ISO. Last week I kept the ISO usually at 100 and didn't change it. I was focusing on the shutter speed exposure. Now that I have f-stop and SP down, I think it is time to throw ISO into the mix and see how that goes. To help me see the relationship between all three things, I am going to make a flashcard to carry around with me when I take pictures. Also, when taking portrait pictures I need to watch the eyes and head placement of the subject. No one wants to look up the nose of someone or just see the whites of their eyes. Lower the person's head and ask them to move their eyes over a little.
We looked at the pictures I took and messed around with them on Photoshop. We enhanced the sharpness on some and played with the color of some. I am really interested in Photoshop and want to learn how to use it. As Dan was updating something on his adobe photoshop, he had to go to the adobe website and there I saw that you can get free trials of photoshop. I'm excited to look at that....maybe someday I'll get the real thing. :)
At the very end of the meeting, we looked on the internet at some different photographers. Such as: Robert Bergman and Vincent Laforet. The one that intriuged me the most was Robert Bergman. We listened to an interview with him and a news reporter where it told a little about himself. He started shooting pictures at the age of 6, which I think is amazing. Now he is 65 years old and has had decades of experience. He takes mostly portraits of people on the street. The colors and composition of his pictures are stunning. He gets very close up to the person's face and takes the picture against a great background. Not until just recently has Robert Bergman been found. He kept pretty quiet about his pictures and only publishing one book. He is having an exhibition of his pictures that he has patiently been waiting to show to people. I admire that he has waited so patiently for his fame.
I can't wait to learn more next week!! :D

Second Meeting.

The sun is soooo b-e-a-utiful!!

If you look really close on the leaf you can see some frost. The days when everything started to frost I went outside to take cool pictures of the frost. Sadly, I could not take a macro pictures of the frost because I don't have a macro lens...but nonetheless, I took this great shot!!

The first thing we do when I arrive at the studio is review my pictures I had taken. Last week Dan asked me to take pictures with different white balances and see which one looked the best for the picture. He had given me the assignment to go into a gymnasium and see which white balance fits. I did that and while we were looking at the pictures the flash white balance looked the best. Although the flash didn't fire it still looked good. But, just to make sure that that white balance wasn't just a fluke, he asked me to go back to the gym and take another picture with flash WB. Some of my other pictures were kind of blurry because I had set my shutter speed too slow and my hand made the camera shake, causing the picture to be blurry. I tried taking pictures of the full moon on Monday, but they were blurry. He gave me some tips on how to reduce the blurriness of the picture: mount the camera on a tripod and use a self timer to avoid shaking the camera when you take the picture. I am definitely going to try that because I really want a cool picture of a full moon...but i will have to wait another 28 days for another full moon. After reviewing my pictures, a family of six came to the studio for family pictures. Seeing how to shoot family pictures was very good for me. I got to see how to place all the people and different poses. One thing I noticed was that a photographer must be able to problem solve in any photoshoot because not everything goes as planned. Last week we had the problem of 6 month old Jacob crying all the time, and this week Dan didn't have enough platforms for the family to stand on the make the proportions look good. So, instead of having really tall people standing on platforms and really short people standing on no platform, Dan quickly thought to get stools from his house and have two kids kneel on them. That seemed to work just fine because he only took the picture from the waist up. After the family left, Dan gave me some homework to do for next Tuesday. He wants me to post things on my blog, find other photography blogs that I like, watch a photography movie he gave me, and most importantly take different pictures (variety). I think I'll try to go up to Skyline, Highland, or even go out to Hatchers Pass before too much snow comes. Things are going well with my mentorship, although the whole ISO, Shutter speed, and F/stop thing all working together is still a little fuzzy, but one of these days I'll understand.

First Meeting.

This was the week of Halloween. I love the textures of the pumpkin....and the gooey stuff inside it. :)

Today was a very long meeting. It was my first 3 straight hours and boy did I learn a lot! First, we looked at all the pictures I had taken last week. In my pictures, I needed to think about what is in the background. What is in the background can disturb what you are trying to focus on. I also needed to work on my lighting again. This time he told me about white balance and how it makes the picture look normal. All light has a temperature and that makes a color. So in a gym the lighting will be greenish-blue and sometimes orange. Regular light bulbs make pictures look orange and warm. To make the lighting look normal you need to go to the WB button and select the proper environment you are in. The best thing he showed me about his was that you can custom white balance your picture, which makes the picture look 10 times better! After about 30ish minutes of talking about my pictures, a family of 3 came to take pictures of their little boy, Jacob (he wasn't quite 1 years old yet). I got to see how the whole shooting process worked. It made me realy excited to think that I can do that someday. He had to fix the lighting, get the proper camera gear, etc. for the baby. During the photoshoot the baby started crying all the time. I tried to help it stop crying by shaking one of his toys above Dan's head, but that only worked half the time. I'm not sure if I could take good pictures of a baby that won't smile or look at the camera. Baby pictures are hard to shoot, but it isn't impossible it just takes a lot of extra time. After we finally finished the baby photoshoot, it was back to more teaching. We talked a little bit about depth of field. For example at f-stop 3.5 it has a bigger opening but less depth of field. At f-stop 11 it has a smaller opening but more depth of field. When looking at my pictures he noticed I didn't have it set to RAW (so when it is on the computer there is more information about the picture), so we changed that. With RAW there is more information (as thick as a phonebook) with JPG it is as thick as a magazine. So every time you save a JPG it compresses the picture down, so there is not as much information in it each time it is saved and it becomes very pixely. Then it was time for the mind boggling to start. ISO, SP, and F-stop and how they all work together. They all control the light that comes into a picture. He explained it all to me, but I am still confused about it all. He gave me three practice conversion thingys to try. I have to change two of the three things, but when I take the picture I want the picture to look exactly the same as the original settings. I just hope I can understand this stuff and keep my head intact in the end.

Before Starting.

I love both of these pictures. So far they are my absolute favorite. The one above reminds me of the movie Pride and Prejudice and running through fields of grass with the sun beaming around you.

The one below is a rooster/hen (i'm not sure which one it is). I decided to go to the duck pond in Eagle River and take a few pictures. This rooster/hen came up behind me and when I turned around it freaked me out!
I went to the studio at the time Dan told me to and it turned out that he forgot I was coming tonight. He didn't have much prepared, so we looked at the pictures I had taken last week. He noticed in my pictures that I needed to fix my aperture, lighting, and focus. I took his criticism as a way to better my photography ability. I agree with everything he told me to fix. I learned that it is better to not take pictures when the sun is high in the sky because it makes pictures too bright. I had taken a picture of a daisy in the afternoon and he put it on Photoshop to show me that it was too white. There wasn't a way to really fix the brightness because it was way too overexposed. He also taught me that my camera is a 3.5-5.6 lens and that that is where the aperture goes from: 3.5-5.6. At the end of the time he gave me 3 books, and a photography magazine to read. They are about composition and the rule of thirds. Overall, I thought that my first time was enjoyable. I'm really excited to do this mentorship with Dan, I know (or hope) that I'll learn a lot with him.

Book Titles: Photographic Composition by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon
Arnold Newman by Poul Erik Tojner, Pierre Borhan, and Lars Schwander
Rangefinder magazine
Arnold Newman's Americans by Alan Fern and Arnold Newman

mentorship

I've always wanted to learn photography. For school I decided to do a mentorship in photography to see if that was what I wanted to do when I grew up. I'm working with Dan Anderson at Bending Birch Photography, and I am having a great time. I'll post my journal entries along with some pictures I took that have been enhanced on Photoshop. ENJOY!!

blog under construction!!

I'm trying to work on getting my blog up and running. it's still in the process. coming soon!!