Tag Archives: Photography School

Our World Tuesday – Nature Photography Class – Spring 2018 – Chapter One

_DSC0153

I am all excited!! I did a one day Nature Photography class by Tulsa Community College.  We met early in the morning and then headed off to several venues, the Linnaeus Gardens, Tulsa Garden Center, Tulsa Botanic Gardens, and Oxley Nature Center.

_DSC0152

So the over a dozen of us, clicked and snapped away and we walked, and walked. My little garmin wrist device tells me that I walked 7.76 miles today. I believe it. My dogs are barking, you know what I mean. I do trail running, and this was about the same except I had a camera and was clicking happily away.

_DSC0148

This is at Wooward Park, before the class really even started. So what do you like best, pink tulips in front, with yellow in back?

_DSC0147

Or the other way around? Without cars in the background. Ignore the cars in the background.

_DSC0143

Or how about the Redbud Trees.

_DSC0141

How about some ancient stone steps.

20180331-155136-4

At Oxley, do you like the little snake my fellow students found?

20180331-160613-3

Or do you like the bigger snake a few hundred yards away. They said, don’t worry, no triangular head, and the eyes are round so it is not venomous. Like I even cared. Who is going to get close enough to snakes to figure out the roundness of its eyes?

20180331-102826-2

I forget where this is from. It is pretty is all I know.

20180331-093251-1

I love this also. No idea what it is.

_DSC0160

Anyway, the more I learn about this photography thing, the more ignorant I get. I am firmy entrenched into manual mode, and metering the photos and all that but the complicated things get me. Like the above. Sunny on one side, shady on the other, overeposed on one side, under on the other. Who you going to call? Nobody, suck it up big guy, figure it out.

_DSC0161

Or focus on the blossoms. The yin and the yang. Big picture, small picture. I am so confused.

_DSC0158

Here is a redbud up close.

_DSC0157

Linnaeus Gardens

How about a flag reflection. The reflection looks okay, but the sky is blown out.  No editing done anywhere on this post by the way.  Haha you say, we could tell that.

That is all for now. I took over 200 photos and I store them all in cloud and it is painfully slow to get them there. I used to store them on an external hard drive. Big, huge mistake. It cratered.

I really enjoyed the class. Kudos to my fellow students who really got into it, the various venues, who welcomed us with welcome arms and the instructors, Larry and Natalie who spent a considerable amount of time scheduling us into the various places, and led us around making sure that everybody had a fun time. I’ll be taking more classes from them again.

I am calling this Chapter One because I have so many photos to upload and don’t want to  wait until they are all uploaded before I post something. Call me impatient.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

 

Getting Schooled on this Picture Taking Thing

_DSC0002

I am pretty excited. After years of thinking about and delaying and making excuses, I signed up for a four session photography class at a local junior college and already had the first class.

_DSC0009

It is after work on Mondays for three hours. The teacher got us all up and going. Showed us what all the dials and adjustments were and we jumped right into how to do the much feared “Manual Mode” with the in-camera metering. She talked about how to hold the camera  and gave us a few tips about what shutter speed to use for what situation and how and when to adjust the iso level. We went into the white balance adjustments and reformatting the memory card. How to, and how not to, clean the camera and lens and all sorts of stuff.

_DSC0013

And then the homework assignment. Go out into the world and take pictures (she said we are really “making pictures.”) In the manual mode, no editing!! Bring your memory cards next time. She will put everybody’s photos up on the whiteboards and critique them. Anonymously she said because she is very frank and wants us to learn. I guess the giveaway will be if I start sobbing when she is displaying my images.

We are to bring six images. Take them in bright sun, with the sun at our back, set the iso level as low as the camera will go, set the speed at 1/125th of a second and   use the camera’s meter to manually set the aperture. For moving objects increase the speed to 1/500th of a second.

_DSC0032

So I have taken a couple walks with my camera. Manual mode is not natural to me physically. I have to search for the buttons and dials to make it work and sometimes in bright light the camera metering is hard to see. Plus I have to remember to get the white balance, speed, and iso set right. The feel for it will come. I’m having fun.

I can’t wait for the next class!!