photography class

I'm really excited about this photography couse I'm getting to take. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, so when I found out that I would get a PLU for it, I jumped at the chance. I love to take pictures, and I love to look at other people's pictures. I think I take some nice ones, but they are lucky shots. My teacher, Dr. W said that first, you need to decide what you like. That's an easy one. I like pictures of people (mostly children). I like to take pictures of children (specifically, MINE). When I point a camera toward my children, what I desperately want to capture is a feeling. I want to capture the way that they make me feel... to share that innocence and that beauty, or that playfulness and craziness. When someone looks at pictures of my children, I want them to see what I see. I want their hearts to swell.


I have a long way to go, I know. Like I said, I do have some good shots. By no means are they technically perfect. I've only used the automatic setting on my camera. If I want to learn to take pictures the way I so desperately want to, then I'm going to have to do a little something fancier with the camera. Something involving aperture, shutter speed, focal length... that sort of thing. Because I am not technically minded, my first reaction is to run far, far away. But then Dr. W gave a biology analogy that helped tremendously. She explained that the iris of your eye operates as an aperature setting, basically controlling the amount of light that gets in. Your eyelid is shutter speed, or how long you are exposed to the image. This makes perfect sense to me! I think the hardest thing for me to get straight is that the smaller the aperture (the less light), the higher the F-stop number. Why? Why make that so confusing? It is what it is, so I need to just remember it.


Tomorrow I'm going to open my camera manual (Olympus Camedia) and actually do a little reading. I have some specific questions that I need to answer:

• What is the range of shutter speed in my camera? What is the fastest shutter speeed? Slowest? How do I set the camera for shutter priority?


• What is the aperture range of my camera? Smallest? Biggest? How do I set the camera for aperture priority?


• What is the ISO range for my camera?


• What megapixel is my camera? (I already know this one.)


• What are my resolution options?

So, tomorrow I'll post with some answers. I've got some reading to do!