This semester I’m taking intro to photography.
A big part of this class is learning the technical aspects of photography. We are learning how to shoot in manual mode; balancing f-stop and shutter speed to get the photo we intend to. We’re also learning to use photoshop to edit photos. Because this is an intro class we haven’t been dealing with colors yet so we’re only shooting in black and white. Nothing makes a photo look artsier than taking it in black and white.
One thing that’s been challenging about this class is the sheer volume of photos I need to be taking. Most of the time in fine art you spend weeks on one piece. That is not the case with photography. We are responsible to be shooting around 72 photos a week. Our first assignment required 36 finished photos. Now it’s become a bit more reasonable with around 5-10 photos per assignment. Our teacher’s justification for this is that the more photos you take, the better you get at it. I definitely agree with that, being forced to take so many photos has made me much better at taking them.
Because of the pandemic, this class is fully remote this year. That means that we’re, unfortunately not using film cameras. The school provided some very nice digital cameras for us, but I’ve mostly been using my own so that I can learn to use it more effectively.
Anyway here are some of the photos I’ve taken for this class.
