Photo 101

It's been a fun week. Last Wednesday I started an online photography class that will help me learn how to use my camera manually instead of shooting in automatic mode. At first I was a little overwhelmed and began second guessing my ability to do this photography thing but the more pictures I took, the more I seemed to "get it". Of course there is so much more to learn but after a week of carrying my camera around and taking pictures of everything in sight, I feel like there is hope. Our first lesson was on shutter speeds. If you use a fast shutter speed you freeze action. If you use a slow shutter speed you blur the action. Click on the photo and you can see that by using a fast shutter speed, I was able to freeze the motion of the water fountain. By slowing the shutter speed, the motion becomes blurred.

Frozen. Blurred.

Another thing that made this assignment interesting is the fact that the people in these photos are complete strangers and I had to step out of my comfort zone and ask permission to photograph them. Not an easy thing for me to do. It really surprised me how enthusiastic people were about having their picture taken. Everyone I asked was more than willing to show off for the camera and it was such a "high" for me to play photographer.