One of the most frustrating things for me as a photography teacher is when the photographers I’m working with don’t do the homework.
The reason I hear most often for homework not being done is “because I couldn’t find anything interesting to make a picture of”.
When I give homework, I never assign “find something interesting”.
The assignments I give are based on what we go over in class and are intended to reinforce technique
and understanding.
For example, the homework in week one is intended to get the photographers controlling tonality.
I would think that intentionally controlling tonality precisely through aperture, shutter speed, and ISO would be interesting enough for a photographer new to working in manual exposure mode.
Imagine looking at a picture
you think is too bright or too dark.
You never understood how to fix that decisively and precisely in the past.
Now you can because you learned how to do that during the first meeting of the Photography Basics/Introduction to Photography class.
When I first learned how to decisively and precisely control tonality, it seemed pretty exciting.
In terms of subject matter, it’s not our job to find things that
interest us; it’s our job to make whatever we photograph look interesting.
That’s what controlling tonality does, that’s what controlling depth of field does that, that’s what controlling blur does, that’s what controlling noise does-and
we do all those things with controlling aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
In addition, there’s controlling focusing.
I could go on and on because everything we do is an element of composition.
In addition to the elements of composition, there are tons of camera techniques to learn, like different focusing areas, different focusing modes, different metering patterns, and being decisive and specific about where to meter instead of the camera doing the work
for us.
If we wanna be better photographers, the last thing we wanna do is let the camera make our compositional decisions for us.
When we compose a picture, we should be intentional about camera operation, composition, and
observing and describing the light we’re about to photograph.
We should understand that the camera operation, composition, and light have everything to do with each other, and having everything to do with each other, they have everything
to do with what we can and cannot do compositionally.
It’s not that we can’t communicate what we want; we just may not be able to do it the way we wanna do it.
What I mean by that is maybe we can’t get the depth of field we want, maybe we can’t get the blur we want, maybe we can’t get the ISO we want, but we could still get something.
Our choice is that if we can’t get what we want, we either don’t make the picture or find another way to make it.
I was always told that even if we can’t get the picture we want, we should make the best picture we can that communicates what we need to communicate.
That’s exactly what the Photography Basics/Introduction to Photography class teaches photographers to do—classes start soon!
And if none of the schedules work for you
in my in-person person group classes, Private Lessons that cover the same stuff are always an option.
My Online Learning Platform is full of content (including what’s taught in the Photography Basics/Introduction to Photography class) that’ll help photographers keep engaged in their photography studies and practice.
I'll
help you be a better photographer—study and practice photography with me.
There’s more ways to learn with me below.
