Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Gettysburg, PA - 25 January 2011

Hi All,

I posted my photography assignment pics on Facebook, but will do the same here.

I went to Gettysburg, PA over the July 4th holiday last year and I took almost 300 pictures. I like to play around with my camera and sometimes I try to get a little serious with it too. As we were walking down main street, we came upon the train station. I ran across the street and quickly snapped a shot of my wife and daughters in front of the building. All I did for this was to center the building and zoom out just enough to catch one of my girls playing on the train tracks. I did not care about the background, or the composition, all I cared about was to capture the moment.

As I started to walk back across the street, I looked down the main drag and noticed how the depth of the town made for a nice composition. I quickly changed the settings on my camera to panoramic and took a series of three pictures. I panned from left to right, capturing the train station, main street and the restaurant. I used  the telephone pole and train crossing bars as a frame. It is not perfectly centered, but close enough to draw your eye in the direction of looking down the street. This way, you see what I saw on this day.

I posted both pictures in black/white and in color so you can see/compare for yourself how much the color adds to the scene. Gettysburg is a brightly painted city and I feel that the black/white pictures loses a lot of the feel for the town. The color photographs give you that, "I was there" feeling.


Sunday, January 23, 2011

CEP882 - Week 1 Close-Out

OK people....it is the end of our first week with all our new gadgets & correspondence tools & I am still just as lost as I was on day one of class. I keep getting into ANGEL to see if/when assignments are due & I try to keep them straight, but I have 3+ classes going on and keep losing my place.

I have this Blog, but not sure if my classmates are supposed to post comments here. I have talked to a few of you on FB Chat & it is fun to get to know some details of my classmates. What else are we supposed to be doing? Reading only takes me so far. Doing takes me places. I am ready to DO something. I guess this means I better go do the rest of my Photography Lesson :)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

CEP882 - Week 1

This blog is supposed to be about "A-Ha" moments, but I usually don't get those; mine are more like "O-Chit!"

This week's "O-Chit" is complimentary to Michigan State University as in "What the hell did I get myself into?" I am trying to finish up a dual Masters run in two years and I am registered for 3 classes + 1 deferred portfolio this semester. I need to get out of school and start paying back my student loans....Satan wants his money back.

I was reading along with the assignments about photography and I kept saying that this is all stuff I taught myself as I grew up. I have always been able to draw, but it was not until I was told to get out of an art class (by a gym teacher of all people) that I took art seriously. Compositions, contrast, emphasis...these are all terms I have been using for 30 years now. I have used everything from a Polaroid Instant Camera (crappy pictures), to a manual 35mm (great shots, but expensive to operate) and have moved up to the digital age (Kodak EZ Share-12X Zoom). I like to take tons of pictures of things that interest me, but can only find a few worthy of being called artistic. I use paint.net (a free version of photoshop) to edit my pictures and I like to store my good stuff in electronic limbo, like in a Facebook Photo Album. This way, if ever in the event of an emergency, I will never lose my pictures; I would just have to reprint them.

Monday, January 17, 2011