Hello!
Welcome to the PhotographyIcon.com forum! You’ve made your first submission so job well done! You’re on your way to becoming a better photographer already.
My name is Duncan Rawlinson and I’ll be walking your through the course and critiquing your assignments.
Did you confirm your subscription to the newsletter? If not check your email and click the link in the mail to confirm. It’s just a way to keep in touch with students and let them know about course updates etc. You can also follow this photography school on Twitter: http://twitter.com/photographyicon
The first lesson reads as follows:
Lesson 1: Beast to Beauty
We want you to find something particularly boring in your home. It could be a doorknob, a remote control, a garbage can, a plain couch, tiles or anything else which you would rarely notice around your home. Something totally forgettable and uninteresting.
Now what we want you to do is to take 2 pictures of the object. Take one picture of it as you normally see it. Stand back and take the picture of the object with disregard for its relation to other things or any interesting elements within the object itself.
Now, I want you to get close to the object and see it with fresh eyes. How can you make this object interesting? What if you changed the lighting? What if you added something to it? What if you zoomed in? What if you blurred your camera to make it more abstract? What if you put it in close relation to something else to make it more interesting? These are all just ideas, but the possibilities are endless. Now Take a second picture and turn this ordinary object into something much more visually pleasing.
Now what we want you to do is upload these pictures to our online student workspace.
You submitted two photographs.
Your beast photograph shows an oven. Just a plain old white oven. This is perfectly mundane.
You beauty shot is very good for your first assignment.
You’ve done a few things.
You’ve shot a “dutch” angle and you’ve used shallow depth of field.
Both of which enhance the interest in the photograph.
Beware of using shallow depth of field to highlight elements that are too far away from the camera. In this case the knob on the oven is a little too far away to see detail.
Overall you’ve done well on your first assignment.
So what’s the idea behind this exercise?! The idea is to get you thinking like a photographer. Or rather, seeing like a photographer. Photographers see the world differently than most people. They see it much more clearly, with more color, and at different angles.
Try to think about this when you go forward and shoot photos. See the world differently. Don’t be content to just see everything the same way as everyone else.
Beyond that another goal of the assignment is to get you to start playing around. What good is it if you become an amazing photographer but you don’t know how to have a sense of fun and play with your photography?!
Good job on your first assignment.
I look forward to your next submission.