Through the Lens

• The main objective of this class is to instill a life long love and appreciation for photography. Probably most students here are not looking towards photo journalism or photography as a career in general. In these ever changing media oriented days, however, just about everybody carries around a camera in their pocket or purse. It's called a cell phone. You can journal your day/life and upload it to your facebook/twitter in seconds as you go between classes (ya, we know the phones aren't off).   Chase Jarvis has proven in his book 'Best Camera', that 2-3 megapixel cell phone pictures can be awesome. Knowing that some kind of camera will be at your fingertips, why not learn to take eye popping, eye catching, dynamic photos of events, friends and family, a skill to carry with you the rest of your life. For this class you will need another type of camera, whether it is a DSLR or a compact with manual functions. Our first steps will be getting to know your lens or lenses and 'focusing' on composition.

First Assignment:
Objective: getting to know your lens
Due posted: Wednesday, January 13th, 2010, please submit by 8 p.m.

• Choose your subject, whether human, animal (it needs to remain still for awhile), a house, tree, car etc. 
• Choose a focal length on your lens and keep it there for the whole phase. Stand back so your subject is surrounded by lots of space in the frame and focus on the subject. Take a picture. 
• Take 4 or 5 steps forward and take another focused picture. Repeat until the subject can no longer be focused.
•  Now repeat the pattern from the beginning but you be on your knees. 
• Then do it from your belly. When you are finished with your belly,
•  roll over and take one looking up. Always work until the picture is no longer focused. You will notice that you loose the space around the subject. 
• Next, if you have a telephoto lens, choose another focal length. If you were at 28mm last time, change to 35mm and repeat the entire processes. Keep doing the procedure for all the focal pts. of your lens, i.e. 50mm, 70mm, 80mm until you have reached the end. 
• Share and email me your findings. I will be submitting the best pictures of your assignment for 'Photo of the Week' in the Wickenburg Sun. They will also be uploaded to this blog. 

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Those of you that have had me in 6th grade, this will be of no surprise. Please make sure you write in complete sentences AND words! I don't want to 'c ur doing fine' type of things. We aren't texting here. If you make an occasional error I will try and catch it but otherwise I want you to remember, we are representing Wickenburg High School to "The World". Let's show we are First Class Wranglers!!

Quote: The question is not what you look at, but what you see.  --- Henry David Thoreau