Practicing

For those of you who know me, you know that I am not a fan of landscape photography. I'm much more comfortable behind the camera when there's a person in front of my lens, but since I started school I feel I need to practice all aspects of photography. I know that we will be covering all kinds of different photographic situations and I just want to try to become a little more familiar with my cameras.

I also need to become familiar with my new light meter. I've never used a light meter before and even after watching many tutorials on how to operate my Sekonic meter, I am still completely lost.

Unfortunately for me, I've learned to set my DSLR camera's manual settings just from practicing different aperture and shutter speeds. This is not a good thing. In order to take good film photographs - in which I can't check the photo the instant I take it, as I could with a digital camera - I must learn to use a light meter.

It was very frustrating on our outing today to try and take a photograph based solely on what the light meter was telling me my camera should be set to.

Below is a photo I took with my Canon 60D, today. This was my favorite of the all the photos. It is one that I took without using my light meter. In the photos where I used my light meter, the sky and clouds were completely washed out.

I am working on a blog post showing several different takes of the same area where I use the light meter for one and my best guess for the other.

For most of us, this photo would be a satisfactory results, but for a photography student pursuing a career in photography, it is a lucky shot that required very little knowledge of what it takes to obtain the perfect shot.

Photo taken in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Camera Love

I love old film cameras; they are works of art to me. One of my classes is The History of Photography and it has opened up my love for these old cameras even more. Before class started I went to a local pawn shop - more of a flea market really - and purchased a couple of SLR film cameras. To my dismay, I got the cameras home only to find that neither worked. Today I took them back and begged the old gentleman to let me trade them. I managed to talk him into letting me have four working cameras in trade. I was so excited, because one of the cameras is an old Kodak Duaflex IV (basically a Brownie camera). I've loaded it with some film and am going to test it out tomorrow.

My second favorite camera of the four I got today is the one pictured below. I am just a die-hard Canon lover and I practically salivate at the sight of a vintage Canon camera.

Canon G-III QL. Photo by Stephanie Gomez. Please, do not reuse my photos without express WRITTEN permission.

Laundry Mat Super Heroes

I had nothing better to do while waiting on our clothes to dry, so I decided to take some photos of my adorable granddaughters, Paris and Peyton.

Peyton

I started the Photographic Technology class at Randolph Community College on Monday and I have to say that it is a bit intimidating. Many of my classmates already have some sort of photography experience. I know I have much to learn and I am eager to learn it, so no worries about me getting discouraged. I'm in this for the end results. What I will be able to do once I have completed this two year course will be well worth it. 

This isn't really practice anymore. It's just me playing around with my camera. Once we actually get into using our cameras and we get assignments, I know that the difference will show in my work. I feel extremely blessed to have this opportunity to take this course and I will not waste a moment of it. 

Below is a photo I took of my granddaughter, Peyton. She is an absolute doll baby. I love photographing babies and toddlers - the results are always beautiful because the child is such a beautiful, innocent soul. 

I simply changed this image to black and white and slightly upped the sharpness. 

Eyes

Played around with my new Speedlite and some close-ups of my granddaughter, Lily. Like I've said before, I'm just using PicMonkey and Ribbet for editing since I need lots and lots of lessons before I can confidently use PhotoShop. 

My first day of school is this coming Monday. I'm excited and ready to learn!

I didn't do a lot of editing here. I simply resized the photo, added warmth to the color and sharpened it a bit. I think the photo has lovely detail.

Little Beauty

My granddaughter, Lexi is a lot of fun to photograph because she is always up for it. I can literally spend an hour taking photos of Lexi and she doesn't get tired of the camera at all. The only draw back to taking Lexi's photo is that she wants to see each and every photo the second after I take it. 

School starts next week and you all can imagine that I am super excited about it. The closer the first day of school gets, the braver I seem to become with my camera. 

My beautiful granddaughter, Lexi Rayne. I turned this to black & white, played around with the brightness, sharpness and contrast in this photo to give it a timeless feel. I'm still working with Ribbet to edit my photos. I'll need quite a few lessons in PhotoShop before I am confident using it to edit. 

New Flash

School is just a couple of weeks away and I'm a little excited and a little nervous. I've been buying the required supplies a little at a time as I can afford them. I was finally able to get my Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash and I LOVE it. I definitely need some training so I learn how to use all of the wonderful features this flash has, but I did play around with it when I got it. 

The photo below is of my daughter's friend, Mattie. I used the built-in cover/filter on the flash to take away some of the harsh light. I love this photo. In comparison with indoor photos I've taken using my on-board flash, the Speedlite creates a much better looking photo. I only did a little blemish touch-up on the photo and reduced the size so that I could upload it here, but I didn't have to do any other changes to the photo. I think the light and the sharpness are perfect just as they are. The light is soft and very flattering.