These lessonsare not about the mechanics of how a camera works. I will talk very little about shutter speeds or exposure. You do not need an expensive DSLR{{1}} to participate. I will however train you to “see” photographically. We will touch on post-processing{{2}} and printing, but the main thrust of the course it to enable you to use any camera{{1}} and create great photos.

We will start this lesson with a simple critique.

For the sake of this website I will choose one of my own photos, a fairly mainstream image…

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What makes this photo work? What parts of the photo could be improved?

This photo was taken because of a snowfall in Victoria. It has quite a muted colour pallet, but the blue, red and yellow cars stand out, giving a bit of a center of interest.

I find the bottom half visually more interesting than the top half. I would say the timing is a bit off. The red car is blocking too much of the yellow car, and the blue truck is a bit close to the others. Also the person i s bit too close to everything else happening.

To be honest, I have never been too happy with this image, I chose it because I can be harsh about it. In a woulda-coulda-shoulda world, I would have moved farther to the right, possibly on the other side of the street. I would have concentrated more on the cars/person, using more of a telephoto lens to compress perspective. This would have taken away the specific place, as shown in the following crop, but I think, from an artistic point of view, it is a stronger photo.

Cropped image
I like this version better, but of course I did not think of it at the time.

From this example, you can see that making a good photo involves a lot of analysis. Eventually a lot of this becomes second nature, but slowing down and thinking about what you are doing is never a bad idea.
In this course we will talk about composition, or more accurately 3D composition and point of view.We will talk about lighting and colours and how they affect mood and “feeling”
We will put what we have learned to practice, and we will review what we have done.
In summary, this course will give you the tools to analyze your own photos. It will allow you to see what works, and what can be improved. In short, it will allow you to go beyond ordinary photographs and bring the essential bits to the viewers attention, to see strong images inside ordinary things.

[[1]]DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex. This type of camera can make certain things easier, and it is a bit more versatile and customizable, but you can take great images with almost any camera. (I only say almost, because there are some very cheap, or very old cameras that impart characteristics on the final image that you may not like. For example, a web cam has a very low resolution, so a print from one may look mushy and unsharp)[[1]]

[[2]]Post-processing means working on your picture in a computer program like GIMP or Photoshop.[[2]]

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