Lesson 8: Better Composition

            I did something I never do in photography because I have very little interest in it.  I took photos of a car.  Its not that I don't love the editing and the photographic process, it's just that I don't know the first thing about cars.  I mean they look cool sometimes, but for me...they're mostly get from Point A to Point B and the requirements for them are four doors, automatic windows and a functioning CD player.  I have a few action photography friends who make their living off of car photography, so I thought, why not? There were a few things I learned while shooting these today. One: When someone asks you where to park their car for a shot-make sure its not into the sun.  I had a very difficult time correcting the shadows in the FRONT of the car because of this.  Two: If you are shooting RAW, keep an eye out on your ISO.  I'm accustomed to shooting JPEG, simply for the sake of my computers hard drive and usually I can shoot at a higher ISO without worrying about too much noise and correcting later, however while shooting at a higher ISO in RAW format created so much noise I might as well have never taken the shot.  Three: Choose a low traffic destination.  I cannot tell you how irritating it is to have to stop what you're doing because people are leering out of their high speeding cars to see what you're doing on what should have been a back road.  I would like to try these again sometime.  It's better to experiment with how to use composition with a car and its curves a few times before really learning what you like.   In a few of the photo's you'll see a gas mask.  My boyfriend asked for photo's of his car with some of his military gear for a local military car show.  It's supposed to represent the Armed Forces and cars.  I'm not sure the gas mask was the best prop to display this, but it was the one he requested.  If you guys have any criticism for me and would like to tell me how you normally take car photo's, tips are welcome =].

Lesson 7: Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is actually a rule I've unconsciously followed in the past without realizing.  Looking at photographs I've taken in the past I notice that I sometimes shift the lens so that its not fully centered on the subject to add either add space for direction of motion or just because I felt it looked right. Sometimes to get someone to look at something, centering the subject takes away from what you're trying to project. (If you look back into my flickr or tumblr you will absolutely see many instances where I've done this).  For this project however, I decided to take a walk in an abandoned neighborhood-while my passion is in photographing people and places, I decided architecture might be an interesting way to portray the rule of thirds.  I took a walk and tried my best to focus on one-third of the frame for each photograph.  I had difficulty lighting in a few of the frames because I didn't use flash and photographed in the shadow of the sun.  Also, finding good contrast or colors becomes difficult when you photograph older buildings.  I would like to re-shoot this place when the external flash I ordered comes in on monday to experiment with alternative results.  The vibrance is hard to find when everything has a natural grey look to it.  In the past I have learned that photographing from an angle of the frame is much more interesting to me than photographing straight on down the center yet at the same time, photographing color is much more interesting than photographing simple grey.  Maybe I should attack this place sometime earlier in the day or not at dusk when there is more light to be found.