I am a very visual person and have recently rediscovered the joy of digital photography. I decided to build an online album to hold all my photos and to share them as creative commons. After a wonderful holiday I was catching up on blog reading and found the ideal way to develop my own photography skills and understanding of visual imagery. Dean from Ideas and Thoughts introduced me to the 2009/365 photos group on Flickr. This started in 2008 with educational bloggers attempting to take a photo a day for the whole year in an attempt to learn and collaborate. My own 2009/365 photo set is well on it's way and so far (6 days!) I haven't missed. I will put a Flickr slide show of my photos in the sidebar.
I would love to hear your thoughts on my photos and growth as a photographer and image maker. I plan to use this project and knowledge in my class to engage and model for my students.
This is going to be a wonderful journey and a challenge, why don't you join me.
Kia ora Shaun
ReplyDeleteIsn't digital; photography just great?
I recently left a comment on Bonnie Kaplan's post. I'll copy it here (aren't computers wonderful things?)
I have always believed that constraint, whatever it is caused by and whatever its manifestation may be, brings about creativity.
I attended a high school in the sixties. I was part of a knot of students who were interested in B & W photography. We all developed our own films and prints and print enlargements.
There were several key attributes in photography that I recall were fashionable. Most were to do with composition and best use of the valuable resource in film.
In a way, it was to do with conservation. But it was also to do with working within the constraints of the technology. Here are the key things I learnt about in those formative years as an amateur photographer:
framing in the camera (this made you think before you clicked)
lighting (both from the point of view of ‘correct’ exposure and image effect)
compositional balance (things like the ‘golden mean’, diagonal composition, subject composition etc)
depth of field in relation to appropriate focus (this meant it was OK to have things out of focus to cast attention on subject matter that was in sharp focus, especially if detail was important).
Digital cameras can be used the same way and similar principles apply. But with photoshop and other tools that can now be used to tweak the digital image (in ways that early photography technologies could not) we have access to another dimension hitherto unvisited.
Spot ya
from Middle-earth