life on the farm

i had my first fundamentals of photography class at newspace last night with 10 other students.  the instructor, jason, is a funny guy and, since he's been photographing for 20 years, definitely knows his stuff!  after we introduced ourselves and talked about what type of cameras we all had, we jumped into a discussion of aperture and shutter speed and how these two functions affect depth of field and showing/freezing motion.  thankfully, my friend jessica had already told me about the book understanding exposure, so i had a very good theoretical background in shutter speed, aperture and ISO.  thank goodness because i think if you were starting from scratch, you'd be pretty lost!  

our assignment?  to take a series of photos showing variations in depth of field and we will review them in the next class.  i'll post those as soon as i take them - i already have an idea in mind, which, of course, involves fife!  :)  we'll see if it comes to fruition... 

next week, we're talking about metering, and i think reading the understanding exposure book will have been helpful here, too... but i'm grateful that the holes in my (admittedly little) knowledge are getting filled in.  

on that note, i'm sharing a photo i took from our bedroom window yesterday.  you can see the cows that belong to our neighbor (he's actually the grandfather of our landlord - they live basically on the same property).  

here is case in point about universal focus or lack thereof.  i took this at f/3.5 because i wasn't really thinking and many of the elements are unclear - like the detail in the evergreens.  i was more concerned that the sun was coming up and lighting up the tree - it looked so pretty!  however, it really should have been taken with a smaller aperture to get a clearer image.  or at least that's my (amateur's) critique...  not to even start on the composition conversation...

it's one thing to know what to do in your head.  it's another thing to actually do it.  i'll just have to keep practicing!!