New Photo Assignment!

Scott Thomas has a new photo assignment up over at his place.  This will be the first time I get to participate using my new blog! Yay!  The subject he has chosen will be difficult  for me! Yikes!  The subject, creative exposure, will be difficult for me because of the lack of depth of my knowledge as well as my camera’s limitations.  I call it a “step-up-from-a-point-and-shoot” because I have the ability to attach a few lenses and I do have some manual settings.  It also has, as Scott mentions in his post, different exposure settings.  I’ve used my scene settings many times and have favorites, but I’ve never quite been able to master using my aperture and shutter speed priority settings.  If I’m understanding the concept of “creative exposure” correctly (and please correct me if I am not, Scott!), it sounds like the challenge is to find an interesting combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and explain why you chose those settings.  That will be the challenge for me!  I’m not sure why I choose the way I do – I just pick the one that makes the picture look the way I like it.  I’m not into much post-processing; I like to get it as much to my liking as possible right there on the LCD.  Most of the pictures I post are SOOC, with the exception of some cropping and a little color saturation.  You could liken my thinking with photography to an old quote about art: “I don’t know much about photography, but I know what I like!”

 So, inspired by what KD posted at her place today, I looked back in my photo archives over at Flickr and chose some interesting shots where I used some of the built-in scene settings on my camera, to which Scott referred to for users of point-and-shoots.

This is one of the first pictures I took when my camera was brand new.  Anxious to try out all the cool settings, I took this of my daughter leaping across the dance studio with the high-speed capture.  No idea about shutter speed, ISO etc.

This one was taken with one of  my favorite settings “available light.”  This setting seems to soften pictures somehow, and I thought it was just right for capturing my daughters in an unguarded moment.

I took this shot of Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, MA from the balcony of my hotel room in Truro, MA with the “night scene” setting, my T-Con 1.7x telephoto lens and my husband, the human tri-pod!

This shot was the result of a happy accident, but also possible, I’m guessing because of some exposure choices that were made by both me and my camera.  This gargoyle resides at the top of the 252 ft. monument that I showed you in the previous shot.  In order to keep folks from plummeting to their deaths, there is a cage around the viewing platform at the top of this monument.  While enjoying the spectacular views from the top, I spotted this gargoyle through the top of the cage.  I set my camera to the “landscape” setting, and the cage magically blurred into the background and I got this unobstructed view of the gargoyle!  Isn’t that cool?  Can one of you photo-expert-types please explain to me how that is possible?

This is one of my favorite shots that I’ve ever taken using the “sunset” setting.  In this case, it really captured the beautiful color of a sunset on Peak’s Island in Maine.  It doesn’t always work quite so well for me.  The colors often seem to be a pale comparison to what I see in real life.

Looks like Scott’s new assignment could force me to learn a bit more about my camera.  (One thing I do learn the more I use my camera is how much I want a DSLR…{WHINE!} )  I’d love to hear any suggestions folks might have for me to help spark my creativity for this new assignment and to help me improve my results, aside from buying a DSLR… 😉  Scott’s assignment is due May 26th… get shooting and please comment to help me if you can!