assignment 4. the art of seeing

reflection

Even though I would have liked to have fewer images in my set that I would like to tweak or completely redo, I loved this particular spot. I was standing under the marquee at the Boston Opera House, at the corner of Washington Street and Avenue de Lafayette, and this was the second of three shoots I did, each in a different place. I wish it wasn’t my second set, or experience could have helped me translate my vision more effectively into the photos. Still, I thought it would be disingenuous to do a second shoot in this general location, and I didn’t think I’d find a spot I liked better. 

I learned a number of things through this assignment. I don’t think the challenge for me was in identifying things that would make a good shot in terms of composition, framing, or seeing the potential for an interesting image. It was in the technical aspects. In some cases, I failed to capture a photo that matched what I envisioned in my head. For example, with the car I wanted more of a blur, but I didn’t set my shutter speed slow enough. For the shot of the chandelier, I should have set the ISO higher since I was shooting into a dark space. (This was a challenging shot, by the way, as I was shooting through a security gate and was at the edge of my reach in an awkward position. I kept hitting the bars, which bumped my lens out of the 32ish mm setting it was supposed to be in so then I would have to reset it and try to get into position again. That’s why there are a couple of minutes between it and the shot before.) The shot of the building is just either out of focus or has bad camera shake. I think it may be camera shake, as I was in a bit of a lunge to try to get the vantage point I wanted. Perhaps this should be called the yoga assignment! 

Going forward, I realize I need to pay better attention to my settings before I shoot, and also plan each shot more to decide what I am wanting to do then set things accordingly. I think also I just need more practice in general, shooting a lot and experimenting with different settings so I start to understand how they translate into the resulting photo.