Final Blog (Hopefully not too Late)

Coming into this photography class with Dave Shumway, I only had a basic idea of what it takes to shoot a decent photo and how to actually work a camera. I believe one of the most important things that I have learned in the class is knowing the importance of what each setting on the camera means. I never really paid much attention to what shutter speed did, aperture means, and even how ISO affects a picture. The exposure of each shot is important because that is what determines if your picture will be dark enough, light enough, too bright or dark, and so on. Knowing how to adjust for these settings really helps in how to make a picture really turn out how I want it to.
Another thing that was taught in the class through the book and emphasized a lot throughout was the importance of dominance. There are many things in a picture that will dominate over the others, and even help to make the picture work for a great picture instead of just a good one. A couple of these that I made sure to keep in mind while taking shots was the fact that red is more attractive than yellow, large is better than small, difference is more noticeable than conformity, and so on. Many of my shots recently have to do with large to small objects with a limited depth of field. Basically, I took many macro shots where there was one basic center of focus that I wanted with the most detail, and a background with less focus and even blurred.
Then to mess with the depth of field in larger shots, it was helpful to learn about things such as aperture priority, and even the different types of lenses that are useful in different situations. For those long landscape shots, a 500mm to 700mm lens would be the perfect lens in this action, for it would allow for that sufficient zoom level and long wide depth of field. Another bit of information that I found very useful covered I this class was the use of backlighting, front lighting, side lighting and more. These help for I know now that the best time to shoot is early morning sunrise, and also evening sunset. Also, another handy use of this class was a better understanding and usage of the photoshop program that I own.
One thing that I have always loved doing was working with photoshop, fixing up photos just a little more than what I took them at. Photo shop is one thing from this class that I will definitely carry on from this photography course. More importantly, I will be using the different exposure settings to ensure better quality of my photos, because I now have a better understanding to how the settings work.