F-Stops and Apertures

Thursday and Friday of this week were spent with Cosmo Condina, if you click on his name you can see some of the amazing images he has made. He was great at teaching us all of the ins and outs of photography. At first I couldn't wrap my head around f-stops and apertures and all that, but we played around with taking some photos the first day and it was really fun to start to put everything together and begin to "make" our own images. 

A photo I took in the Bright Salon at Willowbank. I love that deconstructed effect that we can capture in almost every photo. We are lucky enough to be in a building that is an absolutely gorgeous and interesting place to photograph. 

A shot from the main hallway at Willowbank. Again we get that layering affect that I love.

One more photo I "made" that I actually like. It's also in the main hallway, and shows that lovely primitive painting that was used to decorate the walls. I love all of these details that give you glimpses into what Willowbank would have looked like during its various stages of inhabitation. 

It was most awesome to finally figure out how to actually use our D-SLR in a way where I was using it as a tool that I have some sort of control over, and not just as a point and shoot camera. I now know what to do in all of those fancy menus and what will give me the best image to play with. Cosmo suggested that we take everything in a RAW format, so we have the most pixels work with when we shop the photos. He also had many great suggestions on how to portray a traditional home vs. a modern one (as one might imagine, you shouldn't get to crazy with your compositions when photographing a traditional home, but the contemporary buildings you can get crazy with.) By the end of the second day, I was feeling confident in my photography abilities. Unfortunately we were to take pictures outside and it was raining. So now I'll have to start just getting out there on my own and clicking away.