It's all about the "panning"

Feb. 22nd I took a midterm. I can't tell you how stressed out I was over this. For starters, hubby was off work starting Monday morning..... and won't return to work until the evening of March 4th!! I really just wanted to BE HOME with him. Also, it had been like 20yrs since I've taken any sort of test that I can recall LOL I had to go Monday, even though the kids were off due to President's Day.... nice huh?? I had to go to school!!! Grrr.....

We were given a study guide for the midterm. We went over all the questions, answered them and all that fun stuff. When I got home that afternoon, I looked it over some, went through the book. As he had said not everything is covered on this guide. Tuesday I did more of the same and took some pictures to help reinforce some of the things we've been learning. I will never keep aperture and shutter speed right.... anyhow... I studied hard Tuesday. For a good 4hrs at least. Then I took off for the store, bought a few things to do a make shift home studio. I also picked up hubby the new 360 game Fight Night :o) Early Bday present for him!!

Weds came..... I was sure hopeful I would do well on this exam. Brian first had an ortho apt, so he got out of school that day. They put teenie rubber bands around 4 of his teeth to make room for the caps that will be put on this Weds and then more hardware next Weds. Lucky kid. The teenie rubber bands were uncomfortable enough.... boy is he in for a treat huh? LOL

We were in and out of there, and got to the school parking lot, a metered spot of course, but hey, it was close!! :o) I had Brian quiz me... and I did really well I think :o) Got into the class and worried some more. I'm really wanting to do well in this class,... I want to know I'm retaining this stuff, and I want us to get paid back for the class as well. Anyhow, I looked through the pages before we actually started, and gasped.... "Panning???" to the girl beside me,... "... did we go over that???" she giggled and smiled and nodded her head yes. "CRAP!" Sigh.

I went through the 40 question test (I'm pretty sure it was 40 problems) some were True/False and others were written and worth 5pts. Yup, you guessed it,... panning was a 5pt question. Great. I had NO idea. I mean,.... I kinda did,... but sure didn't know what the correct answer was. I kept in my head, panning through like a forest or something,.... going from one side to the other.... *sigh* what a dope. Everything else I think I did fairly well. I might not have given the answer exactly as he would have liked, but hopefully it was enough to show that I knew what it meant??? If that makes sence. In any event, there was a gaggle of the class standing in the hall talking about the test. Panning = following your moving subject (more or less) GAH!! I remember going over that now :o( Dangit!!!!! So, yeah, I was for sure 5pts off on that test :o( That so sucks.

I should be in class this morning,.... but today is hubby's Bday and I wanted to be home with him. We went out to dinner with some friends Saturday night and had a wonderful time. Company and food both were really good. Hubby works with the friend, and we used to play World of Warcraft with them online as well. Friend is VERY talented, he can draw/carve/whatever else from memory. I don't have even a pinky fingers worth of his talent. His latest hobby has been scrimshaw He looked at a picture hubby had of Geoffery, and started on a small piece.... he gave it to me Saturday night... I can't even begin to say how amazed I am at this. I had read up on scrimshaw back when hubby told me about what he was doing, and really after reading it and seeing a piece,.... you just have no idea. You don't see the marks in the material, but yet this image is right there!! Just amazing. Anyhow, I wanted to share this today :o)

Pictures!!

I am going to attempt to post the pictures I had tried to post from the last blog entry.... hopefully it will work this time :o)

And the winner is......

Nahh... no winners :o) Just thought I'd say that as this follows the night of the awards dealie last night......

I did get my grades back Monday though!! A perfect score is 50. My "Anything" assignment was of the cat in the bag,... I got a 45/50. Okay.... I lied,... due to it being late, I got a 44 (but what's one point?) I was very pleased with that, as I knew this was the better photo submission.

The picture of the figurine, I got 44/50 and the one of the cat/bookcase 43/50!!! Wow huh??? Yeah, I was pretty darned surprised.

This weeks turn in is supposed to be "Natural Lighting". Well, over the weekend, when the sun actually tried to poke through the clouds, I attempted some trial shots in our yard. However, no matter what I did, the camera was showing "underexposed" on the meter. This didn't make me happy to say the least. What was I doing wrong??? Very frustrating!

Well, Monday morning, I was fiddling with the camera, the lenses etc,... when I was messing with my normal lens, I saw that the aperture wasn't moving inside. This is what needs to move to let the light in (or keep light out) and what would change how the exposure is for outside. Hmm..... it's STUCK????? No WONDER I wasn't getting good readings huh???? Or maybe I am just confused and don't know what the Hell I'm talking about as I've never messed with stuff like this.

I took the camera along with me to class. I popped in and talked to the lab guy Ernie and had him take a look at the lens. He moved things around and confirmed what I didn't want to hear.... it was busted. *SIGH*

After speaking to my instructor, I explained and told him for at least this assignment I would use my digital. I've gotta clean the card though.... as I got to have some fun with my SIL over the weekend and took some nice shots of the kids :)

I am in the process of trying to find a replacement lens for the Canon AE1 now.... found a pretty awesome site for stuff for it. I hope to maybe over time (as I learn more on how to use various lenses) to buy more from there. www.keh.com is the site

Here are a few of the pictures I took (and edited in Photoshop Elements 2.0) over the weekend of the kids :) I think they turned out pretty decent. I had my aperture setting off though, as they all came out too dark.

So, there you have it,.... and much to my surprise, I don't suck that bad with a camera when it comes to assignments. It's easy to snap off a few pics of the kids or cats, but to get to specifics,.... a little more complicated. But, I'm learning...... slowly :o)

Hmmm... for some reason the pictures aren't publishing on here.... I will try again later on :)

Another not so much photographer day....

Tonight I went to my first lab session. This is where you go to upload/scan and whatever else to your photos, put them on the school server for the teacher to view them and then grade them, and then show them to the class so everyone can laugh at you!! Sounds great huh?????

Actually it was VERY interesting!! I was in awe of what simple (yet expensive) software can do for you!!! In this class, we use Photoshop 7.0. I missed the first two classes,.... so I got a crash course in the basics. Unfortunatly no one told me I'd be using an APPLE computer!!!! OMG!!!! I felt so lame,.... made me miss my computer SOOOOO very much!!!! In any event, the two girls beside me, helped me out when I would screw up and close out a window unintentionally and not know where the heck to go to get back to the screen I needed. We had 3 sample pictures,.... pictures that our instructor took. He takes a lot of the sporting photos for the school. This is probably pretty silly to most, but he had this picture of a vollyball game. Looking at the photo, I think "wow that's pretty darned good!" Until he fixes it. The net wasn't even in the photo,..... he showed us how to take something like that, straighten the photo out and ta da, it looks more like the focal point of the whole image!!! WOW!!!!!!! HOLY COW!!!!! So, me, I sit there thinking what pictures can I do that too????? Anxious to get home and play with some photos and all. He showed me a nice little tool in the software that would instantly fix,.... while a lot of programs I've used, have this, for some reason, this was just a lot neater :o) For starters, it brought up this box and showed you exactly what it did,.... how much it raised the greens or reds,.... and if you didn't like the way it looked, you could move those lines in the box yourself. WOW!!!! I love this!!!!!

So, yeah, I got a crash course tonight. I had 3 pictures to do too. My first was my "anything" photo.


I don't have the exact version of photoshop at home, but this is pretty much how the teacher will see it. It was the best of all the pictures I took,.... I'm anxious to see what he thinks of it LOL I mean, yeah, it's just a couple of goofy cats... but still :o) The colors turned out really nice and I was very pleased with it.

Then we move onto my next assignment, which is "Depth of Field". I took some pictures yesterday, last night.... and today. I had them developed at WalMart, One Hour. I quickly learned that I don't know depth of field very well. I sucked pretty badly on the photos. I sat there looking at the pictures the two girls took beside me. Put me to shame. What was worse is that the girl (who was VERY nice and helpful) took photo's of a graveyard,.... some nice stones and all.... grrr... that's what **I** was going to do,.... but I saw it in our book and didn't want to repeat what was already there,.... but DAMN did her stuff look awesome!!!! *mutters under her breath.... bitch* They were really pretty pictures though. The girl to my left, she had some neat ones of this tree with these weird berry things hanging from it,.... the colors were just beautiful. Another was of this archway of vines,.... again, very pretty with the colors and all. I'm sitting there looking at my crap. That's what it was,.... crap. Talk about frustration. Well, I had to pick something right????? This is what I came up with:


This is a picture for "deep" depth of field,.... focus is on the bookcase and not on the cat,.... very sucky picture, but sadly it was the best I had. Even after cropping and such, I still hated it. But, what can you do?????? Well, for starters, spend more time taking pictures!!!!

My next picture, is for "shallow" depth of field,... focus on the figurine and not on the other figures. There was a lot more to the actual picture, but after cropping it and all, I think it turned out really well :o) For some reason, the colors here aren't as nice as what I had at school... but at least you get an idea. Also, on this I used the "burn" tool, around her face and dress area, because things were too bright, it helped to bring out a bit more detail (and the fact that I really should dust more!)



So, there you have it,... my first pieces of work. Eh. I know the more I learn, the better I will become, but I sure hate waiting LOL I want instant stardom!!! Well, okay.... maybe not THAT, but I am hopeful that I will get better :o) LOL Monday I should have grades on all these pictures,... so I will be sure to post the outcome!

Next weeks assignment is: "The subject is natural light" Hmm.... should be interesting enough, so long as we don't have more days like today. LOTS of rain!!

On that note, I'm headed to bed :o) Many thanks to my MIL for keeping the kids tonight so I could attend this lab :o) Am looking forward to the next one already!!!