Beginner Photography Class

This summer I took a beginner photography class with my friends, Stephanie and Jennifer. It was a 4-session class through Leisure Learning. This was part of my Mother's Day present, along with the DSLR camera. The first three sessions covered all the basics of photography - shutter speed, aperture, depth of field, different types of lenses, ISO, camera accessories, lighting, photographic composition, and flash photography. At the last session, we presented 6 photos to the class for our final project.

The instructor gave us several categories to choose from for our project: candids, portraits, abstract design, nature/wildlife, photojournalism, and product illustration (including food photography and still life). At first, I debated back and forth between doing candids or portraits of Caleb...since that's really the main reason I want to learn more about photography (to take pics of our family). After trying my hand at getting some candid shots of Caleb around the house and trying out some portraits in the backyard....I quickly realized 2 things. 1. the lighting in our house is terrible so none of my candid shots were turning out very well. and 2. Caleb won't sit still for very long and has no desire to cooperate for portraits! SO, I chose my next favorite subject...FOOD!

I thought food photography would be easy because you control how the subject looks and it can't get up and crawl away from you! Well, I was wrong! I first tried to take some pics using natural light coming through our kitchen windows, but it just wasn't working out. It was definitely better than just the overhead light from our kitchen lights (which made everything look yellow/orange), but it just didn't have that crisp white look like the pictures in cookbooks. I talked to our friend, Josh, who knows a lot about photography, and ended up borrowing an external flash, a light diffuser, and a light deflector from him. We played around with the setup (Rhett was my assistant) and figured out what worked best. Rhett went out and bought a white backboard (like what you'd use for a science fair project) so we put that in the background. Then we changed out the overhead lights above the kitchen table with bulbs made to mimic natural lighting - this helped a lot! Also for lighting, I used the external flash and light deflector to give the pictures a soft, white appearance.

Once I got all this figured out, I think the next hardest part was actually setting up the food to look good. You want your food to look appetizing, not like it's been sitting in the fridge for three days. There are lots of techniques out there that "food stylists" use to make food look delicious. (some food in pictures isn't even real!) I actually found this part very interesting as it appeals to my crafty side. This part was actually a lot of work - setting everything up just right and moving things around until you get a shot that looks good. Not to mention, I actually cooked all of the food I photographed so it was like double the work! It was fun, though!

Here are the 6 pictures that I submitted/presented for my project:














So, what do you think?