Facing My Biggest Fear
As someone who drowns themselves in media and the study of it, you would assume that I know my way around a digital camera. It’s a fitting stereotype to consider me one of those hip people with big trench coats and a camera strapped to their shoulder, not the neck (because around the neck is dorky.)
However.
I know absolutely nothing about photography.
Here’s the part where I tell you some bullshit excuse on why I never learned in high school even though I was Editor in Chief of the school’s newspaper. The real reason is because I was too lazy to learn — and camera’s were scary looking. It was a machine of attention I didn’t want.
This has somewhat made some of my work in college frustrating. I filmed everything on my iphone since my freshmen year. As a junior now, I finally own a real camera. This was one of my big-girl decisions, as it was kind of sad to only receive one present for Christmas, but well worth the “investment”.
I also enrolled myself in a photography class this semester.
I had started taking some pictures before winter break was over, and for whatever reason I felt pretty confident in what I had photographed. They looked pretty good to me, and I’m sure my ego was boosted from my boyfriend’s exciting/encouraging words as he would look through my work. The first picture I took was of a stray cat in my best friend’s yard:
He even made me walk through the snow in a field. I hate the snow. From that little trip, I got both the sniffles and a couple good pictures.
With my confidence soaring, I ended up taking my camera with me to Baltimore. This was more stressful to me than most, because I felt as if I had something I wasn’t suppose to have in an aquarium. This trip became my first time struggling because I couldn’t always capture fish when they were moving.
Children also seemed to only want to run in front of my shot as I was taking the photo. There was also a situation with a small girl and her phone camera flashing off of the tank’s glass.
I took a lot of pictures, and these were some of the best few I took. That was one of the first learning experiences I had with my camera. You have to take a bunch of pictures in order to get one good one.
The day after the aquarium was the first day of class where we were assigned to take different shots with different settings. I ended up climbing a fence to get into a stream to take pictures. Here’s where I learned two crucial lesson:
- Look at your pictures before you leave the location to make sure they turned out okay
- DO NOT crank up your shutter speed :(
After caking my shoes with mud, I came back to campus with super dark pictures. Shutter speed is how fast your camera takes the picture in simple terms — so if you want motion to stop you turn up the speed of your shutter.
BUT. The faster the shutter, the less light that get’s captured by the lens… creating really dark pictures that made me groan in frustration.
After my own excursion, my class was assigned time to go walk around town and take pictures. I found little inspiration because I live here — so nothing looks as cool as it would to someone who came from another part of the state or country.
I did learn that my favorite things to photograph are trash and dead things in a low aperture setting. It’s pretty much all I see Huntingdon has to offer.
I still feel as if I have no idea what I’m doing with my camera yet, but I am excited to keep taking pictures and learning so I can improve this little machine.
The life lesson here is that you have to fail to get a good result. :)
