Artist at Work on Pellissippi's Campus

On one of my evening class field trips on the main campus at Pellissippi I found a student from an art class doing the same thing as my photography student, trying to capture interesting subjects in the fading light of the evening. Thanks to the windows of the building behind the drawing student I was able to show the sunset and the warm light from the sunset. I used a 17mm lens at f-5.6 at 1/30  ISO at 200 and white balance set for daylight ( the one with the little sun symbol ). Using a wide angle lens forces you to come in close to your subject which makes you image more intimate for the viewer.

Soup and Pumpkin Party

I think the reason you learn the rules of photography is so you can find ways to break those rule in order to produce interesting images. The way I broke the rules on this image was by moving the camera during the exposure. I used an exposure of 2 seconds to capture the light from the candles in the jack-o-lantern as I moved the camera. I did not use a flash but let the other parents taking pictures help light my image with their flashes. Exposure information- f-stop 5.6 shutter speed 2 seconds White Balance Day Light at ISO 400 with flash provided by other cameras on the scene.

Wet Weather at Market Square in Knoxville TN

With a 15mm wide angle I got down as low as I could without getting my knees wet. I got into a duck walk position trying to capture the sky reflecting off the rain covered walk way. The camera was set at ISO 400, f-5.6 at a shutter speed of 1/30. The conversion to black and white was done in Adobe Photoshop by using the red channel and converting to gray scale. Note of interest- I am working on a book that will take a select number of images which will include a more detailed explanation than is on the blog. The book will take image by image revealing what I learned by taking that particular image. The book will be out by the first of the year. I will announce it's release on this blog site.

Portrait of a Bald Eagle

When someone says portrait photography most people think of pictures of people not animals.The principles of good portrait photography also applies to good animal photography. In the case of this Bald Eagle I used a long lens 200mm and set the lens at a large lens opening f-2.8. The long lens helps you get close to the bird without disturbing him to the point of flight. With humans a long lens works in the same way by giving you and the person some comfortable space between you. The large opening of f-2.8 produces shallow depth of field to separate the eagle from the background which is the same thing you would do when photographing a person.