Photo A Day: Week 1

As an early Mother’s Day gift this year, I gave myself a photojournalism class (Photo A Day) at the Charleston Center for Photography. My sweet husband and two daughters gave me something equally wonderful and thoughtful, but they don’t realize that the best gift is themselves.  In a way, this class (and my obsession with photography) will help me achieve the level of proficiency that is worthy of documenting my family’s journey. 

 

In this Photo A Day class, we were assigned the task of creating a blog to record our journey in the 6-week long class and beyond. My instructor, Alice Keeney (who is fabulous), has given us great feedback on our work.  We are learning a lot about classic photojournalists, composition and light.  Here is an example of a shot of my youngest daughter during her dance class last week:

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Alice made the following suggestions:

1. Convert to B&W to remove the distracting colors and greenish color cast  (I’ll get you my pretties, and your little dog too!)

2. Focus the attention on her face using a vignette and dodging (lightening) the exposure on her face. Tip: History brush in Photoshop is a wonderful thing!

3. Increase the contrast by adjusting the image levels and correcting in curves.

This is the result:

 Still a work in progress. She also suggested capturing motion by slowing down the shutter speed and trying a "2nd curtain" a.k.a. "rear curtain" setting on my Speedlight. I'll post more on that for Week 2.

Here are some other photos from dance class last week:

Other highlights of the week: Cinco de Mayo

And, I saved the best for last. I had a wonderful opportunity to photograph a friend's newborn baby. She is precious!