Day One of the Tec Course

I have never taken a technical course in anything - I was born before technology and have bumbled my way through teaching myself how to use mobile phones, computers, internet, microwaves etc and now my camera - now this is slightly different in that it has lots of buttons on and you can choose the easy way out and just point and shoot but what is the point of buying one with all the different options if you are just going to use Auto - so I have decided that I would like to learn more about the camera and what button/setting to use for the different types of photos I would like to take. So now I have decided that my theme for this visual diary will be Macro. I love the way that macro shots show up so much detail in such a small piece of subject. I have been looking on the internet for photos that have inspired or do inspire me and I decided to use p.base.com as this is full of photos of the sort that I would like to achieve. Below are 3 that I have taken from other photographers whose names will be by the photo as the photos are taken by them and are what they see at the time and what I would like to see :)

The photographer is Ric Yates 2005 - p.base. This is a Gerbera a flower which I think definitely lends itself to being photographed from any angle. I love the textures that you can see and almost feel from the closeness of the photograph. I in my wildest dreams don't think that I would ever be able to get such a sharp picture as this but I will go on trying until I can take one half as good :)

The photographer for this one and the next one is Polyvios Stalianou 2004 P.Base.com and again this is so different. You can almost smell the burned match the texture of the smake as it rises and the small flame still left at the base of the match this is macro photography at its best as far as I can see. I would love to come up with the ideas as well as the ability to take such a photo - I can stand in my kitchen just trying to get inspiration for a photograph but sometimes all I see is a blank canvas and no ideas - I am hoping again that this course will enable me to think before taking the photos - set the photo up to get the image I want at the end and hopefully achieve this 'in camera' rather than have to play in PS to amend my errors.


Two eggs - how can you make a photograph of two eggs look interesting - well Polyvios has done just that as far as I am concerned. He has the lighting perfect to get the shadows in the right place - the eggs look so natural just sat there on the surface. You can see the texture on the shell in that if you were to take the photo even closer you would not be sure whether it was skin that you were looking at with goosebumps on. I hope that one day someone will be inspired by my photographs just like I have been by looking through P.Base.com today.
I have learned that you can make a photograph out of anything you have around you by taking care in getting the settings right, the lighting and the composure. All I need to do now is learn how to get the settings right on the camera, experiment with lighting and composure and hope that some of this rubs off on me :)
If you have got this far I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this 'Day One' of my Visual Diary of my Tec Course in photography. Hopefully there will be a lot more to add to this over the next 4 weeks :)

hugs xx