This was the FIRST picture I took and the first picture I saw as an opportunity to take. Just seeing the leaves, signs, mountains, and how the road curves into obscurity behind the trees felt like a scene from a movie, and I just HAD to capture it

I felt that this picture was a very good example of aperture and also just a pretty cute photo. Someone’s toddler looking at animals for the first time felt like an excellent moment to capture, plus framing it through the face hole of the painting was just too good an opportunity to pass up

I saw the twisty, cragged tree, and I just KNEW I had to frame something thru it, and when I saw the house in the background, again, it was too perfectly set up to not take a picture. My first attempt made the house too far in the background, but after adjusting my position to make the house look larger, I snapped this wonderful picture!!!

I took inspiration from one of Noah Veyman’s example pictures while we were in class, about to go on the trip. He caught a photo of a flower up close, the background completely blurred, and I told myself I’d find a way to produce a similar photo. So, after I snapped the picture of the house framed by the tree, I walked a bit and found just a lone flower, got up close to it, and snapped a series of pictures from multiple angles. By far, my favorite was this one, with the flower more in the bottom right

Directly after the flower photo 2 above, I heard some bird chatter, and looked upward to see a flock of birds, so I tracked them with my camera for a while. After a couple minutes, the flock was set on landing on this tree, so I caught this, a photo of them all RIGHT before they landed on it. I love the way this photo subtly follows the rule of thirds, it’s great!

Finally, about 10-15 minutes before we left, I saw a lush tree right next to a leafless tree, and I thought it would make a great contrasting picture of life and death so close to each other, It just felt right to take a picture of it. No real thought behind the picture other than the pure symbolism of the moment.

BONUS PICTURE!!! I’m sorry, we were only SUPPOSED to go up to 6, but this one was such a good picture and I felt so prideful after taking it, I couldn’t refuse putting it here! This picture was taken AS WE WERE BEING GATHERED UP TO LEAVE, and originally, I just liked the contrast of her red and black shirt with the grass and treeline, but then I saw the railing with pumpkins and the low ceiling with the suspended plants AND how the pumpkins line up with the ones in the background (look to the far right), It just genuinely looked like a shot straight from a movie to me! I loved this shot so much, it’s aperture, color, lines, framing, and shape ALL IN ONE! One giant assignment photo, meeting every requirement!!!

In this assignment, we needed to take a photo of someone who we were familiar with but not friends with in their workplace/natural space that they would inhabit, so I decided immediately that I should take a photo of my church’s pastor! Unfortunately for me, the pastor had to get his son to the airport quickly afterwards, so I didn’t get as good photos as I would have wanted, but still some good ones nonetheless!

This here is the best photo that we got from the couple minutes we had together! It’s basically exactly what I imagined when going into this project, it’s exactly the picture I was looking for! Admittedly, the background is rather messy, but I like that! It’s so genuine to the chaotic nature of our church, it just seems like a great fit! (not to mention the fact that we basically only had 10 minutes together, that’s a good shot for a 10 minute span!)

This is what I’d consider the only other good picture, albeit, a bit f***y because of the lighting and time issues. I rotated the shot a bit to capture him, the welcome sign, and the cross on the building, as just a vertical shot didn’t end up catching all three, but as a bonus, the tree adds a little splash of color into the picture! That red immediately grabs your attention, followed by the contrasting blue of the sign and the pastor’s shirt! It’s a photo that takes your eyes for a little rollercoaster ride, isn’t that fun?

It’s a picture that barely, BARELY follows the rule of thirds, and possibly follows a golden spiral rule from the top left corner to our pastor’s face? In any case, for the little time we had, it was a nice photo that emphasizes very well how quaint, yet exciting our church is!

Over the course of the weekend, I went to a Fall Retreat hosted by my church, and went to a house that was RRRRIGHT by the Columbia River. I thought that would be a great opportunity to take some good photos expanding and trying out a variety of styles and messing with settings in a place outside of my hometown and class. I initially had trouble with the camera as my mom insisted I take hers instead of the school’s so if I lost it it wouldn’t be as detrimental.

The first night, while I was accommodating myself to the settings of my mom’s camera, I was playing around with ISO, Aperture, and TV to see what the camera could do, and this photo was the result of playing with longer exposure shots to see if I could get good smear effects, turned out great! As a plus, the light was flickering, which made the spaces between the smeared copies more uniform, it looks like a will-o’-the-wisp!

This was during the second morning of the first waking day there, we went outside to think about God and such, and I got finished fast, and started taking pictures of people, and I found my youth pastor in a good pose for a photo, and I decided to use a higher ISO to make the scene seem more like it was “bathed in a holy light”

First night at the place, I took a 30 second exposure shot to capture the mountains, and originally, I was only trying to capture the mountains with this long exposure time, but I noticed that the cars that were passing had their headlights smeared across the picture, and so I just HAD to find a good picture to show that off! I think it looks brilliant!!!

First waking day there again, I specifically asked someone to help me out with a shot, and she agreed, so I took her to the dock and asked for a variety of poses. This was actually the VERY FIRST SHOT, and I hadn’t tweaked the settings much, and I was moving the camera very shakily, but I honestly like how the blurriness adds to the photo, makes it look like a “found footage ghost story” almost!

Same person and time as the picture above. This picture was one of the few that was actually PROPERLY focused on her, or close enough to focused. I noticed that focusing on this camera was not as easy as the model from school, which made this photoshoot difficult. This photo was basically the only one properly focused and had my friend in an interesting position.

Overall, I think I can see my photography skills at work, at it really makes me happy to see that I’m at least DECENT at photography!

In this picture, I tried to have the “start” of the tree branch a little out of focus, however, I had my F-stop too high, and it’s in focus. I did end up enjoying this picture because of the lens flare on the branch in the bottom right, however! (TV:1/60, F-stop: 22, ISO: Auto, around 100-200)

In this photo, I specifically tried to replicate the dandelion example, and I think that it turned out really well, especially when looking at the leaf stuck in the thistle! (TV:1/60, F-stop: 36, aka MAX, ISO: Auto, around 100-200)