Eye-Opener: Memo

My Adventures as a CCP Photographer...

I'm taking Photo 101 here at Community College of Philadelphia and I'm having fun and learning a lot (who knew that these two phrases could be combined together).

My assignments are thought-provoking, exciting and imaginative. I dealt with abstraction (close-up on subject to create and see implied shapes), point of view (looking up or down, bird's eye of view or something radical, as long as it's not straight forward), depth of field (shallow (blurry background) or deep (foreground, middle ground and background appear focus, no "circles of confusion"), shutter speed (fast= freezing the motion, slow = blurring the subject, and panning (which is tres difficil), environmental portrait (not just the subject but the surrounding that is important to the subject) and quality of light (shadow, texture, detail).

as my teacher emphasized, I'm not a civilian anymore, I'm a photo 101 student and with this title I have the right to ask random strangers if I could take their pictures ( I could also ask people I know)...one day I followed several couple who just got married and asked them if I could take their pictures ( they gave me permission)...I ask this dude who was rollerblading if he could spin for me and he was delighted to be privileged...I saw this cute pug and I asked his owner and he said yes...I took an environmental portrait of my mom...I had to ask security if I could take a picture of the Kimmel Center Ceiling, he said yes but when he saw me set up my tripod, he changed his mind, he said I had to return the next day and ask the manager...I was out at night, while soft drizzle moisten the ground and I took pictures of people with umbrellas walking up to a theater in Broad Street near city hall, some of the people asked if I was doing a documentary, I just told them it was for a class...one of them saw my Seton Hill hoody and thought it was Seton "Hall" (shame on him)...

I 'm getting good at developing my own film and loading my film on the reel in a dark room (just think of handling scissors and can openers while your eyes are shut)...while I was developing a print I got reminded that I'm allergic to metal abrasion (this reminder was a freaky experience)...

Pretty soon I'll be learning how to mount my work on a musuem board...on top of these, I understand more about focusing, metering, composing, light (yeah impressionism), movement, photo- terminology and other aspects of the camera (we take for granted because of automaticity = go manual!)

My mid- semester evaluation is this Wednesday, it should be fun!