Thursday, March 19, 2020

Learning Photography

Introducing a new photographer in the family: Charlotte! It is such a fun adventure to explore photography with my daughter. 

She has loved reading our family blogs, and recently asked me why I didn't blog anymore. I told her that it didn't feel okay to me to post content about my children without their consent. Additionally, I think this is a great way to teach my pre-teen daughter how to post content to the internet so that she is prepared for how to share her life on the internet, while respecting privacy, when she is old enough to join social media platforms.

The plan is to eventually move our shared content to a new blog, but for now, we want to continue the photography blog together. We plan to create content together and I look forward to seeing what she reads and writes.

Charlotte asked me to teach her photography because she recently has become interested in 'toy-ography', where she is using her camera phone on her Samsung A10E to take pictures of the scenes she creates with her toys and figurines. Since we are practicing social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and school being cancelled at least until April 17th, this is a good way to spend our time.

The first lesson I taught her was about direction of light. So we practiced standing right in front of the sun and placing toys so their shadows were perfectly behind them, and then we photographed the toys at various positions to notice how the light made the photo look different. I also explained how to frame the photo using rule of thirds, and that I often take a picture and think about how the photo makes me feel. We talked about the emotion of a photo and how that is usually what makes a photo 'good'. And then she practiced, so I will hand off the writing to her (and then help her edit).

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I liked how you can give emotion to the picture and make it seem like a different time of day. I also learned that depending on the perspective it changes the emotion I feel. I really like that when I started, some pictures were good. Mommy gave me some tips and then the first picture I took was good. She told me I was a natural photographer. [How did this moment make you feel?]

I set up my Roblox figurines in a cinder block that stabilizes my basketball hoop. I wanted to tell a story about climbing and friendship. I can feel the triumph of the character when I look at my photo.


Next I want to learn about motion and how I can take a picture of falling snow or running water. Mommy said we could practice on the big camera (DSLR) and that seems like fun.

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