one word wednesday

My grandfather was really into taking pictures.  To tell you the truth he wasn’t very skilled but he was quite prolific and fascinated by the ever-developing technology.   For decades he had envelopes printed with “You’ve Been Taken by Abby” and he would hand deliver them stuffed full of pictures of family and friends at events, in aerobics class (always my least favorite 😉 ), in the pool, and any where else he could grab his camera fast enough to capture the moment.

He bought me my first video camera in 1998 so I could record my dances then he bought me my current DSLR three years ago when I expressed wanting one for this blog.

I’ve read about SLR’s on and off for years but never felt like I had a natural grasp on the intricacies of F-stops and ISO so when I got an email two weeks ago that I could take a class at the college I work at for free I signed right up.  That email and first class happened to be June 18, my grandfather’s birthday (96th if he were still alive) and it seemed a lovely and serendipitous way to carry on his passion and fascination with making images.

The class is “Discover Digital Photography” and is held on Wednesday nights for six weeks, tonight is my third class. So far I’ve been loving it.  The class is generally geared towards someone with less actual hands on experience with an DSLR than me (some people’s camera’s are brand new) but I am still learning a lot. I learn through repetition and hands on and so it’s really helpful to me to have the somewhat basic SLR functions explained to me again because honestly most of my shooting is trial and error.  I am hoping to be able to get more calculated results with less fiddling with my camera after this class.  The teacher is also very accessible and it’s great to have a professional to answer all the questions I have.

Each week we submit 3 photo’s for our homework to be critiqued and discussed in class.  One Word Wednesday today features my 6 homework images thus far. Most of the pictures were taken over the last few years, not since class started two weeks ago.

The title of this post, Making Pictures, is because my teacher Chris Debaun wanted the class to recognize that we don’t just “take pictures” but we make them, just like any other artist makes their art.