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| A framed shot of five street lamps |
Aperture. Shutter Speed. Composition. These words are as
familiar to me as Afrikaans is to an American. This week has seen me leaving my
beloved Radio behind and focusing on photography for our fourth year intensive
course. Yesterday (Tuesday), we had to take our cameras (mine is a beautiful
Canon) out into Grahamstown to complete an obstacle course. I had to try and
see things in a new manner, no longer on the hunt for the best possible audio,
but now getting as close to the ground as possible to take shots of litter and grass!
I had always appreciated a regular ‘point and shoot’ camera,
but our Photojournalism lecturer, Harold Guess expects us to take the camera
off automatic and place it on manual (who does that honestly). This, he says, allows for creativity to
set in. Take for example this shot that I took of cars driving on a street just around the corner from 'The Shire' (our student house). In this shot below, I had to twist a little button (still getting the names right) to make sure my aperture was at its highest (the hole exposing light is open to its widest) to ensure that as much light hit the lense considering it was quite a glum day and evening. Then I had to make sure that my shutter speed was really slow to ensure that lots of light came in. And then I got the shot of 'streaking car headlights'.
*If my terminology is wrong, bear with me, I'm still learning and I will get better! Comments with suggestions would be great*
One of the other obstacles we had to complete was to take a photo of the railway tracks that cut through Grahamstown. I got down quite low for this shot and I do think it is quite a beauty if I say so myself. Check it out below:
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| Taking a close up of Cara (my digsmate) applying makeup |
I chose photography as my intensive to not only learn more about a new and interesting world of media, but to also challenge myself to think differently when telling stories. Radio is spoken and you can hear the emotion in people's voices, you can imagine the world they live in from the background sounds. I would like to think that photography is the same as audio as it snaps up a moment in time, giving you the image of a person's face and their background, but allowing your imagination to fill in all the gaps.
One thing I have realised quite early on in this course is that the manner in which you compose a photo gives you as the photographer a lot of power. It gives you the power to shape the viewer's eye and to take them on a journey. That kind of power, combined with audio needs a lot of attention to detail and a responsible attitude. I think with that in mind and an ability to be aware of what your role as a media practitioner is, I should end up a pretty decent radio/photo journalist. :)
If you have any suggestions of how I can improve my technique, drop me a comment or two!
Nadia xo
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| Ant's view on the world |
