Digital Photography for Beginners – Lesson Four

Knobs & Knockers!

Another great class with Carole Niven this past week.  We’re on week 4 now, and our homework had been to take pictures of flowers (project 4) and knobs and knockers (project 5) with the aim of ‘seeing the picture’.

I think we all found the flower project much more difficult than in the studio the previous week, due to the difference in light, or perhaps we were faced with our own lack of experience and limitations of our cameras (the compacts more so than the SLR’s).  In saying that, Angela, in particular, produced some beautiful shots of flowers in her garden. 

I ended up chasing the light around from one side of my flat to the other, but was particularly pleased with these two images of roses; the overall composition of the first and reflected image on a mirror of the second.

I had purchased these particular flowers and colours in memory of my dad – Bill Page – as it was the anniversary of his death on 19 October.  A wonderful man whom I still miss very much…

No shortage of material or inspiration in Berkhamsted for Project 4 – knobs and knockers – yes that is door fixings for those of you with lewd minds!  In fact it was difficult not to get carried away and take photographs of entire porches, so beautiful were the varieties of accompanying stained glass on the Victoria terraces and double-fronted villas around the town.  I’m surprised I didn’t get stopped for loitering with intent!  I’ve included one of my favourites below. 

So two further successful projects under our belts and we move on to project 5 - using light – and seeing how light can ‘flatten’ an image, bouncing light and playing with different colours.  Carole has a fabulous collapsible light reflector, the rest of us must play with mirrors, baking foil and white sheets!

See how we all get on next week!