Toni Maisano

Today was a long, information packed day–but I’m learning a lot!  In the morning we were told that Day Two is usually the hardest, because of the amount of information we were covering.  But we all survived, and I think we’re all better off because of it .  We covered everything from depth of field to historgrams, and lots in between.

For the aperture assignment, we had to take two identical photos, except for the aperture.  Here’s one with a smaller aperture, larger f-stop (go figure)…

And then the same photo with a larger aperture, smaller f-stop…

Interesting stuff, people .  Next assignment was to shoot different types of motion while changing the shutter speed.  Some of my favorites…

Later in the afternoon after covering LOTS more on lighting, color, and all that good stuff, we headed off for a longer photoshoot at Ghetto Falls.  Here I was happy to finally learn how to shoot water and make it look pretty. *happy sigh*

[and yes--there is graffiti all over the place]

Oh yes, and one last bit bit of news for the day.  I won the photo contest around the concept “Excited”.  And yes, that did make me excited .  Here’s da picture:

And that’s pretty much it for today.  Tomorrow we’re waking up at about 5:00am to go shoot at Garden of the Gods.  Hopefully the rain and the clouds will leave so we can get some sort of sunrise and getting up early will be worth it all.

Hello from the lovely state of Colorado, faithful reader’s of Toni’s blog.  I’m sitting here in my room, drinking hot tea, editing photos, and feeling tired and happy all of once because of my first day here at the Institute for Photographic Studies.  I’m going to the week-long Prizewinning Photography course here, and day one has been awesome!

Today we heard different lectures on a variety of photography “stuff”–we covered the basics of cameras (which really aren’t so basic), lots and lots of elements of composition (read: FILL THE FRAME!), and this evening we touched a little on landscape photography.  In addition to going to different sessions, we’ve already had 2 photoshoots today in Manitou Springs.  But these weren’t just any photoshoots.  These ones had rules:

Rule 1: No more than 25 images total during each shoot

Rule 2: TURN OFF REVIEW (completely, and totally)

Rule 3: No deleting photos

At the end we all came back, downloaded pictures, and had all of them critiqued.  Scary, no?  Well, I was scared at least.  It was so much harder than I thought it would be, to say the least.  Overall, I really didn’t like my pictures I got.  Because of the time limitations and not being able to review what we had shot, it was a really stretching experience, resulting in some not so pretty pictures.  But the idea was that as photographers we should think before we start shooting pictures–going through ahead of time in our mind what we want the picture to look like as opposed to just snapping off a bunch of bad pictures.

We also had 4 photo contests going through the day.  We had three themes we were supposed to convey: Red, Excited, and Leading (as in leading lines, one of the elements of composition we covered).  We also got to choose another photo of the day for another contest.  So, for your viewing pleasure, here are some of my few good shots that I ended up liking…

We had tons of people running around town with awesome cameras–people kept asking us what we were doing .

My photoshoot buddies for the day .

Lord, You know how much
I want to know so much
In the way of answers and explanations
I have cried and prayed
And still I seem to stay
In the middle of life’s complications
All this pursuing leaves me feeling like I’m chasing down the wind
But now it’s brought me back to You
And I can see again

This is everything I want
This is everything I need
I want this to be my one consuming passion
Everything my heart desires
Lord, I want it all to be for You, Jesus
Be my magnificent obsession

So capture my heart again
Take me to depths I’ve never been
Into the riches of Your grace and Your mercy
Return me to the cross
And let me be completely lost
In the wonder of the love
That You’ve shown me
Cut through these chains that tie me down to so many lesser things
Let all my dreams fall to the ground
Until this one remains

You are everything I want
You are everything I need
I want You to be my one consuming passion
Everything my heart desires
Lord, I want it all to be for You
I want it all to be for You

You are everything I want
And You are everything I need
Lord, You are all my heart desires
You are everything to me

-“Magnificent Obsession” by Steven Curtis Chapman