Out with a whimper

So, my final photography class was last Tuesday. It was phenomenal, it was amazing, it was .......... ok, shoot, I have no idea how it was. I didn't even get to go.

Brayden's new soccer team had a mandatory parent/player meeting, and Puke Boy over there sure couldn't manage it. So I left Kellen and Kendrie home with him, comatose in the bed (him, not them) which was a big mistake because when my phone rang half-way through the parents' meeting, it was Kendrie on the other end, hyperventilating with panic because the alarm system had gone off and she and Kellen panicked. Come to find out, *they* forgot to turn it off when putting Barley out, but she was convinced that bad guys were breaking down the doors to steal her away, and practically screaming at me in hysteria to GETHOMENOWWEDONTKNOWWHATTODO amid cries of WHATSWRONGWITHTHEALARM punctuated by SOMEONEISGOINGTOGETME and where was Blaine? Sleeping through the entire thing. Ahhhhhhh, there's some responsible parenting. God bless Phenergan.

So I skipped my final class to attend the meeting, and skipped part of the meeting to stand in the hall and talk Kendrie down off the ledge. And what wound up happening? Well, Kellen and Kendrie calmed down and were able to turn off the alarm themselves .... Brayden discovered that this soccer team, although billed as "co-ed", was actually ten boy and only two girls, and she promptly decided not to play.** And me? Missed my final photography class for absolutely nothing. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

The class was supposed to be a final photo critique and lecture on "What makes a prize-winning photo?" Personally, I don't need my photos to be prize-worthy; I'd just like a shot or two where my kids' skin tones aren't green or gray and I somehow manage NOT to get a trash can in the background, or blur everyone into having two heads.

Since my instructor couldn't critique my photos (on account of me not having them there, of course) I'll let all of you do it for me.

The lesson was over light, both natural (available) and artificial. We had a list of photos to take in different light situations, so he could see how well we could manipulate both our cameras, and our surroundings. I think these might have been my crappiest photos of the entire class, so maybe in hindsight, Blaine getting the flu was a blessing. (Just don't tell him I said that.)


The criterion for this photo was Indoors, Daytime, Natural Light. As everyone knows, that means taking advantage of light coming through a window. I've always heard that north-facing windows have the best light, and this is the ONLY north facing window in our entire house, unless I have one of the kids sit in the kitchen sink. But I didn't think it was a great photo. Overexposed on the side near the window and underexposed on the other side. In hindsight, a white sheet of poster board or something to reflect the light from the other side might have helped.



I thought the photo might look better if I converted it to black & white .... but, meh. Still not anything that would take your breath away, or even be deemed worthy of framing.



The criterion for this photo was Outdoors, Nighttime, no flash, available light only. Obviously, to take an outdoor photo at night with no flash means you must have a lighted subject, and must shoot in aperture priority mode. I used the local church because I think the stained glass windows are pretty at night, but even standing completely still, I couldn't avoid the blur. To get a better shot of this either I need to use a tripod, or to quit drinking so much. My vote is to buy a better tripod.



Criterion: Photo indoors, nighttime, with flash. Pretty much any snapshot would do, but we had to take the exact same photo with no flash, so I needed to get light into the image. I did this by pretending it was a birthday photo, with lit candles on the cake. This photo revealed a few things to me: I don't know if it's possible to get any kind of fabulous picture, shooting indoors with flash. I think a "decent snapshot" is about the best I can hope for ... which I what I consider this photo to be. It also told me I have no business baking a fake birthday cake and trying to be artsy-fartsy and making a two-layer cake because I don't know how to level the cake and this one almost fell over plus I didn't have enough icing to cover the whole thing so in actuality? This cake was a disaster. And, either Blaine or I one need to start smoking so we actually have a lighter in this house. I had to hold one of the birthday candles upside down over a burner on the stove to light it. That's pathetic.


This was the picture that perplexed me the most. Criterion: Indoors, Nighttime, No flash (available light only). Every year I take a photo just like this one of my kids with the candles lit on their birthday cake, and the lights in the room turned off. I love the glow it puts on their faces, and I have done this picture successfully at least a dozen times over the years. So why, all of a sudden, do I have this halo thing going on? The light from the candles is reflecting back up in Brayden's face .... hmmmm. My guess is one of two things: either the candles are too close together on my beautiful, wonderfully decorated piece of crap two-layer cake, instead of spread out like they normally are on a 13x9 cake. Or, there's some funky new adjustment I need to make on my new camera that I'm not aware of, and until I figure it out, my kids are doomed to a life of having reflective candle glow on their faces.

And since I didn't get to ask the instructor about it, I'll ask you, Peoples of the Internets: what on earth did I do wrong???


**For the record, our rule is once you start playing a sport, you are not allowed to quit until the season is over. Responsibility, dependability, obligation to team, blah blah. But since this season hadn't even BEGUN, Blaine and I agreed that she could quit if she wanted, especially since none of us expected a co-ed team to be so lopsided. And I got a full refund from the league, which was a pleasant surprise.