Top 10 Mistakes of Beginning Photographers – PictureCorrect

I'd say this article is pretty much right on!

Top 10 Mistakes of Beginning Photographers – PictureCorrect

What Kinds of Pictures Do You Want to Take?

There's a wonderful post over at Digital Photography School called "My Photography Bucket List" by Jennifer Jacobs / Darren Rowse (click here to read it)

A bucket list is simply a collection of ideas for images that you could make – whenever you run out of ideas you can just reach down into the bucket and pull out something from the list. Sometimes another photographer makes a great image and so you might like to try to make a similar one, and sometimes you might come up with a few of your own ideas.

Here's a few subjects or actions that I'd like to photograph someday:

• A saw-whet owl in flight.
  
• A panoramic view of a glacier field in Alaska.
  
• A picture of me skiing that makes me look impressive :)
  
• A high speed photo of a bullet going through an apple. I know, it's stupid and it's been done before. But think of the timing!!
  
• A magnified image of the Orion Nebula. All I need is to make or get a motorized equatorial mount.
• Robots in a car factory. I don't know why. It seems cool.
  

That's just a few. So I'm curious: what kinds of pictures would you like to make?

Take a few minutes to brainstorm a list of 5-10 images that you haven't made yet but that you'd like to create – what would they look like? How would you make them?

Then post a few of your favorite ideas here, as a comment...

Need ideas? take a look at the comments at the article linked above.

Welcome to the Class and Online Project #1: Acquire Digital Services

First Assignment: Acquire Online Services

Due Date: complete these organizational tasks by Friday Jan. 22^nd

1.       Sign-up for a free Google account at Google.com, and set-up a Gmail account.

2.       Email me at (gmail address given in class) with your gmail account name.

3.       Create three file folders on your computer:

a.       MCLA Photo In-Class Projects. This will be where you store copies of work projects we do for this class.

b.      MCLA Photo Miscellaneous. This is where you store any images that you may use for this class.

c.       MCLA Photo Portfolio. This is where you’ll store your finished artworks.

4.       Add one or two of your best photos to each folder that you just created.

5.       Take a look at http://picasaweb.google.com/Studio.Gregory

a.       Prove that you looked around: comment on one of the images in the MCLA folders.

6.       Sign-up for and install Picasa on your computer.

a.       You can allow Picasa to locate all of the photos on your computer, or only the file folders that you assign it to investigate – at minimum make sure the 3 file folders in step (3) are included.

b.      Set these three folders to synchronize automatically online.

c.       Set In-Class Projects and Portfolio as ‘public’ and set your miscellaneous folder as ‘UNLISTED’

d.      You should be able to see your three folders online through your Google account (click on ‘More’ and then ‘Photos’) even when you are not running Picasa as a software application on your computer.

7.       Email me at  (gmail given in class) and tell me what is the website address of your Picasa album.

        a.       I will be able to view your two public albums, and will comment on the photos your posted.  

8.       If you have Photoshop CS3 or CS4 skip this step. If you need Image Processing Software, acquire both:

a.       GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) (http://www.gimp.org/) and Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/).

b.      Play around with the software.

9.       Go to http://gregscheckler.blogspot.com and look through the blog, links, etc. Read the post labeled ‘Welcome to the Class’ and do any reading or assignments.

10.   You are now prepared for the next part of this course.

11.   Come to B204 to meet in-person for Monday’s class.