Photography Class

I had my first photography class last Thursday. It was pretty interesting, a little more technical than I was hoping for, and I'm thankful I've been doing a lot of reading on my own or I think I would have been lost. We got our first assignment and I have ideas for three of the four pictures I have to take, but need suggestions on the fourth. All pictures have to be taken in manual mode on the camera, which means I have to set the aperture (depth of field), shutter speed (motion) and ISO (I SO have no idea what I'm talking about) myself. Each setting has a different affect (effect?) on how much light is let into the shot and you have to balance the three to get the image you want. This sounds easy. It's not. I promise.

I've never shot in manual, I've mostly been shooting in aperture priority because I.LOVE.IT. But, methinks I love it because it's the only one I understand, and because you get such a pretty effect when you shoot in low aperture- one thing in focus with the rest blurry. If you look at all the pictures I posted from the farm you'll see that that's what I did with pretty much every picture. I'm so adventurous, aren't I? Anyways, here are the four settings I have to do:

1. Low Aperture- pretty much have this one down, except, I've only shot in low aperture with the other things automatically set. I think I'm going to go out, take a picture in aperture priority to get the shot I want, then see to what the camera set iso and shutter speed. Sneaky sneaky:)
*Works well for portraits.

2. High Aperture- I know this one too, it's just not as fun to me because it's not really a cool effect (affect?).
*Good for things like landscapes where everything in the shot is important.

3. High Shutter Speed- Understand this one pretty well, I just need Blake to jump around a little bit and I can take the pic and freeze his motion.
*Use when you want to freeze motion- sports and action shots.

4. Low Shutter Speed- this is my problem child. I know what this does, and I even know when it's good for taking pictures, but I don't know what to take pictures of with this in October. You would use this setting for things like fireworks, when you want to capture the trails of the motion. Or a picture of a subway with one person standing still in front and you get the blurry speeding subway with a clear person because you paid them to not move. Great in theory, but I don't live near a subway and its not the 4th of July. Ideas?

I have a sneaky feeling I'm also supposed to shoot something in high and low ISO, but I wasn't feeling the greatest and pretty much just took my papers at the end and left, so I need to look at them and see if that was an assigment too. If so, uh oh, because I really don't compredo ISO.

Ok, this was a really long post and I doubt most of you care about any of this stuff, but it's what's going on in my life right now so I thought I'd share. In other news, Blake got an A on his last Kinetics test and he's really handsome with his scruffy duck hunting beard.