With two daughters taking high school photography classes, I get lots of requests to help out with assignments. I think the most successful photographers constantly try to challenge themselves. I heard an interview with Parker Pfister where he talked about giving himself a new assignment or theme on a regular basis and he goes out and tries to capture images based on that theme. It reminded me of the old days back in high school (yes, we shot black and white, but color film did exist that long ago...), when the teacher would assign something like "texture" or "hands" in an attempt to spark creativity on our part. I think I've gotten away from that. It's easy to go out and just shoot sports or something, but to try to come up with a unique composition is challenging and fun. It makes you think. The more you can learn from actual experiences, the more creative you can get with projects in the future, and that will always be a good thing!
Having said all that; that's not exactly what I did here, but close. Amber needed help with a depth of field assignment yesterday afternoon, so we headed out to old town for the rich photo potential that exists down there. I brought along my wide angle lens only; in hindsight, I should have brought my tripod as well. I decided that it might be fun to play with HDR a little, so I started shooting 7 exposure shots of various scenes at 6 frames per second, and managed to come up with these images. I merged the exposures in Photomatix Pro to create the HDRs and tweaked them a little in Lightroom.
All together, I shot about 150 images, before Amber announced that she was ready to go. It was quick and dirty and fun. These are far from perfect, but I do know what I can do to make them better, and I have filed away some new ideas for next time when I don't have a 15 year old daughter tagging along...
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