Lesson 4 starts pushing us down the path of thinking about the subject of our photos instead of how we’ve set up our things around the subject. Previous lessons were about settings on the camera and lighting, but this time I had to actually think about what was in front of the camera.

Nika had us thinking about energy spirals. Here’s my first one, in light of the holiday coming up…

I call this one my “Spiral o’ Bumbles”. Ok, maybe not a lot of energy, but it is the holiday season, and I’m willing to bet that anyone reading these posts will be subjected to at least one Rudolph related shot per week for the next couple of weeks, and no “Bah! Humbugs!” from the blogosphere!

Ok, back the lesson…

I have something of a confession to make; the reason I think I’m drawn to learn how to take better photos is that I have something of a background in fine arts and visual presentation. I started out in life thinking I was going to be an architect, and I went to Carnegie-Mellon University to study architecture. I also worked several years as a landscape designer, where visual presentation meant a lot in getting clients to visualize designs. So I have some history in thinking about this kind of stuff, though it’s been a LONG time!

What does this have to do with the lesson this week? Not much, but it kind of sets a level of my own expectations. And I think I’m realizing that, for the past couple of years, I haven’t always thought of what was in the photo so much as what the food was, if that makes sense. If I made ribs, I took a photo of ribs. Sure, I tried to make it look decent usually, but I somehow forgot all that stuff I had once done in art classes and for project presentations. Nika’s lessons are helping me remember some of that, so I am expecting my photos to start improving.

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