I love pouring over pictures, especially family pictures – always have. As a kid I spent hours studying our family photo albums, fascinated by life before my memory.
(Two of my favs – baby me with mom and baby me with dad.)
Recently, my family’s been on an ancestry quest and so delving into century old photographs is a new favorite past-time.
(My great-great-great grandmother, Anna Fox. I’m sorta, kinda named after her, but that’s a long story.)
And then there are the millions of pictures I take of my kiddos.
(These are from an attempt at a home photo shoot last year.)
All things considered, I have a thing for pictures, and when my in-laws gifted me a shiny new Canon Rebel, I thought for sure I’d sit down and become a photographer. Not so. Life happens, school happens, work happens . . .and so I use it as a glorified point and shoot, with quick edits in iPhoto later on. Every so often I happen to snap a good one just by clicking a million, and I’ve only had the other lens on once for about five minutes.
(Here are a few examples of edits using iPhoto.)
The Networked Learning Project for CEP 810 is the perfect kick-in-the-pants opportunity to actually do some real learning about my camera, lighting, composition, etc. I’m excited to see what I can do within a few weeks. The goal of the project is to track our learning progress (the “learning” piece) as we attempt to learn via YouTube and Help Forums (thus the “networked” piece). Posting some of my pre-learning examples in this post, so I can track my progress.
Here goes nothing!
-Anna
The Ice-Cream Coffee Teacher 
You seem to have quite the streak of nostalgia when it comes to CEP 810 posts thus far 🙂
I think you’ll find a fair number of resources (especially help forums) to work on your composition. You might also want to consider signing up for a Flickr account and joining a few groups and/or check out a few galleries as there’s a wealth of knowledge in that community. I’m curious, after reading this, if you have a specific goals among some that you mentioned. Perhaps a particular type of shot, or maybe the best way to frame and/or light a shot using your particular lens. I’d love to see maybe a small gallery of updates (Instagram, Flicker, etc.) over the next few weeks.
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Thanks for the ideas, Ben! Flickr is a great idea – and I think I can embed that feed in here somehow as well, which would be extremely convenient. Truth be told this week has been spent learning enough so that I can narrow my learning goal. It’s been interesting to grapple with the depth of my ignorance! lol I’ll share an updated plan of action within the next few days, hopefully.
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“It’s been interesting to grapple with the depth of my ignorance!”
This is me ALL the time! It’s a great comment, and a great way to tackle life; we’re all ignorant about a great number of things, and it’s only in examining projects and ideas more closely that we begin to learn. Love it!
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Glad it’s not just me! Actually, I think it’s easy to miss a lot of great opportunities to grow and learn by trying the fake-it-till-I-make-it route. There’s no shame in not knowing something (usually) – the issue is in not asking for/finding what you need. My three-year-old reminds me daily (if not hourly) of the power of seeking answers and immediate feedback. Not that we want to adopt all the habits of the five and under set, but it’s amazing how they are pre-wired to learn!
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