Well, maybe not perfect…but I’m getting a little bit closer. This week was purely all visual storytelling and I was very glad to get different tips on how to be a better photographer, since I could certainly use it. So while I may not have made perfect just yet, I certainly did practicing between the daily creates and the photoblitz to say that I am much more comfortable with using a camera (and by camera I mean iPhone since my camera has a battery life of the first cell phone ever invented).

To start off, I started to work with “Looking to the light” as my guide. This happened when I was working on my first daily create for the week which involved me taking a picture of a stuffed animal holding a calculator. This picture was taken on my bed, and I had a reading light that I kept moving around in order to find the best lighting that I enjoyed. I wanted the lights to be on Quackie (the duck’s name of course), and I put more emphasis on the shadow when editing the photo to make it stand out a little bit more. I really liked what I ended up with:

Next tip that I wanted to work on was creating depth. I went for a run one day this week because I am trying to get back into the working out grind that I used to be on (a feat which is very hard because of my lack of motivation). In high school I ran track and absolutely loved it, the challenge of going over a hurdle while sprinting at full speed just really appealed to me. However, I lost the desire at some point between high school and college so I didn’t pursue it in later years. But when I find myself stressed out, I long for the hurdles again. So this week I found myself running to the track and going over some hurdles again. I found myself staring at the long distance between the starting line and the finish line. The number of times I looked down that path amazed me, 100 meters and 10 hurdles and it takes longer to set up than it takes to run the actual race. At that time that distance was the only thing that mattered, it seemed to be a mile long yet you ran it in a blink of an eye. I was thinking about all of this while doing different hurdling drills where the hurdles were still wet from the morning rain and I just saw an opportunity. So, I created depth by trying my best to add in the long distance between. The long distance that I have stared down so many times. In this picture, I got the hurdles and the meters.

Third thing that I worked on was paying attention to the moment, because wow I came up with some awesome things. I realize that this tip was to try to anticipate an action that may occur, but I was shocked to see what I ended up getting when doing my photoblitz. I did my trek in Trinkle where I have been in almost every weekday since freshman year (with the exception of this semester). Yet, I missed a clock that was right in the lobby that I walked in every single day. How could I miss something hanging from the ceiling like that? This is when I realized I need to pay attention not only to the moment, but to my surroundings, which is so completely important.

I even found a cool statue in a glass covered book case that I also had never paid attention to before.