Justin Acuff's Blog » photography class

Backpacking in Big South Fork One Day… Nature and Travel Field Trip #1 the Next

Justin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:20:33 +0000

This past weekend was a really busy one, but fun filled. It started on Saturday by meeting up with Bryan and Meredith, Justin S, Derek, Dale, and Ann for some backpacking in Big South Fork. They all go to Brentwood Hills CoC. It was kind of an interesting itinerary. Dale’s truck was left over near Bandy Creek Campground. We meet up at Leatherwood Ford. The plan was to camp out just below the Angel Falls Overlook, but first do a day hike from Leatherwood Ford to Bandy Creek, stopping by Angel Falls. The length of the Day Hike was right around 10.5 miles. I didn’t take my GPS this time, so about the only thing I really have to go on is estimating by pace and time. Our campsite was two miles in on the trail. We took a couple of tents to claim our spot. We would carry the rest of our gear when we finished the day hike and returned back to Leatherwood Food. It got cold and started to very lightly rain… and I had left my rain jacket in the car, so I was pretty miserable during the day hike and anxious to get back to the car. After getting our gear, we proceeded to hike back to camp. It is a really flat trail, so that helps when carrying a 31 lb pack after hiking 10.5 miles. After we setup, we started cooking dinner. Shortly after dinner, it started raining again. I opted to take shelter in my tent. I usually have trouble falling asleep when I’m out camping, but this time, I was out pretty quickly. I’m sure I was probably the first one out.

My plan was to leave around 8:00 in the morning since I needed to get ready for the Nature and Travel Photography Field trip later in the afternoon. Derek and Ann also had to go back to Nashville and be there in time for a Habitat for Humanity Dedication for a house their group had worked on. When I saw Derek walking around, I went down to see when they had planned on leaving… if soon I’d hike out with them, if not, I’d just hike out alone. Came to find out he had gotten sick. We originally had planned to have a church service, but in Derek’s condition, it was decided that the best thing was to get him back to the car. I helped him pack up his stuff and then went to check on Ann. She had just gotten up and was starting to pack up. However, she really didn’t have a backpack that was big enough for her stuff. On the way in Dale had helped her carry her stuff (I assume), but since Dale wasn’t camping, he left after dinner. What we decided to do was I’d hike out with Derek and carry some of Ann’s stuff and Bryan would hike out with Ann and carry some of Ann and Derek’s stuff. Then Bryan would go back to camp and hike out with Meredith and Justin later.

So that was a long story, with no pictures… but the moral of it is, it helps to have the right gear, whether it be a rain jacket or a large backpack.

Ok we now for the part of this entry that doesn’t require much writing. A few of us meet up at UT before and drove to Townsend. We then meet up with everyone else at the parking lot just before you get to the Y. As part of the field trip, we only went to two places. The first was Middle Prong on the road past Treemont. The second place was one of the first parking areas you come to after you pass the road to Treemont on the way to Cades Cove. Through work, I have access to a couple of pieces of equipment that I probably won’t ever buy. One is a Canon 40D that has been converted to Infrared and the other is a 600mm f4L lens.

http://gallery2.justinacuff.net/v/photography_certificate/nature_and_travel_photography/field_trip_1/

Technorati Tags: Big South Fork, Great Smoky Mountains, Nature and Travel Photography, photography, photography class, field trip

Fundamentals of Digital Photography Assignment #1

Justin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:27:10 +0000

* Shoot a properly exposed picture (manual mode) of a normal scene, not a back lit, not a front lit, not an overly light or excessively dark subject. I don’t care what aperture or what shutter speed, just properly exposed. Take notes.
* Shoot a series of five shots showing purposeful overexposures and underexposures (-2, and -1 stop, normal, +1 stop and +2 stop). Pick a shutter speed that places your aperture in the mid-point of your available apertures, say f 8. Then hold your shutter speed constant and change your apertures to get the over and under exposure your want. This is called bracketing. You can do this with shutter speeds or a combination of shutter speeds and apertures changes. Remember each full aperture change equals 1 stop. Shoot these pictures as soon as possible.
Note, do the aperture or ss change by actually changing the value of the aperture or ss, not by watching the meter move. The goal is to learn your aperture and ss values.
* Find a subject that is in motion, such as a moving car, child on a bicycle, or running water. Running water from your kitchen sink or outside garden hose does not work very well. Look for naturally flowing water. Stop, or freeze the movement of the water with shutter speed control (running water will be frozen at any shutter speed at or faster than 1/60 second. You don’t have to use the fastest shutter speed, just fast enough. Remember to keep a happy meter by adjusting your aperture.
* Now blur the movement with shutter speed control. Use a relatively slow shutter speed. Use shutter speeds starting at 1/15 sec to as slow as you can go. The limit will be set my how bright the ambient light is. When the light is bright, it is difficult or impossible to use really long shutter speeds, such as ½ or one second, but go as slow as you can while keeping your meter happy. You will find that you get to use the longest shutter possible when you set the aperture to the smallest you have, such as f22. You will need to hold the camera absolutely still for these shots. Use your tripod if you have one.
* Show shallow depth of field (such as near subject in focus and background out of focus) with aperture control. Use large apertures (large hole, small numerical value, such as f2). Get really close to your near subject and also have your far subject (viewable in the same frame) fairly far away, greater than 10-15 ft.
* Show great depth of field (near and far all in focus) with aperture control. Use small apertures (small hole, large numerical value, such as f16 or f22)

Well I’ve decided that I am not happy with WordPress’s gallery. I’ve removed those pictures and instead here’s a link to it in my gallery.

Technorati Tags: Photography, photography class, haw ridge, worlds fair park, sunsphere, fundamentals of digital photography

Nature and Travel Photography Assignment 1

Justin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:23:22 +0000

I should have posted this last week, but I got kind of busy with the baby day stuff at Laurel, so I didn’t get around to it. In the meantime, I upgraded WordPress to 2.5, which includes a photo gallery. Previously I had experimented with using a plug-in called WPG2. It worked good when I first installed it, but I think and upgrade to Gallery broke it and I don’t really care that much to go in and see what is going wrong.

As with most of the classes I am taking, this assignment was very informal. It was to pick a subject and photograph it many different ways. I actually picked two subjects, but that was just because they are in the same area. On April 13th, we are taking the youth group hiking. I know the Smoky Mountains the best and I am familiar with Big South Fork, but both of those areas are kind of far away and the Smoky Mountains will be crowded. I know there are hiking trails at Norris Dam State Park, so I loaded up my camera gear to run by Norris and pick up a trail map and hope there was something to photograph. In the southeastern part of the park, there is a Rice Grist Mill and the Crosby Threshing Barn in the same area. I chose these as my subjects. Also that weekend, I had a 40D we had modified to make it sensitive to infrared. I’m still trying to learn infrared. These were my first attempts. It was very cloudy and overcast that day, so the infrared pictures aren’t quite as good as they could have been.

Well, I’ve decided I’m not happy with the WordPress Gallery, so I’ve removed the pictures and instead will give you a link to it in my gallery.

Technorati Tags: Nature and Travel Photography, photography, photography class, travel, Norris Dam, Norris Dam State Park, Rice Grist Mill, Grist Mill, Crosby Threshing Barn

Contemporary Art Assignment 4

Justin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:10:10 +0000

The Nature shooting assignment is wide open for you to bring in any landscape/nature images. You are also welcome to develop an idea based on the Nature photographers that we discussed.

The first three images you will see are Panoramas that I have created in the past. The first is from the Brown’s cabin in North Carolina, the second is at the Grand Canyon, and the third is from Cataloochee. The next two are also from Cataloochee. The final two are from Norris Dam State Park. Unfortunately, this weekend isn’t the best weekend to do this assignment because of weather, but as you can see from the last two images, sometimes you just have to make do with what you’ve got.

Assignment 4

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photography class, nature, Cataloochee, Norris Dam, Grand Canyon

Contemporary Art Assignment 3

Justin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:05:12 +0000

The plug-in I use for displaying the pictures direct from my gallery website has stopped working. Instead of trying to fix it for now, I am just deactivating it and linking to the main page of that particular album.

1) Compose and photograph a formulaic narrative composition – subject’s face is hidden or turned away from the viewer.
2) Compose and photograph a closed narrative composition.
3) Compose and photograph an open narrative composition.

The order in which they appear isn’t exactly the same order of the assignment, so to clarify:
1-7 are the closed narratives. It is part of a series I call “Urban Legends, Myths, and Internet Hoaxes”.
8 and 9 are the formulaic narratives.
10 and 11 are the open narratives.

Assignment 3

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photography class, narrative, open narrative, closed narrative, formulaic narrative, urban legend, internet hoax, myth, WPG2

Contemporary Art Photography Assignment 1

Justin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:17:16 +0000

In addition to doing make up course work for an incomplete I took a couple of years ago, I am taking some photography classes. After hearing Jon talk about the Photography Certificate offered through UT as a non-credit program, I looked at it and thought it would be kind of cool to take that. By the time I started to register, the required Fundamentals class was full. From the sounds of it, I am already pretty comfortable with the topics and techniques that is covered, but I’ll still have to take it to do the Photography Certificate. Since that class was full and the Certificate program requires 5 electives, I looked over the possible electives and selected the ones that are most interesting, most applicable, or most challenging. Not all electives are taught each quarter, so these might change if I can’t enroll in them because they are full. (Since it won’t be a last minute decision, I should be able to register for them.) The electives that I want to take are Portrait Photography, Lighting Essentials, Wedding Photography, Nature and Travel Photography, and Contemporary Art Photography. Portrait, Lighting, and Wedding are the practical electives. Nature and Travel is the one that I probably enjoy the most. (I am registered for it this quarter, but it doesn’t start until March.) Contemporary Art is the one that should be the most challenging. I thought about taking the Sports or Photoshop classes, but decided to go with Contemporary Art since 1) I could register for it this term and 2) hopefully it will help me improve on the artistic aspect.

Since I registered the day after classes started, I had missed the first class and assignment. That was also the day of the crazy ice storm so several other people missed it as well. The second class was just a review of the first class and she postponed the due date for the assignment until last night. The assignment was as follows:

Pick two:
1) Photographic “flatness” creates relationships between things that did not exist before. Select a scene a photograph it form different vantage points to create different relationships between the subjects.
2) Focus can produce a hierarchy of importance in a photograph by creating one plane of focus which seperates the main subject from the remaining content. Take a series of photographs that explore this use of focus.
3) There are two people on the street. They are completely unlrelated, but they happen at one instant to be next to each other. By taking a photograph of them in the same frame a relationship is created. Produce two or more images exploring this.
4) Explore the notion of time in photographs. Find a scene which includes movement and take photographs of increasingly longer duration, ranging from 1/1000th of a second to minutes. About five or six photos in all.

Since I had been sick, I really didn’t get to get out much. Even though she said two, I went for three. The following images are what I showed in class. They are a mixture of images that I shot specifically for this assignment and previous images that I thought would qualify as examples.

Assignment 1

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photographic flatness, focus, photography class