Fields of...gray

We had our last field trip this week, this time to Maybury State Park.  Our assignment was "reflections" --we spent most of the evening alongside a pond/lake/body of water of some sort (I'm such a Nature Girl), but I have not one good landscape photo to show for it.  The balmy temperatures were contradicted by dreary surroundings....not even a dandelion's pop of yellow to be found...and I was uninspired. Although I recognize the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone every now and again, this outing confirmed what I've known all along: I much prefer photographing people to things (even if pond scum is a living organism).

I did finally nail one technique I've been working on for awhile called panning, where you have to lock focus and follow a moving object with your camera, while blurring the background.  It's not a perfect shot (tires can't be frozen because they're rotating in the opposite direction as the panning motion), but better than any of the speeding cars I tried to capture a couple weeks ago in downtown Plymouth.  P.S. Thank you kind biker man for your burst of color!

It was cool to work on some silhouettes, this one combined w/ sun flare.

My friend, Emily, with our teacher, Brian.

And my new friend, Toni, in another ISO1600 shot that (combined w/ a bad crop) illustrates the graininess I touched on in a previous post.

 

Next week is our last class, and I am sad for it to end.  Hoping to do some more work and reading on my own this summer; perhaps start looking for another class or workshop in the fall.  Also hoping this blog will inspire me to pull the camera out on the gray days, maybe even take notice of "things" I would normally pass over.