Month: September 2019

My photojournalism assignment is to focus on the recent opening of a Thai Restaurant in New Jersey that is owned by a small immigrant family; they were people who came to the United States without substantial amounts of money and managed to get through their struggle to finally open their own place. They continue to push through the odds and sacrificed many things to make it happen. 

I chose this topic mainly because it was an inspiring story of people making their dreams come true and sharing their background with the public. I plan to capture the inside of their restaurant, along with the different people that come by to show their support and old photographs they have of their life in a different country. 

My photojournalism assignment is focus on a new school course policy in community college. Since 2018, the government announced a new rule of enough quantify students in each class. Which is means all classes must be enough fifteen students before the new semester start. Otherwise, the class will be cancelled. Now, whether a class might start is depends on numbers of students. Fifteen is a minimum number that makes the class run.

LaGuardia Community College offers eight languages courses for students. The main office is modern language department. Each language has two or three classes in different times for students to choose. Department disputes tutors work in the tutoring center better for students ask questions one by one. However, after the new policy released, many foreign language classes were cancelled in this year. The school emailed to language department that which classes would be cancelled. Until September 5, there were twenty-six classes cancelled and those students who registered foreign classes had to pick another class up.

I chose this topic the reason is foreign language study is important in a country of immigrant. Whether each class has sufficient students, the government should keep the rule of course before. I would like to pick one foreign language teacher ‘s daily routine to pictures on his class and office.  Meanwhile, tutoring center is another place which I mandatory to interview and take photos. Twelve photos are minimum in my photojournalism assignment. I will focus on teachers and tutors lives at school. The main goal is express foreign languages are popular in college. Hopefully the rule of course could be change it a little for language department.

Tao Zhang

For this assignment, I plan on highlighting an example of resiliency in New Yorkers. In early 2014, the first ever Whole Foods came to Brooklyn, placed in the affluent neighborhood of Park Slope. When the plot of land, located on the corner of 3^rd Street and 3^rd Avenue, was first purchased by Whole Foods, there was a fear that small businesses would be priced out of the area. While many local shops have closed for good, others have managed to stay afloat.

I plan to highlight a local, family owned and operated bodega/grocery store that sits less than a 10-minute walk from Whole Foods and depict how their business has persevered since Whole Foods has opened in the area almost 5-years ago.

Some photos I plan to highlight include specific updates made to the store after Whole Foods arrived.

-Reema Doleh

First: A quick review of DSLR settings by practicing with CameraSim

Also: WB

White balance refers to the setting that controls for light temperature. If your camera is set to the incorrect WB setting, your images are likely to turn out looking a little too blue or a little too yellow. The icons are a pretty clear description of the lighting conditions they’re meant to be used with.

In-Class Assignment: Photo Scavenger Hunt

Take one of the school cameras and pair up in teams of two or three. Go out within a reasonable radius of campus and start taking photos, looking for at least 10 strongly-composed images that capture some of the following elements of composition (some of these will inevitably contain multiple elements, and that’s fine). Please make sure everyone in the group gets  roughly equal time with the camera.

Contrasting colors
Monochromatic colors
Symmetry
Pattern
Rule of thirds
Close-up detail shot
Shallow depth of field
Portrait
Dramatic/beautiful/interesting use of light
Slow shutter speed
Internal framing
Movement
Decisive moment
Layers telling a story
Unusual perspective

Make sure you leave enough time to come back and load the photos onto your computer and pack up the cameras by the end of class time; we’ll work on editing the images in Lightroom at a later date. I recommend also saving them in the cloud or sending them to yourself via WeTransfer (which expires after about a week!) or email.

Introduction to DSLR Photography

The first time you pick up a DSLR camera, the sheer number of settings and dials can be a little overwhelming. You may be tempted to stick with Auto when you start out — and that’s totally fine while you’re getting the hang of it.

But to make sure you are taking the best possible pictures, it helps to have control over a few key settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, which collectively make up the three pillars of photography. Tweaking these settings will allow you to take different types of pictures, and all of them essentially come down to one thing: light.

The Bucket

It may be helpful to keep this analogy in mind.

Imagine you are using a garden hose to fill a bucket to the top. Next, imagine that our end goal — a bucket filled exactly to the brim, but without spilling — equals a perfectly exposed photograph .

A few things control how much water goes in the bucket and how long it takes to reach the brim: the width of the hose, the water pressure, and how long you let the water run. You can achieve your goal using endless combinations of these factors. A very narrow pipe running at a steady pressure for a long time will fill your bucket as surely as a very wide pipe running for only a few moments.

A camera works the same way to let in the correct amount of light. Imagine that the width of the hose is the aperture, the amount of time you run the tap is the shutter speed, and the water pressure is the ISO.

ISO

Basically, ISO refers to how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. The lower the number, the less sensitive it is and vice versa. The ISO range in the DSLR cameras we’ll be using usually goes from 100 to 6400, doubling as it goes (100 to 200 to 400 and so on until it gets up to 3200 and 6400).

It follows, then, that you will need to adjust the ISO for the available lighting conditions.

In broad daylight, there is plenty of light to work with, so a low ISO will be all you need. If you let in too much light, the image will be overexposed.

If you are shooting indoors in artificial light, you will need a much higher ISO — but be aware that you sacrifice image quality as you get up to the highest ISO settings, where you will start to notice a grainy quality. So before you reach for the dial to crank the ISO up to 3200, try letting a bit more light into the camera using a wider (lower) aperture or slower shutter speed.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is probably the simplest setting to understand. It refers to how long the camera’s shutter stays open. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is able to come in, and vice versa.

Shutter speed typically ranges from about 1/1000th of a second (very fast) to a few seconds (very slow). Slow shutter speed allow for a longer exposure time, which allows the camera to capture more movement. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the image you want to make.

A faster shutter speed would have captured the aqua-colored glove crisply. Using a slower shutter speed can create a sense of motion. Credit: Lindsay Armstrong

A long exposure can allow you to capture objects in motion in an artistically blurred fashion — or it can capture unwanted camera shake if you’re shooting without a tripod.

Sports photographers trying to capture crisp images, for example, are likely to rely on a fast shutter speed because their subjects are moving so quickly.

Aperture

Aperture refers to the opening in the lens. The wider it is, the more light it lets in. Somewhat confusingly, smaller numbers equate to wider aperture. Aperture is measured in “f-stops” and lenses can have different ranges. The wide-angle lenses that come with the journalism department’s DSLR cameras typically range from about f/3.5 (the widest) to f/22 (letting in the least amount of light).

A low aperture, in addition to helping you shoot in low-light conditions, allows you to capture a shallow depth of field. This refers to the effect where an object in the foreground is in focus but the background is blurred (or vice versa).

This also allows you to play with the bokeh effect.

A high aperture, on the other hand, allows to retain detail at every layer of the image, which can be vital in terms of storytelling. If there are protest signs in the background, for instance, and your camera lens is focused on a police officer in the foreground, a shallow depth of field means we may not be able to tell what the signs say. In such a situation, you might want a flatter image, with a deeper depth of field.