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Photography Exercises
I'm somewhat of a backwards learner in the sense that I have to acquire a global understanding of things before I work myself into the details. And in the photography world, I feel like I have developed an overall sense of the art and the craft. However, I don't know any specific aspect of photography with immense intimacy. I think this is where my personal learning curve becomes less revolutionary and more evolutionary, if you know what I mean. Time for me to zoom into my photographs and pixel peep for flaws, make adjustments and fine tune. But in order to do that, I really need to isolate the different aspects of photography that create a photograph. So thats where you guys come in! What I'm looking for here are different photography exercises that focus on specific aspects of photography. For example, I've read somewhere about a class assignment that required the photographer to light an egg. I don't recall what the exact goal was, but it supposedly required some brainwork. So is anyone willing to share? I'd love to get out and try these things and run my results through a gauntlet of critiques.  Feb 29 08 03:37 pm Link The best assignment I ever had when going to school was to go out and purposely take bad shots. Work at getting tree branches sticking out of someones head like antlers, timming your shots for a blink, bad posing, hand positions, horrible shadows, etc..... The point was that messing up on purpose and having to work at it makes you more aware of what is going wrong when you see it. If we learn from our mistakes, then might as well go out and get them over with and know exactly what they are as we're doing them. Feb 29 08 04:05 pm Link Mark J. Sebastian wrote: That's a classic one: light any 3 dimensional object to show its shape. An egg, especially a white one on a white background is an excellent exercise. Similarly, a black box on a black background, again to show the shape. (And again, with both matte surfaces and reflective surfaces.) Feb 29 08 04:13 pm Link I've been looking for something like that myself and tried to find something that separates the tedious useless exercises from the really useful ones. Light science and magic is an awesome book on how to light stuff techincally. Different kinds of surfaces - reflective, glossy, matte... mirrors... etc. It doesn't have exercises, but if you just replicate the photos it has, that's one exercise and you'll have some experience in that regard. Then there's elements of design and color theory. The area of highest contrast attract attention, negative space, leading lines, conveying motion and all that. So you can dedicate 10 photographs per concept. Then there's lighting the face and different kinds of people. That's a portait study exercise. Catching the moment is another one. Just getting the shot... And then you're pretty much done. You know the craft and it's the message that counts. Feb 29 08 04:31 pm Link that sounds like great advice. i'll try and grab a copy of that book as well. thanks! Feb 29 08 05:10 pm Link Read the book: Light, Science and Magic and work through the exercises. That will be a great start! Feb 29 08 09:56 pm Link One challenge we had to face in school was we had to turn in all our lenses to the prof and we recieved a good quality 50MM to use. For a week that was to only lens we were allowed to use for our assignments! RBI Feb 29 08 09:58 pm Link What aspects of photography do you want to explore? I remember a depth of field exercise from my college days. You start with the fastest shutter speed and largest lens opening and photograph a subject. Without moving the camera, you run through the combinations of shutter speed and f stops. This will show you how the focal length of your lens, shutter speed and aperture all relate to depth of field. Once you understand these relationships, you can begin to see what your image will look like in your mind, thus allowing you to choose the correct combinations in order to achieve the deisred effect. Feb 29 08 10:03 pm Link We had a class project where we had to use a light gray sweep, and place a light gray painted cube on a table and light the box and flag it down to make the background go black, all the while not casting shadow on the box. And once we had it lit and flagged we had to control the light for a 1:1, 1:3, and 1:8 ratio, other shots included flagging down everything except for one side of the box at a time.. it really taught us a lot of light manipulation/control... Feb 29 08 10:03 pm Link Caity B wrote: Ahh beat me to it... Feb 29 08 11:13 pm Link Caity B wrote: How many lights were you allowed to use? Mar 01 08 12:26 am Link __Mark__ wrote: Two Mole Richardson tungsten lights (1 supersoft, and 1 baby). Mar 01 08 07:03 am Link Rich Meade wrote: Agreed. Frustrating as all hell though if you're inexperienced with flags and whatnot.. Mar 01 08 07:04 am Link My favorite photo class was called "alternative subject photography." Well, that's what the professor called it. Day 1, we all drew numbers that corresponded to a random object in a box. This was our subject for the entire semester. Every shot we took had to include this object. I think my favorite photo from that semester was from a woman that had receives a few 3 foot long aluminum tubes to shoot. She had posed a model on a beach, in a lunge chair, reading a book. One tube was coming up out of the water, another one was next to her chair. She shot it in a way to make it look like the tubes were stalking the woman in the photo. It was great. So set aside $5 and go to Home Depot for a new "model" to shoot. Find some random object and include it in 50 images and make it work somehow. Mar 01 08 07:15 am Link shoot a orange to change the skin to look like an apple nice and smooth. thats one i do a lot for fun. light it with a table lamp and your off cam flash Mar 01 08 07:26 am Link Robert Bowling Imaging wrote: This I find to be excellent. Mar 01 08 09:05 am Link Find a subject with a lot of depth. focus 1/2 the way in Shoot on a tripod form f32 to you biggest f stop. Then see how depth of field changed. Also see what your sharpest f-stops are. second project -- shoot a person riding a bicycle at different shutter speeds to see what is needed to stop motion. Mar 01 08 09:06 am Link After I had taken my last class with my photography teacher he would issue challenges to me for a week or month at a time. One of my favorite ones was to use only one light source and all the reflectors, flags, and gobos you wanted to. It's a great exercise and if you really want to push the limits some time try it with 1600 or 3200 ISO (film or digital) and a full moon night. Mar 01 08 09:14 am Link Try the weekly contests on fredmiranda.com Mar 01 08 09:23 am Link I aree with the egg, and Light, Science and Magic. Both are amazing!!! I like all the other suggestions too, there are a couple I am going to try. My suggestion would be try out Ten and Ten More. Two ebooks from David DuChemin. Each has ten exercises and are a lot of fun and work. Mar 25 12 03:17 pm Link I had a studio lighting class, first assignment was use 3 lights on subject, but with one shadow Mar 25 12 04:01 pm Link Chase storms. It is always a challenge, to anybody. Here is a storm just brewing over the coast. You can see the wall of the cloud forming .  Street Photography is challenging to any photographer.  Image Title: "The Usual Suspects" details of photo here: http://500px.com/photo/5339161 Post your Street Photography images on MM here: https://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=822457 (it is not a critique thread, just contributions) . Mar 25 12 04:06 pm Link I had the same "white egg, white background" followed by "black egg, black background" as class assignments. These were shot with 4x5 on Tri-X film and in each print there had to be blackest black and whitest white the paper would print. It was a very good exercise in controlling light. Mar 25 12 04:09 pm Link The white egg on white is too easy. The egg is opaque and non-reflective. We had to shoot a white shinny, translucent cup and saucer on white base & background. All edges had to separate clearly at all points, the translucent character had to show, the roundness of the shapes had to be apparent. Lots of attention to detail. It was our first lighting class assignment. Once, I took some Kodachome 25 and shot a roll on Hollywood Blvd. after sunset. Without a tripod - just to practice good handholding technique. Still will do it with digital at ISO 100/50. You need to keep practicing constantly. Mar 25 12 04:30 pm Link There are a gazillion different exercises. Some revolve around learning your camera. Some revolve around learning the nature of light. Some revolve around composition. Here just a couple that I like: --Take a still life. Shoot it with every different type of white balance option your camera has including two special white balances you've previously set up before the shoot. --Pick a common object in your life (a table lamp, your toothbrush). Shoot 30 different perspectives of that brush (no, you can't use photoshop to change how it appears). --Look for "S" curves in your world around you and then shoot them. --Tell a story with photos. --Play with DoF. --Play with front and rear curtain sync. --Shoot water droplets. Shoot smoke. --Shoot refraction and reflection concepts. --Shoot a picture in which you use negative space. --Compose a shot in extreme light. Expose for the shadows and shoot. Now expose for the light and shoot. --Find an interesting still life outside. Wait for a day with at least some sun (ideally a sunny period and a cloudy period). Shoot it on the hour starting at 6am through to 8pm. Compare the nature of the light, the impact of the "Golden Hour", shadows and impact on the subject for each time of day. --Find a willing model. Pose her on a stool. Start with one light (off camera) and shoot her "around the clock" (i.e.: light at 1 o'clock, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and so on). Change the angle of the light and do the same. Add a second light. Add a third light. --Shoot with one light off camera so you create long, distorted shadows to the side of the model. Aim to create interesting shadows. --Pick one part of the body (ideally one that is acceptable to be exposed in public) and create interesting compositions of it (like eyelashes or lips or hands). Ed Mar 25 12 04:34 pm Link Just stopping in to say, awesome thread. Thanks to OP and everyone responding. I'm going to try some of these tomorrow. . . Mar 25 12 09:18 pm Link Mark J. Sebastian wrote: I've only had one photography lesson. I was told to shoot a roll of film without looking through the viewfinder. Mar 25 12 10:24 pm Link Photograph a glass object, like a wine glass, and... -make it have a white outline on black background -make it have a black outline on white background they cannot have distracting specular highlights I don't know how this helps anyone -here- but it's interesting to do for the first time and challenging with odd shaped objects or the object turned at certain angles. Mar 26 12 12:31 am Link Lots of good ideas already, especially for lighting products. Still shooters tend to think more about composition, but cinema/TV people think more about the "story." How will this shot tie into the other shots? Instead of going for a single killer image, try to plan a series of images which will tell a story - something short like a 15 second TV ad. Create a story board, with layouts. Shoot to the layouts. This exercise will sharpen your pre-visualization skills, and will help you plan larger projects like magazine spreads, and make it easier to work with editors and art directors. Mar 26 12 07:06 am Link Get a white cube and place it in a way you see three faces of the cube (top and two sides) and try to make one side black, one side white and one side 50% grey. You have to do this with only one light and flags and reflectors. With one light and flags and reflectors also try two white or tw gray or two black and one different. At the end try all sides gray, all sides white, also silouhtte and rimmed silouhette Mar 26 12 09:34 am Link To learn the effect of shutter speed on the final photograph, put your camera in "S" mode and shoot moving subjects. Use all your shutter speed from ridiculously slow to super fast. Then compare the results on your computer screen--not the back of your camera. To learn the effect of aperture, shoot in "A" mode. Pick a scene with a lot of depth and shoot through the full range of apertures. Again, compare the results on your screen. To learn exposure, set your camera to manual and shoot a wide variety of scenes, from ones dominated by light objects to ones dominated by dark objects. Start with the exposure suggested by the camera and then bracket (manually) above and below the suggested exposure. You will quickly learn when you need to give additional or reduced exposure from what the camera meter suggests. A game to play after you have done this for a while is "guess the exposure." Try to guess the exposure before you meter the scene. As others have suggested, "Light: Science and Magic" is a terrific resource regarding lighting difficult subjects. Mar 26 12 10:12 am Link I was diving through the archives and found this thread. Some great exercises I will have to try. One of my favorite things to do is to walk around with a few photographers shooting photos. We will come up with a common theme to shoot: orange, light, boxes, circles, anything. This helps to exercise the creative side of your brain. To balance the creative with the technical, you would pick a specific technical element you want to practice. Manual focusing, on-camera flash, depth of field, natural light, etc. As a group you can help each other with technical questions and also push each other creatively. By far, this is my favorite way to become a better photographer. I did this when I was starting out, when I was learning how to shoot manual, and now use it as a way to teach new photographers. I go back to this any time I want to learn a new trick or technique. Apr 16 12 12:43 am Link Choose "one" light source. Could be the sun. A portable hotshoe flash. A studio strobe. Whatever you want. Without adding another light, produce 10 totally different shots with that one light and never use it the same exact way. You can add and use anything else to help light your subject EXCEPT another light. And that includes the sun. So choose wisely. For instance 1: Light by itself (direct sunlight). USe white reflector for fill w/sun. Now produce 8 more. This makes you use your light more creatively and more efficiently. Apr 16 12 03:36 am Link I did a one on one workshop session with Kim Weston last summer and one suggestion he gave me when working with models was to first shoot a full figure shot, then move in and find two or three other closer images to shoot as well. I found that it makes you look very differently at the subject and helps you think about other possibilities in your images. BTW - Learned a great deal in working with Kim that weekend. Note that his work is fine art, not fashion, but I highly recommend saving up your pennies and heading down to Carmel to work with him. Apr 16 12 09:00 am Link |
