Ready, Set, Shoot!

The first event I attempted to photograph was a student senate meeting. There, a new student senate president by the name of William Alexander, attempted to lead the meeting while the rest of his counsel supported him. It was held on the third floor of the Undergraduate Library and the room was encompassed by windows. I set the ISO at 600 and worked down from there, then began playing with the aperture, before the meeting started. I circled the outside of the rectangular meeting space, looking for the opportunity to capture a candid moment. One shot in particular that I had trouble with, was trying to focus on a document that was passed out the senate, or in other words, capture a small depth of field. Unfortunately, I did not capture any feature photo-worthy pictures here and this is the best example I can provide for this part of the assignment.

Tried capturing text on paper but couldn't find the correct aperture to achieve the depth of field/focus, needed.

Surprisingly, I had better luck capturing a feature photo at an indoor location, at night, with unique overhead lighting. I couldn't tell you why, but I did! In this picture, I tried getting an action shot of her painting while maintaining the integrity of the depth so that the social environment of the scene could be highlighted. It really looked like the students were having fun!

Jessica Wooldredge, 19, experiments with blues while partaking in the event, Painting with WSU at the Majestic Cafe in Midtown, Thursday evening.

 Other than the manual photography attributes of the assignment (in which I struggled with), I learned an important lesson regarding the nature of photojournalism. At one point during the Painting with WSU event, I crept up on a group of three girls holding up their paintings to each other, showcasing what they did. I snapped a picture, which caught them off guard, and then they all looked at me in full attention and held up their pictures once more. Smiles on their faces, they attempted to pose for the camera. Intuitively, I knew that this was not the type of photo I was going for, but I took the picture anyway in an attempt to appease them. In class (the next day), I realized that we should not attempt to capture pictures in which people are posing because that would be considered portrait photography, not news, or photojournalism. This was a lesson for me of what not to do, while shooting feature photos!

Students react to me (trying to get in on their painting action) by stopping what they're doing and posing for the camera.