They Caught Me...

In the beginning days of my photography class, we're spending a little time each day talking about how to critique images as well as simple ways to improve their compositions. After the "practice" time during our last class, we started to talk about the images they took. The lesson was on the use of aperture and depth of field, but again, I interjected a few things here and there about composition as we went through their images. One of my main goals in the early days is to get them to really slow down and think about the image they are creating. When working with people, I had mentioned a few times that it's usually pretty important to pay attention to the things in the background that intersect with their model's head. Another main goal I have is to get them to move their bodies in order to select the best composition rather than just standing in one place the whole time. I had just happened to do this very thing with an image of one of the students while we were outside. Now, this is in no way an awesome portrait, but I quickly snapped the first image, then decided that I didn't like the way the mountain went right through her head. So, by crouching down just a little, I was able to  get the same image but with the mountain in a different spot behind her. As I mentioned, this is not an award-winning portrait work, but just a quick snapshot example of how moving your body can give you different options. There are actually quite a few things I don't like about these images, but they are just to illustrate a point. Well anyway, little did I know, one of my students actually caught me in action as I was "crouching". As they were all complaining about how bad they look in their portraits that they took of each other, I laughed and said I looked like a little old granny. I even asked them to send the image to me so I could post it. I'm not afraid...laugh all you want! It's better to just laugh at yourself rather than complaining about how awful or silly you look, right?