The Photo Classroom

The Concept:

Photographing butterflies this summer might make a great addition to the bird, hummingbird and macro photography that many of us have already been enjoying. A couple weeks ago I was reading an article that 300 million butterflies will be coming through NC this summer. I thought that was interesting but then happened to read the comments where a guy posted that he grew and sold plants that butterflies were attracted too. I checked out his website and found that the owner, Braedon Shelton is located here in Charlotte and his organization is Bring Back the Butterflies Cooperative. Thinking it would be nice to suppport another small business locally, I emailed him and was surprised to get a very rapid response with some suggestions of flowers and how many to get customized for me (I had told him I was a photographer so interested in colorful flowers that would also attract butterflies as possible subjects). His plan was to sell the plants at the Uptown Farmer’s Market but with the shutdown, he was taking orders that you could pick up at his home. Then he offered to deliver my order anywhere in Mecklenburg County for $3. I went ahead, placed an order for some Mexican sunflowers, two different varieties of milkweed and the really interesting looking, passion vine. I emailed him that I had placed my order but would like it delivered and low and behold, he dropped them all of that very evening. Here is a photo of Braedon delivering my order.

If you know me, I got more excited about all the great customer service I had received from him than even having the plants to start to work with. Now all I have to do is keep them growing and wait until I have even more things to photograph in my backyard.

The Assignment:

Consider adding butterflies to your summer photographic subject plan right at your home. We will do another post with some butterfly photography tips when the season gets going a little more. Also, consider supporting a great cause (butterflies are important as I learned on Bring Back the Butterflies website) and an excelllent local small business who has been negatively affected by the virus shutdown. Bring on the butterflies! I am ready for them.

The Concept:

In the Weekend Edition of Today’s Photo Minute, Brian introduces are two challenges for our Shoot and Share

The Assignment:

Challenge 1: Patterns in Nature For this challenge, the goal is to get us all looking for interesting patterns in nature. This can include animals, trees, sky, water, flowers or about anything else that is natural and has a pattern you think makes for a great photo. Have fun with this one.

Challenge 2: White Balance Since a couple of our lessons had to do with WB this week, I thought this challenge would give us all a chance to get more proficient with changing our WB to ether improve the color of our images in various lighting situations or maybe even to get a really creative colored effect in our shots. Whether that means you just play around with some of the presets such as Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten (makes things blue), etc. or you want to try your hand at changing the Kelvin settings, this is a great chance to learn and grow. For this exercise, be sure to sure like a before and after photo of the same subject and label which white balance you used for each.

When you get your images ready by late this weekend, please share those with the rest of us who are participating as well. If you are on Facebook, please post them as a comment to this particular post. If you are not on Facebook, feel free to email your entries to brian@thephotoclassroom.com and I will be glad to post them

The Concept:

In Today’s Photo Minute, Brian Osborne demonstrates some of the best practices of setting up a tripod correctly. For many photographers starting out, working with the tripod feels very labor intensive so practicing these techniques will help you to not only avoid any eqiupment accidents but to be able to get ready for that shot efficiently.

The Assignment:

Practice setting up and taking down your tripod so that it becomes second nature. As we pointed out in the video, always make sure each leg extension is locked. Also be sure that the tripod plate is securely attached to the camera and that the camera is locked onto the tripod head before removing your hands from the equipment.