Photography (in English)

(By Mathurin)

Every Friday, people from MyJapan (MyJapan is an organization that has been created after the great earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, 2011) come in my class to teach us the art of photography.

We started the first lesson with lines. We had to look around the class to find lines: any lines, lines
from books, lines from tables, lines from shelves, lines from everywhere. We had to take lines
because it is a start to the art of photography. We did this because when we took a picture, we could observe the vanishing points, we could learn how to correctly aligne the lines, how the lines are made, where are the lines, how the lines are straight...


The second lesson was on silhouettes. Silhouettes are the shapes of an object. We only see the outline.
Inside the silhouette is black or another colour, but we don't see what is inside the silhouette.
The button used to take a picture is called "the shutter button" (my dad told me strange word in french Obturateur, but I already know Shutter in english). You know, for that button there are two clics to take a picture. So, you'll need to do the first clic while looking at the sun or a light at the same time (I would recommend you to use the sun because it's more powerful). Then,
you will have to ask a friend to stand right in front of a window, or you could put a geometric shape in front of a window (you could also put a curtain if it isn't to thick). Then, you would do the other half of the clic.
Note: while all that time, you would have to keep hold of the first clic where it was.

Third lesson: 3D pictures. This lesson was on shadows. Shadows are supposed to give 3D to the object
because if there where no shadow, the picture would stay flat. This lesson is simple, you only need
a light and put it at an angle. What I did was to put an object with a really bright colour. But I think
that the picture is better when the shadow is behind the object.

Floating table and chairs

After that we had a lesson on the rule of three thirds. The rule of three thirds is often used in the art of photography.
Okay, so, the rule of 3/3 means that the main object of the picture does not always need to be in the center of the image, but it could be on the right side of the image, or on the left side of the image,
your choice! On your camera, there should be a mode "Grid Lines". Its a mode that puts
3/3 lines on your camera screen.

The before last lesson. Two or three pictures are a way to make a short stories.
One example of a short story is when you take a picture of a friend with two bottles in each hand.
Then you take a second picture of your friend with the bottles on the ground. That is a short story.



Laaaaaast lesson. Now that you know all the bases to take pictures, you should now try to take
pictures in different places to make your name or a sentence, like this picture below.

There! You practically know everything on the art of photography!

Mathurin