Shoot, It's All About Perspective

So I've decided to invest in one of my long-term hobbies and have enrolled myself into a short Photography course at Prairieview. It starts in 2 weeks and I haven't done much to prepare myself. I guess I'm expecting to just show up and be a student of fine art - let the teachers do the teaching. But I know that if I'm going to maximize my learning experience, then I should prepare by familiarizing myself with the basics of shooting with an SLR.

I enrolled in Photography 2 - Focus on Creativity (got to love those play-on words). I'm technically supposed to take Photography 1 as a pre-req, or have equal experience. I know it makes myself sound like a pretentious swank (man I love thesauruses), but I thought I was too good for Photography 1. I was afraid I would already know most of what they would be teaching, and would therefore be wasting my money when I could be challenging myself instead. So to determine which course I should take, I made a call and the Prairieview employee gave me a short, verbal test. It went like this:

Prairieview Employee: "Ok, what do you know about depth of field? How would you make the background appear out-of-focus and the subject sharp?"

Me: "Um. You would change the aperture. The smaller the number, the narrower the depth of field?" (I answered most of this as a question- I was only 85% sure). She replied, "Good." and I breathed a sigh of relief. One question down.

PE: "How would you make moving water sharper or blurrier to show movement?"
Me: "Um. I would change the shutter speed."

PE: "Good... What do you know about the rule of thirds?"
Me: (Drat, I don't really know about this but I remember my friend mentioning it when she took the course - let's make stuff up). "Um like not just centering your subject." Yes, my profundity is mind-blowing.

Apparently that was a suitable answer, even though there's much more to it. I plan on educating/refreshing myself on some photography lingo to avoid sounding like a fool in the classroom. But for a more detailed description of the Rule of Thirds, click ici.

PE: "Do you know about white balance or how to read a histogram?"
Me: "I know a little about white balance, but I don't really know much about histograms." (See what I did there? It's all about forming an answer by rephrasing the words already present in the question).

I feared that was enough to drop me down to Photography 1, but my shoddy answer didn't seem to affect the standards set in place because she thought I was ready for Photography 2. I guess I'll be the ultimate judge of that in May- I may get the hang of it, I may not.

This course focuses on creativity, which I'm looking forward to. I received an email forward from a friend that held some creative photographs - serendipitous? (Nah I don't believe in that but the word is cool). They aren't interesting because of content, but because the photographers were able to construct new images based solely on angle and perspective.

Take a look.

Somebody get a tissue. We have a situation.

Note: I don't know these guys, nor am I related to them.