My blog friend Prairie Jill and I are working through Steve Sonheim’s book each week this year.
This week Steve is talking about missing the part of the old days of film and waiting for the prints to arrive in the post or collect from the chemist before you saw the results of your endeavours.
I clearly remember being very aggravated by this wait.
Paul used to do a lot of portrait photography, I used to write the camera settings down in a note book and then, depending on how much it cost we would wait a couple of days or a week plus for the prints to be ready.
We would evaluate the photos then try different settings and off we went again.
The day digital came into the house was a wonderful day indeed and was the same day I took up photography.
Any way this exercise seemed to want to recreate the waiting experience.
Steve suggested that we cover up the screen on the camera and take a picture every five minutes for an hour or so without looking, evaluating or deleting pictures from the camera.
When your eyesight is a bad as mine, looking, evaluating (other than to see that there is actually something there} and deleting doesn’t happen until the pictures are downloaded to the computer, which could be a couple of days if I’m away. So for me it was a nudge to get out on a dry day between endless rainy days and take some pictures. My son was tasked with setting a timer on his phone.
This resulted in gales of laughter because he said that I take a picture every thirty seconds! A timer was definitely redundant today.
I have twelve here that I have processed in black & white and put into a collage for you to see.

I am looking forward to seeing what Jill did with Lab 6.

The rest I am keeping for Lab 7 next week.

The collage in colour

Which do you prefer?
Do you evaluate and delete as you go along or wait until you see the photo’s on your computer?

Assignment four in this book.
Take about 20 pictures with your eyes closed!

My friend and I were having coffee, she laughed the whole time and I didn’t mind because I had my eyes closed…

So, would I have taken any of these pictures if I had had my eyes open?
Probably not although the exercise made me think about various places I could go to take the photos and having decided that it was far too cold to be outside today, I found some courage from somewhere and asked the staff in the coffee shop if it was OK, and then I got my camera out of my bag and did it.
If I could do this again I would stand up and take more time over it.

So another step forward and a little bit braver.

I haven’t done Labs two and three, but I will.

I wonder if my friend Jill braved the freezing Winnipeg temperatures to do this weeks exercise?

I won this fabulous book by Steve and Carla Sonheim last year. My blog friend Prairie Jill has a copy and we have decided to work through the projects together this year.

The book says it is “52 Fun Exercises for Developing Self-Expression with Your Camera”
it also includes Six Mixed Media Projects by Carla. I have done some of her classes before and really enjoyed them.

The goal isn’t to learn how to take pictures like a professional, but to learn how to take pictures like you!

It sounds good to me.

LAB 1 Smart Phone 30/30
It is time to go beyond the single snapshot. In this assignment, the objective is to capture an experience by shooting a series of images. Tell a story by taking 30 shots in thirty minutes with your smartphone.

I decided to go into town and have a coffee sitting outside and take the photos. Although some of the pictures were ok and told a story of my coffee shop stop I wasn’t really happy with them, they didn’t seem to say anything about me. I did another thirty minutes in my craft room, I am much happier with these.

From my desk I see colour, chaos and contrasts, definitely me.

I can’t wait to see what Jill did. Does anyone else want to play along?. If you don’t have the book I’m sure we can work something out.