Assignment 8 - Chilling out

This week has got me down. All the Blogging world is getting pumped about winter, and we don't have one here in Dubai. I suppose I would also be in a temperate zone in my other home down under, but at least winter comes there (if not at the right time). But Dubai is firmly 27 degrees (81 Fahrenheit for all old schoolies), and so  given the theme "chill" (photofriday),  I have decided to take the advice of my brother when he was 13. I'm gonna chill, but like the pill.

Now I don't know if it's because last night I tuned to Discovery Science just in time to catch the beginning of Steven Hawking's Universe - Time Travel, but I have decided to connect the theme of chill with slow, and talk about shutter-speed. (By the way - he says it can't be done. The best he can get is slowing down the aging process, and I can get that done at a clinic down the road)

Lesson 7 - Let there be Night

I recall at the beginning of these sessions, that Zahra (teacher) had told us about the evils of using the in-built flash. It is designed for the novice, and is the brightest of all known lights. It strips your exposure bare, washes out the colour, and gives anything with eyes that 'rabbit trapped in headlights' expression. Not to mention the fact that on my lily skin it overexposes to the point that the sensor on the camera recognizes my skin as dead pixels (ie. no colour at all). We had been told to use low shutter speeds and wide aperture to compensate for darkness, and not to forget that we could also use higher ISO (although I find that anything over 400 makes my exposures unacceptably grainy. I have been told that this can be artistically pleasing, but I don't think I have the knack yet).


However today, Zahra ran us through the functionality of the flash, JUST in case we were caught in the dark with no tripod.