my photography homework

So I work in higher education. One of the many benefits of my job (outside of working with amazing, optomistic "I'm going to change the world" college students) is that I get a tuition waiver so I get to take classes from talented faculty. for. free. 

So this fall I decided I should take some classes for "fun" so I'm taking two classes from our Mass Communications department--one in social media and the other in photography.

I think I'm actually getting somewhere in my photography class so I thought I'd share my homework with you. In this week's assignment, we've started working with photo editing so we were tasked with some black and white photography and "high key" and "low key" backgrounds. 

above-my perfect little Curly Girl in a "Rembrandt" style portrait. To do this, I just hung a black bed sheet over my dining room curtains and left the east side window curtains open for side lighting. I underexposed the photo just a bit to make the black background rich. 

Second, birthday flowers from my husband made for a nice subject with both a white and black background. I used a low f-stop on the first to create a small depth of field for that blurry background

Last, a beautiful little Mary statue I found in an antique store this summer. 

Returning to "college" has certainly been an experience. I LOVE learning so it's been fun to be back in the classroom but certainly awkward too. My photography class is online but my social media class is in person. I have to admit I feel like a nervous ninny my first day of class, being that "old" person (especially in a social media class!)... but hey, just like this delicious quote from Brian Tracy:

Sometimes you have to get a little uncomfortable to grow, right?

-Nina