Meeting on November 17, 2019

Our meeting lasted quite a bit longer this time around. There are two reasons why this happened: Firstly because we prepared a couple of calendars with photos from our nighttime excursions and secondly because the critique of the photos we shot is taking more time than scheduled as our new members are pretty lively and creative!

When we had finished, we explored how a photograph can be affected by changing the values of the shutter speed and aperture of the lens.

By using a faster speed, we can ‘freeze’ an image, whilst with a slower one, we can capture the movement of the object we’re trying to photograph. You can look at some examples down below:

In our next photograph you’ll see a lit spinning top that even though it is currently spinning appears to be still as we used a 1/1000 speed.

By using slower speeds, the same spinning top looks different...Notice that in the following photos the slower the speed we use the more lights are captured...

Concerning the aperture, the choosing of its value is related to the depth of field: open aperture=small depth of field & closed aperture=large depth of field.

In the example further down we changed the width of the aperture, but in order to make the difference in the depth of field between the two photographs more apparent, we changed yet another factor that affects the depth of field, the focal distance of the lens (from a telephoto to a wide angle lens). The only factor that affects the depth of field and has remained the same is the distance.

Finally, we discussed generally about art and whether it has α didactic role and if a work of art has to draw conclusions, reason and get across ideas. The answer to all the questions above is obviously no. Or as Gogol once said: “The function of an image is to express life its self, not ideas nor opinions “.