Photo Time Again!

Monday night I started another photograph class so I'll be posting my photos for class for the next eight weeks. I'm trying to stay positive about the class because after the first night I'm not sure what I'm going to learn. Most of what he covered in the syllabus I already know and he handed out the 2 final assignments and I could have passed them both. For this class I am going to focus more on the creative part. Since I have the technical understanding of my camera down I can truly focus on the creativity, which is really what I'm looking for. The professor used to shoot for a local paper so it will be interesting to hear things from his perspective as a photo journalist.

Our first "assignment" is to bring in our favorite photograph to share with the class. Now, the challenge here is that it can be ANY photograph. One I've taken, one from a magazine or a book or that someone else has taken. I have over 5,000 digital pictures that I've taken. I love pictures, how am I supposed to choose just one? I did decide to pick a favorite of my pictures - I could spend hours looking through others pictures but I want this class to be about how to better my pictures so it was time to decide.

I think I'm going to go with this butterfly one below (a cropped version of this picture is my ravatar on Ravelry). I took this picture in August of 2007 about 1 week after I got my new Nikon D80. I hate to admit that the camera was set on "auto" for this picture, but it was however it is still one of my favorite pictures. I like all the color and crispness of the flower petals and the butterfly. If you look closely enough you can see the spider webs beneath the petals. I love how the background is blurry but gives a good setting for this single moment. Sure I wish the picture was framed a bit more but I can always find something wrong with any picture I take.


As I said it was very hard for me to pick just one picture. In fact I still can't decide which one I will end up turning in tonight at 5:45 (although I suspect it will be the butterfly picture). My other favorite picture is the one below of Sparky. This one is a favorite for different reasons - it has emotional ties for me. I adore this dog (he is mine!), his eyes are so expressive in this shot and how can one not love that tongue sticking out? I also like how the depth of field on this one came out also. Notice how his tongue & nose are blurry and just his face and ears are in sharp focus. It just speaks to me for some reason (and mostly because I'm biased).


Do you all have a favorite photograph? Why is it your favorite? Is it hard to choose just one?