My Classroom as a Camera Obscura

The other day we made the photography classroom into a camera obscura. Blacked out the windows and door, cut a hole in the paper covering the door, inserted a uv filter, hung a white backdrop across from the "lens" opening, and turned off the lights. I really like this activity, but then again I'm a photo geek. Hopefully the students liked it too...got a few ooohs and aaahs =] The exposure time for these shots is 25 seconds. The first image is with the uv filter-sized pinhole--nice and bright, but blurry. Small depth of field? Maybe.

If you don't know what my classroom looks like the door is just off to the right. The inverted image is of the two portable classrooms across from my room. You can also see several students in white t-shirts. At the bottom right are some students sitting on the floor.

This second shot is with a much smaller pinhole--about 1 cm in diameter. Darker for sure, and I believe it's also clearer. It seems to line up perfectly with the way apertures work, but I'm not positive if that's the reason for the difference.

Have I mentioned before that I have the best job ever? Add this to the supporting evidence :)

My "Pastels II" Challenge Entry

Even though this is now my personal worst score on DPC (70th out of 157 entries) I'm still glad I entered. I'm not a big fan of pastels, so it was a challenge for me, but that's the point. The other and more difficult challenge to overcome was the fact that we had family visiting from WI and MN the whole time the challenge was going on, so I didn't have a lot of time to shoot or edit. The day the challenge closed we went to the LA Zoo with my mom and step-dad, and that's where I shot this flower. Dustin gets the credit for pointing it out to me and holding it steady for the shot :) It's an HDR, and much more vibrant than it should probably have been for a pastel challenge, but this is how it looked after merging the three exposures, so I left it.

Hesperia's Picture This! Photo Contest

Anybody interested in entering a photo contest? Just got an email about Hesperia's Picture This! Photo Contest and it sounds easy enough to enter. The theme is Environmental Awareness. Here are the official guidelines and the submission form, which includes more ideas of what kind of picture they're looking for. The top 13 photos will be printed in the 2012 City of Hesperia Environmental Awareness Calendar and posted on the city website.

Students: Just a reminder that I always offer extra credit for entering your work in photo contests other than those within our classroom.