CDIA – Photographic Seeing

This past class at CDIA has been one of my favorites so far.  We had a rock star instructor, Felix Rust, who is an amazing wedding and portrait photographer, with an amazing story of how he ended up where he is.  The outline of the class was to learn how to manage what you could not change about a subject (shape, size, color, and texture) by controlling what you could (angle, focal point, composition, light versus shadow), but Felix really emphasized that the biggest assignment was get out there and make a cool picture.

Our first trip away from good old Moody Street was to the DeCordova Sculpture Garden Boston Public Library.  Thanks to Mother Nature for making it impossible for us to go to DeCordova – I am so glad we got to shoot at the library!  I loved everything about it:

The shadows and different colored lights gave certain areas a really eerie feel to them.  Very appropriate with Halloween coming up!These are my favorite two images from the library. I like this first one because even I still have trouble figuring out what is a reflection and what I actually saw through the window – I felt a little like Alice staring into the looking glass:

This next one is of Felix in one of the rare moments he put his camera down.  One of the best things about Felix is that he does every assignment alongside his students, and works under the same limitations and time constraints we do.  One of the assignments was street photography, so to catch Felix sitting down, unaware of both his camera and mine was pretty cool for me!

After the library, we ventured out into Harvard Square to continue shooting our street photography assignment.  Given how late it was, this shoot ended up having a bit of a darker feel – it was definitely a fun shift in gear.  I haven’t done much street photography in a long time, so it was a nice break from what I’m used to!

Our last trip was to the Harvard Museum of Natural History.  This place is so cool and SO creepy!  Its got every type of animal preserved there, and while I know there is some sort of organization, it seems like all the animals are mismatched together.  I swear some of them were looking at us!  The face on our TA, Julie, says it all:

Thanks, Felix, for a great class! Hope to see you again later in the program!