Who says Spring Grove Cemetery is just a place to go and see the dead? Spring Grove Cemetery is more than that. Did you know that Spring Grove Cemetery is home to a few famous people and is the second biggest cemetery in the United States? The largest is in California. Spring Grove also has a chapel in which you can get married. That’s kind of creepy, if you ask me. Why would anyone want to get married in a cemetery? Spring Grove Cemetery is also a great place to take pictures. This is exactly what an RWC class did for an assignment recently.
The Photo Principles and Lighting class went to the cemetery for an optional field trip to do their first assignment. This was a great opportunity for all students participating in that class. It was a chance for them to get a head start on their first assignment and for the professors to help them with any questions they might have had with the assignment or with their camera. The students were required to take 14 pictures total for the assignment, which included group shots, individual shots, landscaping, and lighting just to name a few.
The weather was freezing that day, and the longer it went on the colder it became. While everyone took some great pictures, everyone faced a major challenge: taking a picture when the sun was out.
The students needed to take two pictures of the same thing: one picture with the sun directly in front of the subject and one with the sun directly behind the subject. It was cloudy that day, and the due date for the project was near, so a lot of students felt it was almost impossible. Some people had to create fake lighting in order to get that part of the assignment done.
This was an interesting field trip because it gave students a wide opportunity of things to photograph and they never ran out of ideas. One of the best things was learning how to become a better photographer and getting some extra help and feedback from the professors.
Photography is a very interesting subject, but there are times when you get presented with a challenge (sometimes more than one) where you have to be extra creative and come up with a solution to work on. During this class, students are faced with many challenges (like the sun not being out when needed), but that’s what photography is all about. And with some extra help and advice from other students and professors of this class, you can do just about anything!