I would like to share with you the publication Zach Dooley has created as part of his senior project. I agreed to be his mentor as he tried to learn the ins and outs of digital photography. To fulfill the requirements of his project, he settled on photographing the city halls of Rhode Island and decided to include the Foster Town Hall due to its historic significance. It is the oldest town hall in the country still in use, as I learned from Zach. He bridged this project with his history and civics courses and also wrote a paper which he is submitting separately. There is also a folio of nine photographs he had printed at Printmakers with a nice folio cover. He is rightly proud of his work.

Take a look at the magazine he put together with his photographs. I trust you will like what you see. If the spirit moves you, purchase a copy to encourage Zach to pursue photography as a hobby. He also got accepted to URI and he is considering marine biology as his major. If he decides on that I can see his photographic interest shifting from architecture to underwater photography.

He will present his creations at Pilgrim High School in May. I am sure he will impress his teachers with the quality of his work and the level of his learning. We have completed last bit of the paperwork today and he is ready to roll.

Congratulations Zach for completing this multi prong project.

Photography requires an understanding of some fundamental concepts like exposure, aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, and so on. As one experiences these in the field the abstract concepts make more sense and become second nature in the practice of photography. I have stumbled on a very interesting Web site that offers visual explanations of many photographic concepts. Some topics and their visual or verbal explanations may be too esoteric and complex, but several applets allow the visitor to play around with the settings of aperture, shutter speed, ISO setting, and a few more and see the results right away. My recommendations are, Variables that Affect Exposure, Depth of Field, and Gamut Mapping. Try any others if you like, but these three will make understanding, and then explaining to others, some of the fundamentals of photographic variables.

When the moon is near the horizon and recognizable objects, like buildings it creates the famous moonrise illusion. In reality, the size of the moon obviously does not change and remains about the width of your thumb when your arm is fully stretched. Try it, you will see that you can cover the moon with your thumb regardless of its position in the sky. However, the illusion is very strong and the resulting photographs, when properly executed, can be striking. Mike Luciano sent the link to an article that shows this illusion very well, with explanations of how we are deceived in our perception.

Enjoy the moonrise over the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio, Greece.