Photo Club starts off new year

Photo Club has kicked off the new school year with an interest meeting and tutorial on the basics of using a DSLR camera. Hoping to shape the club with their unique styles and fresh start, the completely new officer team has planned multiple events for members to shape their photography skills. El Estoque asked three members about their personal photography prowess, and what they are looking forward to this year.

Sophomore Caleb Siow
Siow began exploring photography in July of 2015 photoclubstory1-3-of-3 and was an active Photo Club member his freshman year. Light painting — the process of setting a DSLR camera on long exposure to capture patterns drawn with light — was one of the most enjoyable skills he learned in the club last year.

screen-shot-2016-09-21-at-6-42-56-pm — A long exposure photo featuring sparks formed from burning steel wool, taken by Siow in the summer of 2015. He specializes in playing around with exposure length to achieve creative shots. Photo used with permission of Caleb Siow

This year, he looks forward to teaching astrophotography, the process of capturing the sky and star trails by manipulating camera exposure settings.

“My specialty is exposure photography,” Siow said, “So I know how to make cool stuff come out of exposures.”

He anticipates the club will grow bigger this year because he has noticed the freshmen class has a lot of photographers wanting to better their skills.

Sophomore Pallavi Komma

photoclubstory1-2-of-3 Komma is the president of Photo Club this year, and was an active member last year.

She looks forward to seeing new members and helping them hone their photo skills, emphasizing the importance of developing their own personal style of photography and sense of originality.

“[We want to teach members] how to be unique instead of trying to copy most of the pictures I see a lot on the internet,” Komma said. “Like the ones with the dots in the background called ‘bokeh.’”

An example of bokeh from Christmas lights. Photo by William Brawley, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Bokeh is the appearance of light points that are heavily blurred by a camera.

Komma’s favorite kind of photography is macro photography, a form of extreme close-up photos of small objects.

Junior Tiffany Wang

Inspired by the photographs of YouTube content creator and entrepreneur Connor Franta, Wang hopes to learn how to use a camera and edit photos through Photo Club this year. The new club member is currently taking Photography, and hopes to learn from the club as well as the class. Wang doesn’t specialize in a specific form of photography; rather, she enjoys capturing anything that captures her eye.

“I hope to learn how screen-shot-2016-09-21-at-6-43-19-pm to Photoshop mainly because even if you don’t have a camera you can still Photoshop anyway,” Wang said. “Even if you have a bad camera, you can Photoshop your picture to look [better].”