Using my unfocused brain

My focus was acutely sharp as I entered my photography class a bit early. This year's resolution permeated my body - with the promise that I will expose myself as a novice, yet learn the art of taking pictures. My seat choice was in the ambient light away from the hallway noise to allow my mind to open up and again, focus, on the professor's every word. I wanted to be close up with my notebook in order to filter the distortions of gabbing in the back of the classroom.

As time in this new experience continued, I shuttered at my lack of absorption of the material. I secretly began to get irritated at the professor's zooming through material. He talked about how everything would be in "manual" ... Not in the manual, but manual. To an extreme novice, what the heck. I began to get a little whoosh and the white balance in the class was such it looked to me like I was seeing a wide angle distortion of students. Panic attack? Maybe! My lack of knowledge, and age, and gray matter, were proving frustrating and knew I had to recalibrate my resolution.

He talked about histograms - the last histogram I had was when we found out our baby was going to be a girl child...I thought this was photography. ISOs were important, zooming of the lens to get a good focus, also important. F-stops! Bracketing! Not only aperture and shutter but aperture priority and shutter priority! My brain was not flashing.

Homework happened. I took pictures, wrote down the settings with each click, my composition was my home. Yet, I could not find out how to change the shutter speed. The professor looked at my camera one afternoon when I went to his office and quickly manipulated its poor body telling me where to change the shutter speed and aperture thingy. It didn't stick.

I took said pictures, which were suppose to have a certain ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, which was lacking. I removed the memory card, great name, out of the trap door on my camera's underbelly, and put it in a memory card reader. So far, so good. I inserted said device into the little opening on my laptop and bam, a note came up on my desktop. What do I want to do with these pictures. Instead of being honest, I created a folder and kindly asked that they be placed in the folder. It happened! Then I was to transfer this folder onto a thumb drive, which I inserted into another slot on the computer. Try try try, nothing occurred - I could not get those pictures to jump onto the drive. After a good half an hour of attempting this impossible necessary homework, I gave up and went to get a different thumb drive. It worked. Then I noticed something peculiar about the original drive - it was actually a memory card reader, one of two I had purchased. Closing down the computer as fast as I could without being too snarky, I was finished.

In class that week, I had my thumb drive ready, but there was no mention from the teacher (I demoted his title) of this homework. Was I delusional? Searching my notes I was mistaken - I had misunderstood the assignment, there was none.

And this was only the fourth week. Can't wait for the other eleven!!!