12 weeks to better photography: shooting outdoors

Week 7's lesson was on shooting outdoors. It talked about how you are not supposed to position your subject in direct sun because it leads to shadows and over-exposure.  The main problem though is that thier eyes are most likely squnting if they are looking into the sun.  I always thought that you were supposed to have the sun behind the subject, but the article says it's best to have the sun on the side.  If it is directly behind the subject, then the lens is facing the sun which can cause lens flares.  So, the assignment this week was using macro mode in outdoor photograpy.  This is great for me, because I just got a telephoto lens for my birthday and have not had much practice yet.  Ideally, I would have been able to find a butterfly, bird, caterpiller or some kind of small creature to photograph, however I did not see anything so I decided to use the street sign.  I sat on the front porch and then took the first photgraph at 70 mm.

For the second one, I zoomed all the way to 300 mm and was still sitting in the same spot. This lens sure would have been nice to have on our trip in the spring!