Oh captions, my captions.

What I learned form out caption assignment is it’s a two-part process. What I mean by is that taking the photos is step one and writing the caption is step two. It’s just like photojournalism, where the journalism is the caption writing, just like they said in the Storify.

Here are some of the important tips that I learned from Storify about captions; every photos need a caption and the reason being how else are we going to know who is in the picture. If it’s a headshot then we need a name. The first sentence of a caption should be written in the past tense. The second sentence adds the additional information and is also written in the past tense. A captions number one objective is to tell who is in the photo and what’s going on.

              Captions are must for photos. When people look at a newspaper, online article, or blog they look for what the picture has to offer. Keep in mind that captions don’t need to tell the whole story, just the five W’s and the How. The more simplified the captions is the better it sounds. If you follow the steps given, take your time and keep your captions simple, you should be fine.

Understanding the camera controls, One F-stop at a time

Shot of wide depth of field, Midtown buildings

Shot of Rule of Thirds, WDET

For this week's assignment we were told to go out with our cameras and shoot and post three of our best quality photos to this blog. In this post I will show and describe to you why and how I shot theses. I will also tell you about how I felt and what I took away from this assignment.

The reason  I decided to choose the building photo  is because of the wide depth of field . I shot this with my F-stop at 5.6, my ISO at 100 and I metered at 1/200.
In the second picture I decided to use my dog Winston as my subject. When I was fooling around with the camera, he was laying his head over the shoulder of the couch. When I looked up I thought this picture would be a good example of  a shallow depth of field. I focused on him, leaving his background out of focus. My F-stop was at 5.6, ISO 1600, and I was metering at 1/6.

For my last picture, I chose to use this shot I took at WDET. In the shot we have three different people, making three different types of faces to the caller on the phone.  My F-stop was at 5.6, ISO 800 and metering at 1/8.

Overall this assignment was quite fun. What I took away from this assignment is that having a steady hand is key to taking good pictures and  that it’s okay to mess around with the controls of your camera to see what you come up with.I also learned that panning is lot more difficulty then I though..., and that I want another lens.

Shot of subject in focus and background blurred, Winston

2015 North American Belgian Beer Festival

The North American Belgian Beer Festival, which is hosted by Ashley’s Beer & Grill in Westland Michigan, brought in over 80 Belgian brewers to the event. The event only happens for one day but the Ashley’s Belgian Beer Festival is an 11-day event going on until Feb. 15.

Ashley’s Beer Belgian Beer Festival is into its fifth year and the owners, Roy and Jeff More couldn’t be happier.

“This is the only festival in the country that is exclusively Belgian beers,” said Roy More “With this being the first year for this event, North American Belgian Beer Festival, we did not think it would have gone this well.”

The festival is the largest pure Belgian beer festival in the country. With over 80 different Belgian breweries coming and 70 different Belgian drafts what not to love if you’re a beer fan.

Photo by Darius Baber

“Belgian beer is highly recognized for making the best brewed beers in the world,” said More. “That’s why many American breweries are copying the Belgians.

The North American Belgian Beer Festival sold out at 1,000 tickets.

“We had to turn business away,” said Jeff More. “There were just too many and not enough tickets for this event, next year we’ll have more.”

Photo by Darius Baber

Many featured breweries were at the event: Van Honsesbrouck, Mikeller, and St. Bernardus were among the crowds biggest of hits.

“Yeah the St. Bernardus Abt 12 is amazing,” Belgium native Bruno Vanzieleghem said. I’ve been to other beer festivals here in Michigan but this one takes the cake, where else can you find Belgium brewed other then Belgium?”

Brother Woody Chandler, a writer for Ale Street News and part of the Order of Disorder, and his friend David Atkinson though differently.

“Whatever is my glass,” said Chandler. “ But if I had to choose it would be Scotch Silly brewed by Brasserie silly.”

Photo by Darius Baber

The festival started at 1 p.m. with many people waiting until 11 for the doors to open to the tents.

“We been here since 2 p.m. and I don’t see us going home anytime soon,” Melvian B. from Detroit said. “My friends and I heard them talk about it on the radio like 3 days ago and we been to other beer festival so we wanted to just stop by this one.”

With the North American Beer Festival in the books you can be sure that it will be back next year as well.

“Absolutely this event will be back, in fact Roy and I want to see if we can make it three days instead of just one so more people can enjoy the beer,” Jeff More said.