"See ourselves seeing": observing my relationship to my environment using the digital camera

Having not much expierience using digital cameras, this assignment was challenging to me. I had a little difficulty with setting the aperture on the camera. I never did completely figure out how to get the aperture to f16, but I do think that I understand what it does. The lower the number the larger the aperture is, which allows more light in to the lens. The larger the number the smaller the aperture, letting in less light. We were to experiment with aperture in a range of 5.6-16. I found that the photos I took in the evening with an aperture setting of 5.6 were alot clearer and brighter. After experimenting with holding the camera in my hands or setting it on something to keep it still, I found that setting it down would result in a much clearer picture. I shot most of the pictures with aperture setting of 8. the photos taken in the evening were slightly blurry, and the ones taken at night were were almost all black except for small spots of light coming from houses. The photos taken int the afternoon were actually the opposite, very bright and detailed in some spots. while even brighter was the sun coming in through windows, that it just blurred that spot into a white glow.
Overall I feel that I did learn alot from this assignment. I can now say I'm not completely clueless about digital photography. :)