A View from the Isle

Image by Planetnelson via Flickr

One of the photographers who I most aspire to be like, to emulate, get inspiration from is Kris Krug. I think more than any other person his work, example, and encouragement is one of the main reasons I decided to make the jump to go pro.

Every time a great picture has been taken of me, Kris has usually been the person who as taken it. Even with my own camera.

This past summer at Gnomedex Kris give a short presentation on how to take better pics. Doesn’t matter if you’re a pro or budding amateur, this video is awesome.

Enjoy:

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Over the weekend I went to Seattle for a little shopping and while Sheila was browsing bead stores (she makes amazing jewelry), I took pictures around the stores. At our last stop I was playing with small apertures for some landscapes (f/16 to be exact). I wasn’t really getting what I was looking for so after shooting a few other things, I decided to take a picture of an interesting light pole on the street and got this:

Well “wow” was the next thing out of my mouth.

I have been playing with motion blurs and trying to do them in full manual mode and having a tough time with the exposure settings. This was in aperture priority and well I was amazed at the results.

Yes, if I had taken a class, read more, asked around more I would probably have learned this sooner, but I didn’t I discovered it by accident. I think discovering things by accident is way more fun, even more satisfying than just being told how to do it. Now I have more insight into how to compose and take pictures. I understand a little more about the balance of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Now I’m ready to experiment more.

Here is a slide show of the whole motion blurred set from that street:

Tomorrow is BlogActionDay and I intend on doing a photo essay on the subject of poverty. I’m not going to wander to the Downtown Eastside either, I’m going to look for poverty in the places where you wouldn’t expect it.

That will certainly be fun.

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Like all art forms, photography is a life-long pursuit. Of course, we all “learned” how to take pictures in a few minutes—especially with today’s point-n-shoot cameras—but for those of us who strive to go beyond the basic snapshot, it takes work. Work and a ton practice, patience, and humility. The practice part is pretty easy. Take lots of pictures. Experiment. Emulate pics that you like and see if you can do the same thing. Humility?

Yes. I don’t think there is a photographer worth his/her salt who can’t learn something new. For me learning how to use white cards/gray cards for setting white balance (including that blacktop is a great sub for a gray card in a pinch) and using bracketing better in my shots. Yes, I’ve been taking pics for a long time, but I know that every time I go out to shoot I learn something and get just a little better.

All that said, bracketing, playing with settings, gray cards, I do love my auto-settings.

First off, I pretty much stick to aperture priority mode. I like wide-open apertures (usually f/1.8-2.2), especially with my prime lenses (50mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.8) for the tight depth of field and clarity. I guess that’s my “style”. Regardless, this means that shutter speed is up to the camera.

I don’t stop there though, I’ve learned that auto-ISO is really handy. Even on my short walk going from sun to cloudy to shade for the best results I’d have to tweak my ISO often. With auto-ISO I pick a good ISO for the walk in general, then let it float. Yeah I know that if I picked and ISO I’d have more control, but I check after a series of pics what ISO the camera picked so I can see if I like it and want to shoot again.

I also I stick to auto white balance instead of flipping around to different settings. Both the D80 and D300 have pretty decent auto WB and because I shoot in RAW/NEF I don’t really have to worry about it. I always look at each pic and adjust the tone, white balance, and contrast (I love Lightroom’s “strong contrast” preset), so I get a chance to tweak a bit. Of course if I’m lucky enough to have blacktop in the pic, then my WB is just a click away (another great feature of the digital darkroom, IMHO).

There is something to be said for setting everything by hand, and I do this sometimes, but the freedom of letting the camera do some of the work so I can just focus on composition and practice is freeing.

Of course I’m not not always happy with the results, and that’s when I tweak more for another shot.

Practice, experiment, practice, learn.

And one more tip: read the manual. As obtuse as it can be, sometimes you learn a great new feature or two.

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Last night I wrote about cropping pictures to bring that extra something out.  Tonight my best friend had me over for dinner and I took some pictures of her birthday cake.

Basic, simple stuff, right?  Okay I tried my usual odd angles thing, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on composition on them.

Take a look at these two pics (Nikon D80, ISO 800, 50mm prime lens, f/2.8, shutter 1/25, aperture priority mode):

In the top photo I didn’t even notice until I loaded it on my laptop that I caught the tendrils of smoke drifting off the candles.  In the second one I realized that, wow, lots of black around that cake.  So went into ACDSee Pro2 and did some cropping.  Here are the same two pictures cropped.  Just cropped, no other editing:

This is when you have “wow” moments.  I think just cropping on the details has given these shots whole new looks.  I could go in closer, get the smoke and dripping wax or just a lit candle.  This is what I’m finding most fun and exciting about photography now.  I can take a picture, see it right away and then just see where I can go with it from there.  Fast, easy and simple.

Wow.  I love this hobby.

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