The first chance I had was with a friend who offered herself as a model for the day in which we both went down to Manly Beach to take some photos. I managed to learn some key lessons on this first outing which included:

1. Prior to a shoot, take the time to really plan some ideal shots that you would like to get
2. In the initial planning stages ensure you take into account the terrain of a location, crawling over rocks is not always comfortable and/or easy with camera gear
3. If working with a person that has never modeled before, give them a briefing before hand of what you are going to do/try to achieve as it is better that they have a rough idea than to dump them in the deep end

Having said that, it was a great first experience and it showed me that I have a lot to learn, especially surrounding the composition of the photo and how the model should pose within the shot. Granted it was a first attempt but I look forward to giving it another go soon.

Then today I had another opportunity to do group shots at a work Social Club Christmas Party. It was a rather interesting experience in which I kept the camera in auto mode virtually the entire day. My reasoning was that I needed to get comfortable getting people to pose and get the actual photos prior to attempting to do artsy photos on the fly. All in all I feel that it went quite well, I was able to get some really good photos and had my first real experience using the flash on the camera. After using it a bit I honestly think (nay KNOW) that I need to get my hands on a decent diffuser, a lot of the photos worked well bouncing the light off the roof but some I feel needed a direct diffuser to really get the lighting correct.

After having a look back through my photos I feel that today I was far more comfortable turning the camera on the side to get a decent profile shot rather than always leaving the camera in landscape mode. I think this is something that I have struggled with in the past but it seems that today this came really quite naturally.

Anyhoo, that is enough of a brain dump for now, I am going to pick out a few individual photos and ask the staff members if they would mind me using them on the blog then hopefully I can analyse them in detail.

Until next time, behave!

Stuart

A lot of these photos were very technical based shots and therefore lacked any elegance… however this the reason I wanted to share them. After going on this excursion and then seeing the photos side by side, I found that the overall picture of how shutter speed affects a photo being taken became far clearer.

Essentially from what I have learned, shutter speed (also known as exposure time) controls the effect of how quickly a moment is captured in time. For example, the higher the shutter speed, the quicker the moment is captured. The easiest way I have found to remember this is that if you take a photo of a fountain with an extremely high shutter speed you will be able to see each individual droplet caught in time, however on a slower shutter speed you would tend to see the flowing effect of the water rather than individual droplets.

So lets go through a few examples (click on any image to expand it):

This photo has the following technical specs (so to speak):

Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure Time: 0.004s (1/250)
Aperture : f/9.0
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 56mm (89.6mm in 35mm)

Note the exposure time (shutter speed) for this photo is 1/250th of a second, which is known as a fast(ish) shutter speed. If you take a look at the photo you will notice that all the cars are in focus including the blue car in the foreground which was moving at the time.

The technical specs for this second shot are:

Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure Time: 0.0166s (1/60)
Aperture: f/16.0
ISO: 800
Focal Length” 56mm (89.6mm in 35mm)

In this photo the exposure time has been dropped to 1/60th of a second and you can see that all the cars in the background remain in sharp focus as they are not moving. However the red car in the foreground has begun to become blurred due to the movement of the car and the lower shutter speed.

As we take this to the other extreme of the scale we begin to get significant blurring on moving objects as you will see in this final image.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure Time: 0.25s (1/4)
Aperture : f/32.0
ISO: 320
Focal Length: 56mm (89.6mm in 35mm)

This image was taken with an exposure time of only a quarter of a second which meant that the car had time to move across the field of vision in between the time that the shutter opened and closed and this is what causes the blurring.

You may have also noticed that the Aperture was raised incrementally in line with the lowering shutter speed, this is due to the direct relationship between the aperture and exposure time (or shutter speed if you prefer). I will however cover this at a later time.

If you want you can see even further increments in between the ones I have placed above which I have placed in my Eccentric Reality gallery and they are on pages one and two at the link above.

As a final note I wanted to provide one slightly more practical example which I mentioned above and that has assisted me in remembering how shutter speed affects a photograph. If you take a look at this photo you will see the effect that I mentioned earlier in regards to freezing a droplet of water in time. Had a lower shutter speed been used the water would have simply looked like it was flowing or in other words, more blurry.

Keep an eye out for the next post on aperture. In the mean time if you want to see all the photos that I took on my recent outing with all the technical details listed alongside you can check out the album here.

One such animal is the good old seagull. I have found that the seagull is one animal that can be photographed with ease, this could be their sweet nature (ahem… yea right!) or the fact that there are just so many of them around and you can get up quite close to them.

While I was away in Merimbula I took the photo that you see to the left and the second photo below (which is one of my favourites). As there were so many seagulls around and the other aforementioned factors I was able to get up close to them and greatly increase my chances of getting some great photos.

I found that because they are so timid, I could sit there just constantly taking photos, playing with settings and changing everything around to really have a good play with the cameras settings and features.

This of course was great for a noob photographer (i.e. yours truly) and while I have not yet had the chance to learn a lot about the intricacies of photography, I think that the seagull will probably be a regular guest in my photography during the learning stages.

Now onto one of my favourite seagull photos. I have dubbed the photo below “The Inquisitive Seagull”, I managed to take this shot just as the seagull dipped it’s head and it came out with a really interesting look on its face so to speak hence it looks rather inquisitive.

So please, let me know your thoughts on these couple of photos, as always I am very much open to constructive criticism. Also what animals have you found the easiest to take photos of? Whether you are a budding photographer or a professional I would love to hear your thoughts.

Stuart

So after flicking through a few photos I settled on this one which was a Park Bench by Merimbula lake:

Ricktas of the AusPhotography forums was kind enough to give me the following feedback “hmmm. I think you have a great shot here, though the distant horizon at the top looks cluttered. Crop the top off, just above the darker blue line, clone out the yellow blob top left, to simplify it and it improves a lot.”

Although have never really been a guru with editing photos, I pulled together what skills I had and came up with a revised edition of the same photo:

Looking at the photo I now see that Ricktas hit it on the head like a nail. The photo looks so much more simplified without the extra clutter on top and I think it looks more pleasing (please tell me your thoughts).

I have learned a couple of things from this that I will keep in mind for next time. Firstly, I really need to focus on the composition of my images as I take them. Up until now I have always pretty much just kept my eye on the centre of the image, rather than really looking around the whole frame and seeing if I can cut parts out that may not belong, or clutter up the image.

The other lesson that I picked up is that some photos will (by their nature) require editing post production to touch them up and really give them their added flare. This was something that I had not considered before, I thought I could just take a great photo and that was that.

I want to also say a big thank you to Ricktas for his awesome advice, and now I hand over to you, what do you think of each image (the original and the remake). I am always open to constructive criticism and hey… I am still learning too.

Stuart