Hello ,
Yesterday, I worked with photographers who usually create pictures under low light-intensity situations.
Specifically, they work primarily at night in the interior of a building.
And the structure is illuminated with mostly incandescent/tungsten/warm transmitting light sources.
Because I met with the photographers during the day, which is inconsistent with the
light they usually work in, I asked them to show me pictures they weren't thrilled with that they made while doing their jobs.
And then, I asked them to describe what it was about the images they weren't happy with.
In other words, I asked them to self-critique their work.
The self-critique pointed to issues with understanding the cause and effect of camera operation and related compositional outcomes.
Specifically, some settings needed to be addressed.
And those settings were white balance, focusing areas and modes, and blur caused by movement.
I then asked them to make a photograph using the camera settings they usually use when doing their work and then critique it just like they did the pictures they showed me before.
I asked them to make a picture to see how they handle camera operation, especially the exposure mode they work with.
And it wound up that the exposure mode they preferred working with was fully automatic.
That was a BIG part of what was causing their problems.
Because while working in fully automatic exposure mode, we couldn't address the issues of white balance, shutter speed, and focusing.
So, since blurr was one of their primary concerns and we had limited time to address the things that needed addressing, aperture priority seemed like the most effective solution to that problem.
So we set the exposure mode to shutter priority and discussed appropriate shutter speeds that would handle blur caused by movement.
We also wondered whether it would be more beneficial for the camera operator (photographer) to pick the ISO or have the camera's algorithms determine the ISO for the photographer.
And now that they were out of fully automatic, we could address the white balance, focusing, and blur that was described as undesirable during the earlier self-critique.
We went over white balance and how to change it.
And considering the parameters of photographers' circumstances while working, it seemed most useful to keep setting the white balance to automatic.
We tweaked the focusing area to make it more precise and consistent.
And we then talked about when to use different focusing modes based on the subject movement.
This helped make achieving sharpness during focusing more consistent and reliable.
And at the end of our lesson, when I asked them if what we did during the time we had
helped them be better at what they did, they said it did.
All that mattered to me was that what we did helped them be better photographers.
And the lessons from this probably longer-than-needed story?
The lessons are that the things we don't like about our pictures
point the way to getting better at what we do.
And the way to get better at what we do is to understand the light we're working with, the cause and effect of camera operation, and camera operations' impact on compositional outcomes.
And remember, we learn and improve by doing, so practice making at least one picture today.
That’s all for now; thanks for reading!
Sam
Study and practice photography with me.
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And if the timing doesn't work for you in any of my scheduled group classes, we can schedule a one-time lesson or a series of in-person or online one-on-one private instruction that cover the same things as any of my
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