Leave your camera on Auto, and take LOTS of pictures

If you have bought a DSLR but are new to photography, getting to know it may seem like a daunting task... so many modes and settings and controls - how long will it take to learn what they all do and how to use them to get the best result?

There's a simple answer to this question: Don't worry about it! Leave your camera on Auto

The camera is on Auto mode (the green square setting) and for the most part, it will probably get it right.

Think of it like learning to drive. If you start learning in a car with a manual transmission ("stick shift") then you'll start off spending so much effort trying not to stall that you don't think so much about the actual task, which is driving the car! If you learn on an automatic, you can learn the road rules, how to reverse round corners, how to read traffic and road conditions and so on - in other words, you can be up and running much sooner.
Once you've learned to drive in an automatic, you can then graduate to a manual - if you want to. Some never do, and there's no problem with that either.

Using a camera is the same. If you leave it on Auto mode, nine times out of ten, it'll get it right. After all, a digital camera is just a computer with a lens attached.

There are a few situations which can trick it into making the wrong decisions but thankfully this doesn't happen often. So, leave your camera on auto and concentrate on what's important - making pictures!

Later on we will look into the more creative effects you can achieve with the shooting modes, or, for even more control, the manual settings. But that's for another day.

The other area to discuss today is how many pictures to take. The answer is easy. LOTS! The days of expensive film are over. Take as many as you like!

In fact there's a word for this: Spray and pray

It means - take LOTS of photos in the hope that some of them will be keepers.

Wait, what? What's this "some" business??

That's the unglamourous part... downloading all the pictures into the computer and keeping just the best ones. Yep - you're going to have to use the DELETE key here....

This trap is just too easy to fall into - come back home after the holiday with several hundred photos (or more) and throw them all into the computer, and then never think about them ever again.

Why take a photo if you (or someone else) is not going to see it later?

In this BBC Magazine article, the author says: "I know so many people who take 500 photos on holiday, don't curate them and put them all up on Facebook. In 20 years they'll have 50,000 and won't be able to find the ones they want"

The answer is simple but boring. Get a good photo library management package installed (I recommend Google's Picasa - it's free and very convenient to use, but there are lots of them so take your pick)

Lots of photos of the same thing here... This shoot needs editing

When you've imported all your photos in, try to aim for keeping only two or three of the same thing... after all, who wants to sit through someone else's slideshow where you are looking at the same thing over and over?

Following this rule is probably the most effective way of making your photos become more interesting...

Next time, we will look at zoom lenses, and how you can create some interesting effects with them by zooming in or out.

Understanding Photography 1: Introduction

For the next few entries I will be providing a bit of guidance for people who want to improve their photographic skill and who don’t mind getting slightly into the technical stuff from time to time.

If you are happy taking pictures on your smartphone and uploading them straight to Facebook, then there’s probably not much for you here. However if you have a “proper” camera and want to get the best from it, then stick around.

In this “Understanding Photography” series, we will be looking at a bit of philosophy in terms of what to shoot and when, understanding flash and what you can and can’t do with it, looking at how using your zoom lens can change perspective, the basics of exposure and the effects you can achieve with adjusting it, as well as some useful tips for travel and landscape photography.

If you have bought a DSLR or even just a pocket digital and want to take photos that will be pleasing to look at - this series is for you.

Next entry: Leave your camera on Auto, and take lots of photos

The shot that almost wasn't

On the South Coast in Wellington is a replica Moai statue, gifted to New Zealand by the Chilean president on a state visit in 2004.

I decided to get some shots of this to show when I go back to Chile for my next work trip.

So I decided that the strategy for this shot, given that it was a fairly overcast day, would be to use the telephoto lens (70-200), open it right up for minimum DoF (f/4), and then stand far enough back to get the entire statue in shot. I'd planned to add a vignette and take it down to B+W in PP.

Sort of like this:

 

Unfortunately although I experimented with a few angles and waited for the sun to appear, this shot just kept getting away from me. The version above was the best of the sorry bunch, and I'm not overly fond of it.

Then I went fishing in the camera bag. I remembered the wide angle was in there. (10-22mm). Why not try the other end of the focal length scale? On it went. Dialled it right back to 10 mm and then got good and close to the statue. (Anyone watching must have thought I was going to give it a hug!).

Then - Live view mode engaged (Thanks Mr. Canon for that one!) - camera above head looking down - this was the result:

Much as I'd have liked to do this one in B+W, it just didn't work. Colour it is.

And the strange thing is - I am rather pleased with this shot. Completely the opposite to what I had planned in all respects, but it just works!

I'd be even more pleased with it if I'd stepped to the left so as to avoid the car (my car, actually....) in the background!

However. This shot demonstrates the benefits of perseverance and keeping an open mind!

Fun with the 85

So a work colleague recently bought a Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens. This isn't the stupid-expensive L-series f/1.2 that you'll see hanging off the front of the poser's 5D Mk. 2... this is the 85mm "for the masses"

f/1.8 is still plenty fast though, I was well impressed with the beautiful bokeh effects this lens can produce, even on the 50D (1.6 crop sensor). A quick lunchtime walk around within a 5-minute radius of the office yielded the following:

 

Oh all right, if you insist, I'll add some color images as well...

 Proves there's some life in the 1.6 FOVCF sensor, you just need a hollow drainpipe hanging in front of it!

Art vs. Technical skill

Following on from my previous post about pictorialism: I've reached a place where I can admit that I've been unhappy with my photographs for about as long as I've been taking them.

Phew! That wasn't so hard to admit.

There are a variety of reasons for this but I think it comes down to two basic elements which are reflected in every photograph:

• Art, and
• Technical Skill

I perceive that my work tends towards the technically "interesting" but artistically "bland".
I am an IT person and I guess I've gravitated towards that career because I'm naturally the kind of person who thinks in squares and rectangles. When I conceptualise something it's all about Right-Angles - action and reaction, cause and effect. In other words, I am a logical thinker, rather than an abstract or artistic thinker.

This naturally affects my photography - my images will tend to be somewhat technical concoctions, rather than meaningful works of artistic expression. This is a natural consequence of the way my brain works.

The problem arises from the fact that I enjoy photography from others that reflects the more creative, artistic side of photography, and wish I could emulate it.

But dreaming up a photo and pre-visualising it are extremely challenging. Once I have the idea, it's a different matter - because then it's just a technical exercise in realising it. Give me a theme and tell me to take a captivating photograph of it and I'll be lost. But describe the image to me and I'll do it.


Answers I've sought include:

• Giving up altogether on photography
• Taking beautiful landscapes that everyone praises me for (I'm not so artistically illiterate as to not recognise a beautiful landscape in front of me!)
• Trying to take artistic geometric abstract-type images
• Trying to reproduce favourite photographs from others

In the end, these are all doomed to failure, because in pretty much all cases, I still don't like the images that result. However, at the grand old age of very nearly 40, I've decided on a new course of action. Which can be distilled to a very simple principle. Namely:

The heck with it. I'll just take pictures of whatever I want to!

To Hell with whether it's arty or not. If I think it's gonna make a good picture, I'll shoot it. And I don't give a rat's whether anyone likes, or even gets the results.

For example: This is one of my favourite images that I made recently:

(It's OK, you don't have to like it!)

I've had this new approach for a couple of months now and I am pleased to report that everyone thinks I've gone insane. But I've been enjoying photography a lot more for it, and I'm actually starting to like some of the images that result from it.

I'm still going to practice the whole "concept and pre-visualisation" thing, but I've decided that this particular skill isn't strictly necessary in order to call yourself a photographer (as opposed to someone who merely takes photographs)

Office portraits, 1984-vintage

Under the stairs at my house, I have a box of negatives that I inherited in 2001 which go back to the 1970s.

In the cupboard in my study is a film / slide Scanner.

So I dug out some of the old films, but sadly not all of them were stored particularly carefully and so some of them are a little damaged.

I picked a few interesting candids of people working in an office to scan, mainly wanting to familiarise myself with the correct techniques for scanning B+W negatives. (Fingers crossed this is something I plan to be doing more of in the future)

The results are like a time capsule. Whilst not particularly captivating photographically (most lit with direct flash, and the subjects have that unflattering "deer-in-headlights" look) they are an interesting commentary into how much has changed in the last 26 years.

The photo set is here: http://tinyurl.com/2eo9uaj

Depending on the number of views this set gets, I may add to it. I am sure there are more interesting negatives in that box...

Street Photography

So I've been trying a bit of Street Photography around Wellington with the compact digi. I mean proper Street Photography, not just urban-landscape-with-distant-people-in-it.

I find it is a lot harder than it looks!

Below are my (self-developed) rules so far:

1. Underexpose slightly - better to have slightly grainy shadows when you pull it up, then blown highlights
2. Use Raw. In fact this goes for all photography that you intend to post-process
3. Be discreet but not covert
4. Avoid photographing children
5. If you are male, be very careful about photographing women. Particularly young or attractive ones
6. Photograph people DOING things, and preferably interacting with others. People walking past buildings is not Street Photography!
7. You don't need a 35mm rangefinder, but if using a compact digi, plan and compose for the infinite depth-of-field
8. Cloudy days are better
9. Slow down, look around. need to feel the vibe of the place not race from point A to point B.
10. 50mm!
11. Any candid photograph is ten times better if the subject establishes eye contact with the camera. But not if they've established eye contact as a prelude to an angry "don't photograph me!" expression. Grab the shot right at the moment of eye contact!
12. Shooting from the hip is damned hard.
13. Street Photography with a (D)SLR is like using a blowtorch to light a cigarette.
    

That's for starters. I'll add more as I go.

The Search for Meaning, Manners Mall, Wellington 2010