Photography Basics

This shot is very different to my previous ‘How I got the shot‘ post. The conditions where very different and I approached it in a different way too.

Location

This is actually only 5 minutes from my front door in Oldham in the North West of England. We don’t get that many bright, clear days so I wanted to make the most of it. It is taken in the Medlock Valley.

Equipment

For this little photo walk, I wanted to challenge myself a bit so instead of taking out all my camera gear, I took just one lens. So I took my Sony Alpha a100 and my Minolta 50mm f1.7 lens out with me. This means that I had no zoom to help frame the image, so I would have to move to get the picture I wanted.

The Process

I saw this photo possibility from a little way off. The sky was a nice blue with some nice whispy clouds to give the sky a bit interest. The light was good on the grass, and fortunately the grass was a nice contrasting colour to the sky.

So all the ingredients were there, I just had to mix them together to get a decent result.

The tree was a perfect focal point in the picture, but the tricky thing was, where to place it in the frame. Should I comply to the Rule Of Thirds and position it more off centre and lower down? Should I include more sky or more grass? Should I try and find a larger focal point for the image or climb the hill to make the tree larger in the frame?

Lots of options, and who’s to say some of those options would have made a better image, but this is the way I decided on.

So onto camera settings. I knew I wanted to make sure as much of the grass was in focus as possible which meant a large depth of field, which meant using a small aperture (large f number). So I set the aperture, again with the camera on aperture priority, and checked to see what the shutter speed was going to be like. I needed to make sure I captured the grass as sharp as possible so I needed a fast enough shutter speed to avoid too much blur caused by the wind. So I ended up with f14 to get a lot in focus, and 1/200th to try and keep things as blur free as possible.

The Result

Well I am pleased with the result. I did take a few different compositions but this is the one that I liked the most. It’s the sort of arty type print that might be good for a wall and it’s also got a lot of space in it so it might be good for a magazine cover or advert in a magazine, so it has certain commercial possibilities too.

I’m not really into landscape photography but I did enjoy the walk I did and the images I ended up with.

Let me know what you think of the image and if you’ve ever challenged yourself in photography like this.

On the photography basics Flickr group I have set another challenge. This one is called ‘Red’, so nice and simple. A 1gb memory card is up for grabs too.

It is meant for beginners though, so I hope there will be no sneaky experts submitting images.

Go here to find out more.

When I was learning photography (actually I’m still learning) I liked other photographers to explain how they reached the final image that I was looking at. Sometimes it was a lot simpler than it looks, and all it took was an understanding of the basics.

So, I thought I would do the same thing to hopefully help people get some good results, or at least improve their images a little.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I don’t class myself as an expert photographer. I don’t know everything about it, but I know enough to get images that I am pleased with and images that others have liked, so I must be doing something right.

So here is the first shot:

Location

Taken at Chester Zoo on 19th March 2008. It was in the chimp house which is dark, the chimps are behind some dirty glass and there is not enough room to setup a tripod.

Equipment

• Sony Alpha a100
• Minolta 300mm f2.8 Lens

Original Image

The Process

Before I took this picture, I watched this chimp for a while when it was getting comfortable, so I already had an idea of the type of shot I wanted to end up with. As I couldn’t use a tripod, I had to hand hold the camera for this shot. The 300mm lens is a big heavy lens so it’s not the easiest of things to hand hold, so I found somewhere I could prop my arm up on to help support the lens a bit more. This would reduce the amount of camera shake a bit. The other advantage I had was that my camera, the Sony Alpha a100, has a built in anti shake system which again helps to reduce the camera shake a little.

I had my camera set to aperture priority so I could control the aperture and not have to worry about the shutter speed setting, although you still have to be aware of what the camera is doing.

As there was very little light, I knew I needed a wide aperture to let in as much light as possible. My lens had a maximum aperture of f2.8, so I set that. I checked to see what shutter speed the camera was choosing. 1/30th of a second. Now that may seem quick, but is actually quite slow in photography terms so I new I was risking a blurred image. The added benefit of using a wide aperture was that it blurred the background out meaning there were less distractions in the background.

I waited until the chimp stopped moving and hoped both would stay still long enough. I fired off about 4 shots hoping that one would be sharp enough to use. When I took the shots I tried my best to move as little as possible, I held my breath too to try and keep camera shake to a minimum. This can take some practice and finding a comfortable, stable position is not always easy.

Looking at the image on the back of my camera, I knew it looked ok, but you can never tell until you get it up on a computer screen.

When I got home, I loaded up my images into Adobe Lightroom, which is my preferred choice of image software, and checked my images. This one ended up being the sharpest of the few I took.

I’m not going to go into the technicalities of what I did in Lightroom as this post is more about taking the picture than the post processing. I already had in mind black and white, but first I corrected the exposure a bit and applied a crop to get rid of some of the empty background.

I then applied a black and white conversion and applied a little split toning to add a slight hint of colour so it’s not pure black and white. I also got rid of a distracting highlight just under the chimps head which was caused by the dirty glass I think.

The result

I am very pleased with the resulting image, and you can see that there was nothing really technical about taking the picture, it was more about knowing what settings to use in the conditions and what the limitations of those settings were.

I’ve got more of these posts planned, so hopefully they will help you a bit.

Let me know your thoughts.

As spring is here, I thought a spring clean of the site was needed with a nice new theme.

I’m still tinkering with it a bit, but I think it’s getting there. If you have an comments about it, please let me know.

I’m trying to get my Photography Basics Flickr group going, so I thought I’d run a little challenge and offer a 1gb memory card to suit the winners camera as a prize.

You can read all about it in the Flickr group. If you aren’t a member of Flickr and want somewhere to share you pictures, it’s a great place, and free too!

The challenge is only open to members of the Flickr group. Sorry.

I’ll be running similar challenges through this site at some stage though.

2008 has arrived, 2007 seemed to be about 2 weeks long, so let’s hope 2008 takes it’s time and we can make the most of it.

Over the Christmas period you may have been lucky enough to get a new camera, or are about to tackle the January sales and spend your cash on one. Or you may have got a new bit of kit to use with your camera, maybe a tripod, flash, or even a new lens to add to your collection. So now what do you do with it?

For those that got a new camera, you’ll have no doubt taken lots of pictures of the Christmas tree, your relatives, your feet, the dog and anything else that doesn’t run away when you point the lens at them.

I bet most of you just put the batteries in, put the memory card in and snapped away on the camera’s fully automatic setting. Great! It’s so easy to get up and running with a new camera, as they are clever enough to do most things for you, but is it doing the right thing?

The first thing to try is to look at the different camera modes, even the automatic ones like portrait, night time, landscape, sports etc etc these all have their own little icons and your manual, yes, the manual…. you have still got that haven’t you….. will tell you what they are. They are still point and shoot modes, but you will get different results from each one so experiment with those for a while.

Once you have tried those, and more importantly, noticed the differences in your images between each one, then you can move on to more manual settings. But let’s not run before we can walk!

So there you go, that’ll keep all you new camera owners happy for a while, now on to you new camera kit people.

So, you got a tripod for Christmas, what will that do? Well a tripod is a very useful piece of kit. OK, so all it does is keep your camera still when you take a picture, big deal. Well actually it is. The less movement in your camera when you take a picture, the sharper the image should be. It also can help you position the camera at angles that might be a bit awkward otherwise, good for close ups or slightly abstract view points.

So, you got a new camera bag for Christmas, how will that improve my photography? OK, I’ll be honest, a new bag won’t make you take better pictures, but having a better organised bag will make life a lot easier for you and will let you get the right piece of kit quicker so you don’t miss that one in a million shot! So take the opportunity to do a bit of a new year clean of your kit and organise it a bit better.

So, you got a new lens for Christmas, what do I do now? Well, aren’t you lucky, a new lens is a great addition to your kit bag. I’m assuming it will have been something you asked for and not a random gift from a long lost Uncle, so you’ve got it for a purpose. If it’s a telephoto zoom lens you can now explore things at a distance. Capture relatives when they don’t notice you are pointing the camera them, or maybe try getting pictures of birds feeding at the bird table where before you would scare them off by having to get too close. If it’s a wide angle lens, then maybe landscapes are your thing so go and experiment with those vistas and funky converging lines. Just remember to keep it dust free, and when swapping lenses try and do it as quick as possible to avoid dust getting in the camera or the lens.

Wow, that was a long post from what was initially going to be just a Happy New Year message.

Let me know what you got for Christmas or what you have bought in the January sales.

It’s nearly that time of year when I eat far too much, drink a little too much and end up spending too much money, but I also try and take a few photos too.

Many of you might be lucky enough to get a digital camera for Christmas, and will take lots of pictures of your feet, people sitting around you, decorations and anything that (I’ve done exactly the same thing in the past). Use these shots to get to know your camera a bit more and experiment. Ply your relatives with alcohol to make them willing models for you and try and take a few portraits, it can be a good laugh trying to make people act up for the camera, so enjoy it.

2008 is going to be a good year for this site and photography. I am getting closer to getting a photography course up and running, and have had lots of interest in it already. I’ll be adding lots of extra content to this site to support the course too, so those of you not able to attend will still benefit and hopefully learn a few things too.

I am always looking for ideas for information on this site too, so don’t be afraid to get in touch.

All the best

Garry

I am now looking into the possibility of running a short course on the basics of photography in the Manchester(UK) area sometime in the new year.

At the moment it is no more than a possibility depending on costs and facilities etc, but I would like to get an idea of the amount of interest.

So, if you are from the Manchester area and would like to be kept informed about if and when the course might run, then please contact me via the contact form on this site. That way, I can easily keep you all up to date.

You can also leave a comment on this post and let me know the type of thing you would like to learn on the course. I would imagine it would be about 6 weeks long, 1 evening a week. I have no idea of a price though as that depends on the costs of room and equipment hire.

I would aim to cover the following subjects:

• basic camera functions, going beyond fully automatic
• composition
• using light, both natural light and flash
• simple photo editing in photoshop (this is very much dependent on what equipment I can get)
• emailing and uploading photos to web sites

So there you go. If you are interested, let me know and I will see if I can make it happen.

UPDATE: I have now removed the newsletter form from this site as the service from Zookoda really isn’t living up to what they say they offer. SO please just contact me via the contact form on this site if you are interested in the course.

I was having a bit of a surf around the internet looking for web sites related to another site I have just started about stock photography and I came across a post by David Huntley about being creative and I thought it was a great idea for a beginner. So all credit to David for the idea, I hope he doesn’t mind me pinching it.

So what do you have to do. Well David’s idea was to take one normal household object and take 100 different pictures of it. Yes, that’s 100. This is a great way to explore your cameras settings, so don’t be afraid of trying different modes on your camera, different aperture settings, different shutter speeds or different lenses if you have them. It also doesn’t matter at all if the shots don’t come out very well, you will learn more from your mistakes than your successes. You can also make use of different lighting too. Try using your flash or use desk lamps to try and create different lighting effects. It’s basically an excuse to go mad with your camera and just try out as much as you can.

The key to this task is to remember what settings you used on your camera, which menus you used to get to those settings or which dials or buttons you pressed. After taking 100 photos you should know your camera a lot more than you did before. It might be an idea to have a pad and pen and note down the settings you used for each image so when you come to review them you can see which settings produced the images that turned out best, and which settings you may need to experiment with a bit more.

So there you have it, just go for it and see what you end up with. I look forward to seeing some of your results.

After getting an email from someone who has visited this site, I asked them what they would like to see on the site. They said they thought some simple exercises or tasks for the beginner would be good. It can be hard to find inspiration sometimes, so I thought this was an excellent idea. Thanks Louise!

So the first task will test your eye for composition and the Rule of Thirds.

While this isn’t really a strict rule, it’s a good guideline to follow.

So what you need to do is this. Pick three different subjects, for example; a landscape, a portrait and maybe a subject that is moving. You don’t need to worry about any particular camera settings, this is just a composition exercise.

Follow the Rule of Thirds and take several photos of each subject, but try and stick to the guidelines. So check where your horizons are, for portraits check where the eyes are in the image, but try and make each picture different to the previous one.

If you have a zoom lens, then try a composition zoomed right out, try one zoomed in half way and try one zoomed right in. Try your camera in landscape orientation, and try it in portrait orientation and see what you end up with.

If you have a Flickr Account, join and add your pictures to the Photography Basics group and tag them “photographybasics task 1″.  If you don’t have a Flickr account (it’s free to set up if you want one) then either post a link to your image in the comments of this post if you have the image on another web site.

This task should help you get used to looking at the image in the viewfinder or screen before pressing the shutter button to take the image and thinking a bit about the image you are about to take.

I look forward to seeing your images.