Expose Yourself

Every SLR photographer deserves to learn how to properly expose a picture in their camera. So far, I've slowly accumulated knowledge in a series of steps.

1) There are usually 3 metering modes in your camera. Leave it on Matrix until you know what you're doing.

2) When using the Manual mode, there's a small graph you can see in your viewfinder. Changing the Aperature and Shutter Speed cause the little meter to move left or right. If you're too far one way or the other, an arrow points away from the centre. When you're in the middle, the picture will be exposed correctly - as guessed by your camera. Once I figured this out, I happily centred the (Matrix) meter before pressing the shutter, feeling marvelous that I was taking photos just like a professional.

3) Then I realized that my photos at night or in snow weren't turning out. That's because the meter works as it was engineered but not as expected. The meter wanted to make the photo average - and around cloudy winter days the meter's centre made the snow dirty grey. John Shaw's book "Nature Photography" corrected me. Using the spot metre and determining what would be exposed as light (like snow) or medium (like grass, sky, skin tones) or dark (like shadows), I now choose what should be exposed correctly and choose the settings appropriately. You can really mess up the Aperature/ Shutter Priority settings if you leave it on Spot and aim it at something light or dark. Be aware.

4) Shooting during mid-day causes unwelcome, ugly shadows to show up on subject's faces. Using flash (on-camera first, then off-camera TBA) can change the exposure again, leaving the settings you select to only capture ambient lighting. I haven't mastered flash yet.

5) Now I find out (from Understanding Exposure by Bryan Patterson) that shooting in RAW can fix exposure settings by 2/3 of a stop to reduce/soften clipping (jagged over-exposed highlights). This is another tool to fix the photo should you miss it in-camera.

Good luck. May the light shine soft and inviting.

Mr. Microstock

I've never really thought about doing this, but there are professional photographers out there who sell their photos for a few dollars each up to thousands of dollars for indefinite exclusivity rights for full sized 24MP photos.

See the strobist article on Yuri Arcurs here or read his own blog.

In any case, there are quite a few rules you need to follow, and the real money doesn't start pouring in until a few thousand photos have been downloaded. Photographers can get better photo prices if they only sign up with one stock site, but it'd be a while before much money started to flow.

But the thought of earning money for photos I've already taken is appealing. Perhaps thousands upon thousands of dollars by reaching out to the Internet and letting it work its sales magic. That's real magic.

Honing Your Craft

I recently picked up an autobiography of Ansel Adams, probably the finest creative photographer ever. He was already an artist seeking perfection on the piano long before he ever made his first photograph. He firmly believes that this anal-retentivity from his musician days [my paraphrase] helped to make him a photographer that searched for that perfect photo and not be simply satisfied with an approximation.

I also once played the piano. I did not, however, achieve a skill level that would impress anyone. Indeed, I followed a philosophy of always wanting a new song to play, and never enjoyed replaying a song after I had already tired of it, regardless of its level of perfection.

My recent photoshoot with a model in Erindale Park made me realize a couple of things. First, I do not know what I'm looking for in the perfect photo. I'm sure I took hundreds of photos in the span of 2 hours. After taking them home and pouring over them, I pared the list down to 50 photos. Then after printing the shots, I cut it down to 10 by eliminating poses that were beautiful but had harsh shadows or points of blown out highlights. These last ten were what I'd consider adequate. Better poses had been cut but the lighting on each of these was satisfactory. However only two were what I'd call good. Lighting was nice, composition was strong and the model's expression touched something like genuine. But it was only after the fact that I knew what I wanted.

Although I'm sure Ansel Adams never took as many photos as I did in such a short time, I also believe that he often had many unusable prints that were never shown to anyone. I've heard before that a sign of a great photographer is one who only shows his great photographs. But I don't want to take several hundred pictures to get one or two good ones. I simply want:
A) Perfect exposure every time
B) Perfect poses from my model (having a few unusable photos when it’s the model's fault might be okay)
C) No crap in the background.
These are the three main reasons why any given photograph was cut.

I'm starting to view my camera, not as a magic box that takes nice photographs, but instead as a tool that has limitations, weaknesses and deficits that need to be recognized and worked around. Buying a new camera won't help - the problems faced are more to do with physics than camera construction. Getting what I want has gotten harder recently. Is this what the road to perfectionist feels like?

Model Shoot - June 2009

Oddly enough this site keeps coming up as the first link in Google for "Meadowvale Photography", so I figured I could update it once or twice a month. Keep in mind that the events are kept updated at the Meet-Up Group Calendar at:
http://www.meetup.com/Meadowvale-Photography/calendar/

We had an outdoor model shoot at Erindale Park on Sunday. For those who attended, send the photos to Arun.

Also - a Toronto night shoot is on June 19th, 2009. Meet at the Queens Quay terminal. Further details at:
http://www.meetup.com/Meadowvale-Photography/calendar/10621787/

Cheers.

For up-to-date events see:

Meet-Up Group Calendar

The Meet-Up Group provides a gallery, forums to discuss with other members, tips & suggestions and an Event Calendar for up-coming events.

This site will no longer be maintained, until further notice.

April 8th AGM

This is our last formal meeting of the year.

We will vote for our new board for the 2009-2010 season, discuss a calendar schedule for that season (i.e. what we would like to do) and plan events for the summer months.

We will also share photos. Please bring prints or your laptop/memo stick as we will have a digital project to display and share our work with eachother.

March

What: March Meetup - Flash Photography

When: March 11, 2009 7:30 PM

Meetup Description: Flash photography using multiple flashes and diffusers.

Using other members of the club as "models" we will experiment with flash photography using multiple flashes and diffusers. Flash photography can be a less expensive means of model photography than purchasing a dedicated strobe lighting system.

John will be leading the discussion.