This might be a little boring to my viewers--but this is where I log this kind of stuff. I want to write it down before I forget. Yesterday I watched an archived webinar from a photographer in Texas. It was interesting because she gave lots of tips for posing, interacting, etc but one thing stood out. She mentioned that there is such a trend among newer photographers these days to shoot wide open but sacrifice sharpness in the images as they are striving for the creamy background. I was amazed to hear that she rarely shoots below 5.6!! She sets her aperature and her shutter speed, and then just bumps the ISO either up or down to get the correct exposure. SO interesting! Her reasoning is that she doesn't want to risk not having tic-tac sharp images and you never know which portrait a family would want to enlarge to a huge size. How unprofessional to say they can't because that one picture isn't up to par technically. I admired her passion in learning this craft well-- the math and the science behind it. It's where I kind of was in the beginning but was getting overwhelmed by those details. When I took the community college portrait class I asked the teacher about some exposure formula and she looked at me like I had two heads! haha! Well, I know that I am sometimes..okay, most of the time, a little too detail oriented or try so hard to go by the book on things so I thought, 'ok, Dawn, just calm down about this and have fun with it. She doesn't get all worried about the math in this thing-- just works by trial and error.' That line of thought was helpful at that time because it gave me the guts to keep trying, to go into manual mode without knowing what I was doing, to venture out and experiment. But, now, as I so badly want perfection and excellence in the technical side of things, it was encouraging to hear a photographer promote that learning. It does help!! For instance, by doing the math you can figure out exactly how much focus you can have. She showed this comparison of shooting at F1.8 vs F5.6 from 18 inches away: at F1.8 you only have a .25 inch depth of field!! (or amount in focus) But with F5.6 you had almost a full inch. Doesn't it make sense that one eye might be crystal clear and the other softly focused? 1/4 of an inch!! No WONDER I had so many rough, unfocused images with my family of 6! So anyway, it encourages me to continue to work on understanding the why and how of this stuff. I don't want to be mediocre.
Here's a link to her work: http://kimberlywylie.com/
ok, and one other learning point from recently. I was reading an article and the photographer was saying how so many times people overshoot just trying to catch a lucky shot. It takes sooo much more time to process that many images. She suggests pretending you are shooting with film, to limit yourself. Wait for the right moment and get it right on camera. I agree with that. I am no where close to being there, though. I think that's why I don't feel awesome when people compliment my photography - especially with portraits. It was just lucky shooting, ya know? I didn't KNOW I was nailing that shot (and honestly, I'm not sure if there is a single picture I have truly thought I "nailed" even in reviewing them.)
I want to improve technically. I want to grow in confidence, shoot with purpose and skill. But, how do I get there from here? That's what I don't know.
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