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Margaret - August 19, 2010 - 9:23 am

Congrats, Renata! It’s been great fun being a part of your blog, and I’m learning a lot. Looking forward to what you have in store for the next six months!
Zoe - August 19, 2010 - 10:02 am

Yay, happy mini anniversary! Your blog is great and I look forward to learning more in the days to come. And winning more contests 🙂
Peter Knickerbocker - August 19, 2010 - 2:52 pm

Congratulations Renata!
Hedvig - August 19, 2010 - 7:54 pm

Congratulations, Renata! Your blog is so fun to read and very informative. Even though I don’t usually comment, I follow your blog with great pleasure! I’m also one of the many “Margaret Series” fans. ( Hi Margaret :)) Keep up the good work!
Tom - August 19, 2010 - 9:41 pm

I am constantly amazed at the quality of images you take and post here! Congratulations on a super six months of creativity! Also, regarding the “Margaret Series,” perhaps in a future episode I could be an out-of-work Brooks Brothers model who hangs out in the park and accidently bumps into Margaret, an Ann Taylor model with a cryptic background. Just an idea!
DavidLeeDavid - August 20, 2010 - 9:25 am

Happy half year anniversary younger older sister!!!!!!

P.S. Did you make that perfect cupcake and if so, can I put an order in for a dozen? :>
Renata - August 20, 2010 - 11:56 pm

Thanks everyone for the well wishes! How fun! It’s been so hectic lately that I almost forgot that 6 months had already past! But I had to mark the event with a mini post and a mini cupcake that (@Dave) I swung by the store to pick up on my way home. Don’t know that I ever actually made a cupcake!
Robert - August 22, 2010 - 3:51 am

Well done. Your photos really are beautiful and your writing’s not bad either. May you have even greater success on your future anniversaries.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Sound Off

I know you Margaret fans might be disappointed that I’m taking a little break this week in the Margaret series, but I just had to write about this tip.

I often work quasi listening to the news in the background. This week the station cut to a live press conference where the microphones happened to pick up all the background noise. So I’m upstairs working on my photo edits, and I keep hearing these “bee-beep” sounds over and over and over again. It was like someone was taking a picture. I thought for a second someone had broken in and started photographing me and I couldn’t figure out where they were hiding! I actually started carefully walking around the house trying to find the intruder. I found myself getting closer and closer to the TV, not believing what I was hearing! Someone in the press conference was taking photos every couple of seconds and they had their focus beeper on! It was just the most irritating and distracting sound.

So here’s my newsflash… You can turn the beeping sound off!

Most cameras come out of the box with the focus beeper set to *on.* One of the first things I do when I get a new camera is go right to my menu options, find the sound controls, and turn the beeper *off.* (The second thing I do, in case you’re wondering, is set the current time and date. Since I’m always using multiple cameras, I make sure all my clock settings on my cameras are synchronized. It makes it much easier after an event when I go to sort my images from multiple cards.)

But back to the noise pollution…There really is no *need* to have the focus beeper on since there is typically a little green light inside the viewfinder or on the screen at the back of your camera that will either blink or stay solid. When it’s solid, you’re in focus. (This is typically when you’d hear the beeping sound telling you that you’re focused preceding every shot.) Most point and shoot cameras now have those face detection squares that change color and lock when they are in focus, so again, there’s no real need for the beep.

So if you don’t want everyone turing around and looking at you when you try to take a photo in a quite place, then turn off the beeper. And that goes for the fake shutter sound some point and shoots and camera phones have to make them sound like they have big boy pants on. Turn them all off, they are just not necessary. I’d give anything to have a dead silent camera.

You know, they even make camera silencers, (special housing to surround the camera and $$$ btw), for photographers who shoot stills on movie sets. The last thing a director wants to hear on his set while filming is a shutter going off or that annoying beeper. And that goes for me too!

——-

Btw, no one answered my quiz question from last week 🙁

Tags: Beeper

5 comments

Zoe - August 13, 2010 - 11:13 pm

How could I have missed your quiz from last week? Hmmm.

I have a new camera! So I’ll be re-visiting all your Friday tips soon. I’ve got my date and time set, and I think I turned off my beeper. There may be hope for me that I’ll be able to take a few decent shots soon… maybe… 🙂
DavidLeeDavid - August 14, 2010 - 8:37 am

…”One of the first things I do when I get a new camera…” That’s like once every ten years for me, so ummmmm, how often do you get a new one? 😉 I still use my dad’s camera set that he bought in Vietnam back in the late 60’s…but some fungus has grown into a few of the lenses. My next camera was one I used in art school in the late 80’s and early 90’s. My “latest” is a digital that is about 5 years old. Guess I started my own museum… but I’m betting yours is more vast, unless you sell ’em or trade yours in.
Renata - August 19, 2010 - 12:51 am

Wow, Dave! I’d love to see the camera gear from Vietnam. How does fungus grow in a lens, btw? 😉 I went digital in I think 2005 too, and have had 6 of them, 5 of which were SLR’s. (I always have two cameras on a shoot.) Yes, I’d sell and upgrade. Granted I do go through more cameras than your average person given that I do this for a living.
Renata - August 19, 2010 - 12:54 am

Looking forward to seeing your pics Zoe!
DavidLeeDavid - August 19, 2010 - 8:59 am

Oh! Oh! OH! Here is something on fungus and camera lenses that you can write about and inform your public: http://www.mypentax.com/Fungus.html

Friday, August 6, 2010

What’s Your Focus?

When taking a portrait, sometimes we can’t choose our backgrounds, but we can choose how much we notice them. Unless the background is integral to the person in the portrait, it’s normally more pleasing to set the main subject apart, or differentiate them from the background by letting it go out of focus, thereby making your subject stand out more. That way, when only your main subject is in focus, it’s clear who or what your subject is.

The control for this is all in the f-stop, the aperture that is.

By choosing a wide aperture (small f-stop number) we create a more shallow depth of field. By choosing a narrow aperture (large f-stop number) we create a lot of depth of field. Translation: Wide Aperture/Small f-stop Number = Blurry Background (That’s if you put the focus dot on the person of course.)

Margaret, found playing hooky again in her local park, was willing to pose for you all to illustrate my point. I put her in front of a busy background as you can see in the above photo. It was another very sunny day, and a typical camera in Auto Mode would recognize all that light and try to close the shutters, so to speak, by creating a small aperture hole. Since small apertures create lots of depth of field, I opened up my aperture nice and wide to help the background disappear and increased my shutter speed to compensate for all the extra light coming in. What you see here is f16 above and f2 below. That’s the difference the size of the aperture hole makes.

Now if you don’t have manual modes on your camera, or just don’t want to fuss with them, most point and shoot cameras and some SLR’s do have a Portrait Mode. If you look at your dial or menu options and you see a face in profile, or a woman with a hat, that’s your Portrait Mode. What that mode does is it automatically sets your lens’s aperture to usually the widest it goes, maybe f3.2 or f4. (Some newer point and shoots are now down to f2.8 which is great.) Then it calculates automatically the rest of the settings. This mode works well to blur out distracting backgrounds while keeping your subject focused.

For Your Tip Within a Tip:

After opening up your aperture or selecting Portrait Mode the next time you’re taking portraits, to help differentiate your subject even more, try putting some extra distance between your subject and the background if you have room. This will help create the illusion of an even more shallow depth of field for that nice blurry background, while keeping only your subject in focus.

Pop Quiz:

Am I using a flash?

Tags: Portraits,Shallow Depth of Field

4 comments

Zoe - August 7, 2010 - 10:45 am

Another fun Margaret shoot, and I read it with great interest since I now have a new camera I will soon be learning to use! I will also be going back and reading all your Friday tips with new camera in hand.
Peter Knickerbocker - August 14, 2010 - 12:06 pm

My guess is that you are not using a flash due to the shadow lines across Margaret’s face.
Renata - August 19, 2010 - 12:26 am

Sorry, Peter. Guess again 🙂
Peter Knickerbocker - August 19, 2010 - 2:55 pm

Ok, I now guess that you ARE using a flash! 🙂

Saturday, July 31, 2010

And The Winner Is….

ZOE!!!!!!!!!

Out of 47 eligible entries, over 40 posts, Zoe had 11! Thank you for being such a faithful reader and commenter!

Are you ready for your close up? 🙂 Now go pick out your outfit! Congratulations on winning your free Headshot!

A BIG thank you to all of you who have been leaving me your comments. They really help me to know how to communicate better simply by seeing how you respond. And since I’m a new blogger, barely 6 months on the scene, I can use all the feedback I can get! Don’t be shy in letting me know if there are topics or images you’d like to see more of, and do send me your Friday Photo Tip questions and suggestions. If you didn’t notice already, I get super excited about my monthly contests. What shall be the next one? What game shall we play? I’m open to ideas. I have a few lined up, but would still love to hear your suggestions too.

Happy rest of the weekend everyone! And don’t forget your Portiuncula Indulgence! (Feast on August 2, some dioceses on the first Sunday of August.)

4 comments

Zoe - July 31, 2010 - 9:23 pm

OMG — ARE YOU SERIOUS? I actually WON something?? That is amazing!!! Sorry, Jen..
Renata - July 31, 2010 - 9:30 pm

Zoe, you sure did! This was your show! I pulled you out two more times after that! I stirred and stirred the bowl to mix everyone up real good. Jen had lots though too and was quite the contender. But I think it’s fair to say, this was Zoe’s night! 🙂
Zoe - July 31, 2010 - 9:31 pm

OH, and thank you! I was so excited about winning, I forgot to say something! Hmmm, now I need to do something with this hair and figure out what to wear…

Two ideas for future contests:
– A one hr shoot with you (where you help and give advice) at a location of the winner’s choice.
– A Christmas photo for the winner’s Christmas card.
– Gelato for two — where the winner gets whatever flavor they want and your ear for 30 or 60 minutes to ask you whatever questions they want about photography.
Renata - August 1, 2010 - 11:26 am

Thanks, Zoe. Love your suggestions, particularly the one with gelato! 😉

Friday, July 30, 2010

Composition: Looking For Some Perspective

Sometimes dead on is just not dead on. (Btw, let’s hear it for the return of our lovely model Margaret…Yay!)

This one’s real easy. When framing a subject look at the lines and seek out some perspective opportunities. Often the background offers lots of possibilities (the ever so popular and slightly overused photos on railroad tracks come to mind). Lines fading into the distance creates the illusion of endless depth in a composition. You don’t always need to look for train tracks, plus they’re not too safe in my option, but you can usually find receding lines within your frame especially when photographing outdoors if you just position yourself and your subject correctly. A tree line, brick wall, and even the very chair you might be sitting on, could be far more interesting if just photographed from a side angle as we see here sportingly demonstrated by Margaret.

So here’s your tip:

Next time before clicking the shutter button, walk around your subject and study them from all sides in relation to the background. You might be surprised to find some great depth and perspective in what might have otherwise been a very flat composition.

Tags: Composition,Perspective

6 comments