Want better lake or beach photos? Why does your beach/lake photo come out too light? Great question, get off the automatic modes. Your meter can be tricked. I have my meter on spot metering, and still the meter can be tricked. So many times I will use my hand- held meter to get an accurate reading from my subject position. Have you seen photographers on the sideline at sporting events taking readings throughout the day? Same reason, they shoot on the manual modes so they can get predictable consistent results. I call it “my men in black device”, it’ll erase the clients memory when I use it, LOL! Anyhow back to why the camera meter can be tricked: With the white sand and the sun reflecting off the sand and water the meter reads it as more light so the image will be overexposed. Can you fix it in photo shop, yes, most of the time depending on your format, did you know that jpg format is a compressed file thus not producing all the file information? I prefer to shoot in the raw format for that very reason. My goal is get it in the camera so that you won’t have to spend more time in postproduction. Yes I know it’s fun. Time is very valuable. My suggestion is to get off the auto modes. Under expose the image by one stop. Or you can remember the sunny f/11 rule. So if your camera is reading 125th of a second at f/11 in a bright sunlit day at the beach, shoot at 125 at f16. The same holds true in snow as well. The best time of day to shoot is just before sunrise or just before sunset. Another tip: if you are going to photograph people then have the sun behind the subject so they won’t be looking directly into the camera. Use your flash as flash fill. It is better to underexpose opposed to overexposed, Happy Shooting!
It’s the little things that make the difference: There are times when you can’t photograph during the best time of day. We went to a client’s house for her senior portraits. ( I wish I would have had a mustang at 17-18 years of age!) As I was packing up to return to the studio an image came to mind in the middle of the road. I prefer not to use flash whenever possible, but in a situation like this and at 10:00am, I had little choice. The flash was off camera to the left of the subject just out of camera view. Photo A without flash…look where the shadows are on the road. Photo B is with flash to match the ambient light. I used a 400 watt second portable battery flash to do it but even though I preach photographing at the best time of day, I like challenges and this one is very similar to the beach photo tip above. Look at the sun reflecting off the payment. Had I used the auto modes the exposure would have been skewed. In the end I like the look and feel of the image.
Grad clothing tips: What to wear. Guys need to wear a dress shirt with a tie, dress pants and shoes. You can color coordinate your tie to your school colors. We have seen ties from the school with their mascot and school colors. Check with your dean or senior class sponsors for answers. Young ladies should wear a v-neck dress or top along with comfortable shoes. If you have lots of hair, pin down your cap. Remember simplicity and comfort is the key. Enjoy one of the most important times of your life. Look around you, take it all in, look at your fellow classmates, you may never see them again. Exchange contact information with your student friends. Enjoy the ceremony, it will all be over in 120-minutes.
Last month I answered the questions about what camera to invest in. This month I will give general information on camera settings. Since it is graduation/wedding season let’s talk inside settings. ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. It’s the value indicating the sensitivity to the film/sensor. It’s a rating for film/sensors that are used to see how much light is needed for proper exposure. A good rule of thumb is 100-200 ISO for outdoor, bright sun light conditions. 400 is good for overcast, 800 and higher for indoors and low light situations. The higher ISO sometimes will create what used to be called “grain” for film noise for electronic cameras. There is noise reducing software to help but my thought is get it right the first time. Who has the time for post production/photo shop afterwards? Can you put your camera on Auto? Sure, but when you go inside and the camera reacts slow you will get blurred images. Increase your ISO. Film/sensors do not see light like our eyes do, learn to see how the camera sees things. I often laugh when I see a TV sporting event-flash going off in the stands. Point and shoot flashes have a very low throw-rate, so if you are trying to get images at the event or on the field from the stands forget it, your flash simply is not strong enough. Raise the ISO speed on your camera; hold the camera steady, the subject may be blurry if moving due to the slow shutter speed, but you need to pick up enough ambient light for a proper exposure. In other words, wait until the action/person at the event comes closer to you otherwise the subjects will be too small in the frame. Red-eye reduction: Use the red eye reduction at all times. What causes red eye? The flash hits the retina and bounces back into the sensor/film creating what we call red eye. Point and shoot cameras as a whole don’t do a very good job of preventing red eye. A couple of ways to help prevent red eye: 1.) Don’t use your flash, find natural light somewhere, a door or a window. 2). Put soft tissue over the flash, this will not get rid of it completely but it will help. 3). Avoid flash on top of the camera. If you can get that flash off the camera or bounce it, do it. I try to avoid flash on camera.
5-generation family portrait, 94-years young! I had the pleasure of photographing a five-generation family this past month for Good Samaritan Village, ages 5-94. As of this writing, Mrs. Kovac will have turned 95. Can you imagine the changes Mrs. Kovac has seen in her 94-years? (95-years ago the Titanic sank. 95-years ago Albert Einstein published a book called his General Theory of Relativity. Woodrow Wilson, no relation, was the 28th president. Mrs. Kovac has seen 16-presidents. WWI started in 1914, Mrs. Kovac was born in 1916: I can tell you she gets around well and can carry on a good conversation. During the photo session her grandson shared with me that he would call her and many times she was busy and asked if she could call him back around 9:30pm, she should be done playing cards by then. The Kovac-Simmons family portrait session is one of the most memorable family portrait sessions we have created. It truly was a pleasure.
Personal Note: Kathy and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary last month. It was a little late but better late than never. Kathy planned a trip to St. Augustine for a weekend at a bed and breakfast. This type of trip was not on the top of my “bucket list”, but I’m glad I did it. We stayed at the Agustin Inn Bed and Breakfast and the accommodations, food and service were outstanding! It’s nice to see good old fashioned customer service. The breakfast menu on Saturday was chilled peach soup (they likened it to a smoothie), cheese quiche and a skewer of chicken/apple sausage with pineapple and red bell peppers. I almost immediately turned to Kathy and said “we are going out”. Where are my scrambled eggs, grits, bacon and toast, after all this is the South! Kathy suggested we give it a try and if we don’t like it we can go elsewhere. One taste of the chilled peach soup in my mouth, I loved it! The Agustin Inn B&B is conveniently located to all the downtown shops, tours, etc. We walked and toured all day on Saturday. The weather was outstanding. I wouldn’t recommend going in July-Sept. We drove home on A1A, the scenic route, and had lunch at Snack Jacks, right on the beach in Flagler County. It was nice just to sleep in, have breakfast prepared for you and no jumping up to take the dogs out. We toured the old school house, the old fort and the historic military hospital. The way they explained the surgeries they had to perform in those days, before anesthesia, was “graphic”. The tours helped refresh our memories of Florida History. Did you know that Ponce De Leon was only 4’10” tall? We toured Flagler College as well, what an incredible place. Henry Flagler was way ahead of his time, what a resort he built. The resort took 2-years to build and cost 15million dollars. In today’s market it would cost 56+million. The interior, furniture and paintings are well worth the time and money to see.
