Brandon Malone Photography

Every year I take a week off to attend work­shops and classes to fur­ther edu­cate myself.  In fact, doing this is very crit­i­cal to my growth and devel­op­ment as an artist.  Trends and tech­nol­ogy change con­stantly, and there is always some­thing you can learn from some­one else.  And since it’s so easy for any­one to buy a dig­i­tal cam­era, it’s even more impor­tant for the pro­fes­sion­ally to truly set them­selves apart.  But whether or not a per­son is a pro­fes­sion, or a new begin­ner, con­tin­ual edu­ca­tion is essential.

This past week I enjoyed my time in Cape May, New Jer­sey at the Mid Atlantic Regional School (MARS), which is a Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phers of Amer­ica (PPA) affil­i­ate school.  PPA has many affil­i­ate schools, so most peo­ple should be able to find one in their region.  You look at the list of instruc­tors teach­ing for the week, and the topic they are teach­ing on, and then sign-up.

I saw Scott Robert Lim on the list teach­ing about cre­ative light­ing tech­niques that are able to be used in any sit­u­a­tion.  I’m sure my descrip­tion isn’t exactly how it was worded, but it was essen­tially that.  I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle of his in Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­pher mag­a­zine some time back about using your cam­era flashes in man­ual mode instead of TTL.  I was obvi­ously influ­enced, but spend­ing a week with the guy was a whole-nother story com­pared to read­ing a short article.

We went out into the blaz­ing mid-day sun and pulled of beau­ti­ful images.  The two on this post are from that shoot.  We went into a build­ing with tons of win­dows on a rainy day and com­bined avail­able light with video LED lights.  Then on the last day we went to an avi­a­tion museum and pho­tographed mod­els in a few chal­leng­ing sce­nar­ios, which came out amazing.

The first image is closer to how it was cap­tured, which was about 1 or 2 pm.  The sec­ond image is after I fin­ished hav­ing fun with it.  For the effects, I just used onOne software.

Of course we learned a bit more on pos­ing in addi­tion to the light­ing, but it was an amaz­ing week long class.  I soaked up almost every oppor­tu­nity I could to assist Scott, which bet­ter helped me grasp what he was teach­ing, as well as gave me bet­ter insight on how to help an assis­tant that may work with me (usu­ally that’s Amanda).  Any pho­tog­ra­pher that has not had a chance to learn from Scott is miss­ing out on a career chang­ing expe­ri­ence.  (Click HERE to see pho­tos from the class).

The other nice thing about attend­ing a PPA affil­i­ate school such as MARS, or any other, is the ven­dor sup­port that comes to these schools.  Often times you can get some great deals on equip­ment and soft­ware.  Some­thing was really cool this time was that the Can­non and Tam­ron guys where they loan­ing out equip­ment for stu­dents to play with for a day.  In fact, Can­non had a cou­ple of pro­to­type cam­eras they were loan­ing out.  And the last night there, our class assis­tant won a free Canon 1D IV with a lens.

Any young pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher not tak­ing advan­tage of this kind of edu­ca­tion is rob­bing them­selves and doing their busi­ness an injus­tice.  It is expen­sive, but it more than pays for itself as the infor­ma­tion as applied.  Every client I have from this day on will ben­e­fit from the edu­ca­tion I sought and learned.  Next year, I plan on spend­ing my week back at the Imag­ing USA con­ven­tion again since it’s been a few years since I was there last.  So don’t look for me in late Jan­u­ary of 2013 because I’ll be in Atlanta.

The first image is closer to how it was cap­tured, which was about 1 or 2 pm.  The sec­ond image is after I fin­ished hav­ing fun with it.  For the effects, I just used onOne software.

This is one of our very spe­cial cou­ples. We first met Amanda while work­ing with the Bal­ti­more Blast Cheer­lead­ers. She was always very pas­sion­ate and enthu­si­as­tic about what she did, but that is the kind of per­son Amanda is. So when she con­tacted me about her wed­ding, Amanda (my wife) and I were crazy excited. Of course we also were curi­ous as to what the guy is like that won her over. In my mind, I imag­ined he was going to be a large mus­cu­lar foot­ball player. Though Justin isn’t a foot­ball player, he aparently is a for­mer pro rugby player. So note to self: don’t make him mad. Jok­ing of course.

Justin and Amanda are big about Old Town Alexan­dria, so that’s where they had in mind to shoot. In plan­ning for it, I sug­gested we go extra early in the morn­ing so as to get a sun­rise photo. The added ben­e­fit is that we made up over ninety per­cent of the pop­u­lar in the imme­di­ate area since every­one else was still sleep­ing. That or they were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the run that took over one of the streets out there.

We really did enjoy Old Town that time of the morn­ing. The street lights, shop lights, tree lights, and traf­fic lights lit up the streets. Since we were aim­ing for the sun­rise, we were not able to get any of these amaz­ing street views. So that’ll have to be a future ses­sion. It really was our first time shoot­ing a cou­ple in Old Town, but you can beat I’ll be tak­ing more pic­tures out there in the com­ing months.

Work­ing with Justin and Amanda was tons of fun. They really care about hav­ing qual­ity cre­ative pho­tos, and they’re more than will­ing to do what­ever nec­es­sary to have them. It really is a plea­sure and an honor to be in a posi­tion to go into the lives of peo­ple in order to reveal their pas­sion for each other, and their play­ful char­ac­ters that make them mesh so well together. I think one of my favorite reveal­ing moments dur­ing our shoot was when Amanda play­fully stuck her tongue out at Justin while he was look­ing away. As a pho­tog­ra­pher, you don’t get these kinds of moments until you’ve made some kind of con­nec­tion with your sub­ject, mak­ing them feel at ease, as if they’re no longer being pho­tographed, but instead hav­ing their rela­tion­ship captured.

So we get all kinds of amaz­ing pic­tures, we’ve all be up since way too early on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and what bet­ter way to wrap every­thing up than with a good break­fast. Thank­fully they new of a great lit­tle place to go. And, in Mal­one fash­ion, it was a fam­ily affair so we had lit­tle Zachariah with us. We left him in his car seat, but had him up high with us. Appar­ently he was hav­ing a great expe­ri­ence since he was laugh­ing exces­sively for a while before he finally passed out. At least we know every­one had a great time. I can’t wait for the actual wed­ding day. It’s going to be amazing.

Robert and Tera have kicked off my wed­ding sea­son for me this year as my first cou­ple for 2012.  The out­door types that they are, I knew to expect lots of fun, relax­ation, and a few crazy guests.  Plus some good food.  I was any­thing but disappointed.

This was my first visit to the Christ Epis­co­pal Church in West River, Mary­land.  It was absolutely beau­ti­ful, and full of out door photo options.  The inside was tight, but with the older clas­sic look and feel that you would expect.  The kind that makes you feel like you’re sit­ting amongst his­tory and it dri­ves a bit of curios­ity about who was there long ago.  It is a very well kept church with a great priest, and I loved shoot­ing there.  Of course the cool doors and pink flow­ers help too.

We were able to get some pho­tos of Robert and his men ahead of time, but that was it before we had to head off to the cer­e­mony.  I love watch­ing a mar­riage cer­e­mony in small old churches.  Some­thing about the red car­peted isle and wooden struc­ture and hang­ing lights just seems to add that spe­cial touch to a wed­ding.  Of course I don’t gen­er­ally get to pay much atten­tion to what’s being said other than cer­tain key phrases that tell me what’s hap­pen­ing next.  But I’m there to take care of the visual cap­tur­ing of things, so I have to keep my focus on look­ing for those expres­sions.  They will be excited with the pictures.

From there we were off to the Amer­i­can Legion in Edge­wa­ter, Mary­land for the recep­tion.  Again, keep­ing with their style, they kept things sim­ple so as to focus more on sim­ply hav­ing fun.  Most every­one was able to spend time catch­ing up with oth­ers, shar­ing sto­ries, and pass­ing their bless­ings and best wishes on to Robert and Tera.  And it’s always a good sign when a brides­maid catches the bouquet.

Robert and Tera have begun their newest life adven­ture as new­ly­weds, and like all of their fam­ily and friends, I wish them the best.

If you would like to view the pho­tos from this wed­ding, a link will be posted here once the pho­tos are com­pleted and Robert and Tera have had their first looks.  In the mean­time, enjoy the pho­tos that I have included and feel free to leave some com­ments or sto­ries or any­thing else about the day that you’d like to share.

Click HERE to view the event site pho­tos.  They are only avail­able till July 1, 2012.  Both prints and dig­i­tal files are avail­able for purchase.

I won­der if any­one can tell me what the white stuff was that I dis­cov­ered spilled all over the back­side of my pants.

As with every­thing else in pho­tog­ra­phy, lenses are sim­ply tools used to cre­ate a spe­cific look.  So when you walk into a scene, or are prepar­ing for a ses­sion, you’ll want to first think about what you want the final image to look like.  This will help guide the deci­sions you make.  For now, we’re just focus­ing on lenses.

When you have a SLR/DSLR/HDSLR, you have the option to choose dif­fer­ent lenses.  Point and shoot cam­eras require mini adapter lenses to get a sim­i­lar option.  But we’re going to stay with inter­change­able lenses here.

There are obvi­ously tons of lenses options out there vary­ing in brand, zoom, speed, and price.  So what’s the dif­fer­ence and what does it mean for you?  Well, it depends on what you’re doing.

Lens glass:  With lenses, glass is a very crit­i­cal fac­tor.  Lower end lenses will work out just fine for the aver­age per­son, but the pro­fes­sional often requires a much higher qual­ity glass.  The dif­fer­ence in glass could be the dif­fer­ence between a clean, clear, vibrantly col­ored pic­tured and one that is dingy and off-colored.  Some brands are bet­ter known for their glass than oth­ers, such as Nikon.  But even Nikon has both higher and lower end glass options.  A brief read­ing on each glass type will let you know which is bet­ter.  Of course so will the price.

Lens speed:  If you have ever been con­fused when some­one talks about how fast a lens is, done feel bad.  I remem­ber when I knew noth­ing and assumed it referred to how fast the lens focused on a sub­ject.  What it really refers to is the aper­ture rat­ing of the lens.  For exam­ple, a lens may be referred to as a 2.8 lens, or a 4–5.6 vari­able lens.  The lower the aper­ture rat­ing, the bet­ter the lens, and the more expen­sive it is.  This is not some­thing the aver­age per­son will need to worry about unless you are a seri­ous hobby shooter work­ing in low light or need­ing shal­low depth of field on a reg­u­lar basis.

Prime verses zoom:  Most peo­ple are imme­di­ately aware of what a zoom lens means.  So the oppo­site would be a non-zoom lens that has only one focal length.  This would be a prime lens.  Where a zoom lens is con­ve­nient, and prime lens is sharper and cleaner.  Most peo­ple assume buy one really big zoom lens (such as Nikon’s 18–200) than lug around a bunch of primes.  But be aware that lenses with these larger ranges usu­ally sac­ri­fice on qual­ity.  Again, prob­a­bly noth­ing the aver­age per­son will notice, but will drive the pro­fes­sional crazy.  My per­sonal favorite zoom lens is Nikon’s 24–70 2.8 lens.

Per­spec­tive Con­trol:  Ok, this will be really dif­fer­ent to most peo­ple.  A per­spec­tive con­trol lens (PC lens), also called a tilt-shift lens, is a really cool fun toy.  It can be related to a lens-baby (for those famil­iar with it), but it’s not com­pletely the same thing.  These lenses are prime lenses that are man­ual focus only, and are very expen­sive.  The user is able to rotate, pan, and shift the lens in order to achieve the desired per­spec­tive and depth of field.

Ok, so you know a few things about lenses now, now you need to know a lit­tle more about how to make the best use of them.  So let me share a few things more for you.

Pro­tec­tion First!  Have a UV or Haze fil­ter on your lens at all times unless you’re replac­ing it tem­porar­ily with a dif­fer­ent filer.  Fil­ters pro­tect that expen­sive glass you just paid for and help give you a bet­ter image.  Dif­fer­ent fil­ters do dif­fer­ent things, so check out web­sites such as Tiffen and see what kind of fun things you can get to play with.

Be con­science of your shut­ter speed!  The gen­eral rule is that your min­i­mum shut­ter speed should be the same or greater than your focal length.  So if you’re zoomed out to 200mm, then your shut­ter speed should also be 200 or faster in order to prop­erly stop motion.  Again, this is a gen­eral rule that every­one breaks, but know you can before you try.  This is where faster lenses are handy.

Think about sub­ject com­pres­sion!  I prob­a­bly had you up to this point, so let me try to get a sim­ple expla­na­tion and some exam­ple pho­tos.  Imag­ine you are pho­tograph­ing two peo­ple, and one is stand­ing ten feet behind the other, but you’re only focus­ing on the indi­vid­ual clos­est to the cam­era.  Com­pres­sion how to do with how close or far apart they appear from each other in the final image.  A wider angle lens (such as 24mm for exam­ple) and closer to sub­ject posi­tion (say 5 feet) will make the two appear much far­ther apart.  If you use a longer lens (such as 200mm) and are father away (maybe 20 feet), then the two will appear much closer together in the final image.  This does not mean they will both be in focus, so don’t con­fuse com­pres­sion with depth of field.

The image on top was with a 24mm at less than 5 feet from the tree.  The bot­tom image was with a  200mm at just over 10 feet away.  Same tree and same back­ground, but dif­fer­ent compression.

Now you know a bit more than you prob­a­bly did before about lenses, and hope­fully have a slightly bet­ter idea of how to choose a lens that will best suite the job you need it for.  Remem­ber the aver­age per­son that is just tak­ing vaca­tion pho­tos and cap­tur­ing fam­ily moments is prob­a­bly just fine with a basic low-end lens with a sim­ple range zoom of between 24–80-ish.  Just remem­ber that it is a lower end lens with lim­i­ta­tions, and put a fil­ter on it for good­ness sakes!

The last time we looked at basic pho­tog­ra­phy, we focused on basic under­stand­ing and usage of the aper­ture and shut­ter pri­or­ity modes.  This time I want to look at mix­ing a lit­tle flash into the equa­tion.  I’ll even sim­ply the sit­u­a­tion a bit by assur­ing you that you only really need to worry about the ISO and shut­ter speed this time.  Also, the tech­nique I’m about to share is one of my secrets that I use at a lot of events.

Though we are using a hot shoe mounted speed light flash unit, this will still work to some degree with a pop-up flash as well.  If you want to be advanced, then you can play with your var­i­ous flash set­tings, but a stan­dard TTL set­ting is a great start­ing point.

Ok, so there is one more cam­era set­ting that you’ll need to know about in order for this light­ing recipe to work prop­erly.  It’s called a Rear Cur­tain Flash Sync.  By default, the cam­era pops the flash at the begin­ning of the expo­sure, so chang­ing it to rear cur­tain means the flash pops just before the expo­sure ends.  What this does is allow the var­i­ous lights and col­ors in the room to hit the sen­sor before the flash burst, allow­ing for more nat­ural col­ors and less washout.  So get your cam­era man­ual if you need to and find this set­ting.  I actu­ally leave my cam­era per­ma­nently set this way, so feel free to leave it there per­ma­nently as well.

This image was made using a lower ISO and a faster shut­ter speed.

The next thing you want to do is adjust your cam­era set­tings to pull in more of the ambi­ent light.  If you remem­ber, a higher ISO num­ber will increase the sen­sors sen­si­tiv­ity to light, which means less light is required to get a proper expo­sure.  Some­thing around 800 to 1600 will prob­a­bly work just fine.  The idea is to use more avail­able light and less flash to get your final expo­sure and the ideal end look.

This image was made using a higher ISO and slower shut­ter speed.

Now, set your cam­era to Shut­ter Pri­or­ity and choose a slower num­ber.  Some­thing between 1/15th and 1/60th will do the trick.  The slower your shut­ter speed, the more ambi­ent light and col­ors you’ll bring in.  If you speed it up too much, like say 1/125th or more, it won’t have enough time to pull much more than the light from your flash.  The would result in a less col­or­ful image.  The trick is to almost even out the flash out­put with the avail­able ambi­ent light.  That way the flash is mainly freez­ing your sub­ject and ensur­ing they’re prop­erly light.

So what should you con­sider when doing this tech­nique?  Well, since you’re using slower shut­ter speeds, you’ll need to be con­science of the amount of move­ment that your sub­ject is mak­ing.  If the sub­ject is fly­ing all over the place, then you’ll get that crazy ghost­ing affect, which is cool if that’s what you want.  If not, then you’ll want to speed up your shut­ter speed a bit.  Of course, if your sub­ject is not mak­ing sud­den move­ments, then you’ll end up with a warmer image.

The two exam­ples below demon­strate the dif­fer­ence this tech­nique can make.

The first is with a faster shut­ter speed while the sec­ond one used a slower shut­ter speed.

Remem­ber this is just one of numer­ous tricks that can be used to get a spe­cific look for an image.  Not every trick is idea for every sit­u­a­tion, so like a good spice, use it only when the occa­sion really calls for it.  Oth­er­wise you’ll end up over­do­ing it and be left with a ton of images that have a look not bal­anced with the sub­ject mat­ter.  Any­body to learn tricks just as any­one can spread paint on a can­vas.  It takes an knowl­edge­able artist to know how and when to use them, and when to leave them alone for another day.  Enjoy play­ing with your new tricks, and show­ing off to your friends what you can do now.

So now that we have some amaz­ing pic­tures of you, what are you going to do with them?  It’s so com­mon today to have dif­fi­culty think­ing past our smart phones or Face­book and remem­ber that we have homes for dis­play­ing our mem­o­ries in.  Sure, these are great ways for shar­ing your pho­tos, but elec­tronic means should be a far sec­ond after first cre­at­ing amaz­ing dis­plays for your home.  You’ll love these dis­plays so much bet­ter and you’ll never have to worry about los­ing them when your phone eats the big one, or your com­puter gets fried, or when your online pro­files get hacked.  Elec­tron­ics have a 100% fail­ure rate while most phys­i­cal dis­plays have 100+ year archival rat­ing.  Besides, that large wall piece is WAY more impres­sive than any screen view.

So, what are your options then for in home dis­play?  There are tons of new options all of the time, but there’s also the more com­mon ones that only get bet­ter as time goes on.  These are things such as Can­vas Gallery Wraps, Framed Prints, and Books & Albums, fol­lowed by gift prints and wal­lets of course.  Then you can start mov­ing into other cool things such as metal or acrylic prints, snow boards for the wall, cards for the fam­ily, and more.  We even have Can­vas Ban­ners and Illu­mi­nated Prints for our wed­ding recep­tion displays.

It really is crazy the amount of options avail­able to us today for dis­play­ing our pho­tos, yet most peo­ple can’t get past their screens.  The screen is never going to do jus­tice to a mem­o­rable pro­fes­sional pho­to­graph.  So when you start think­ing about hav­ing pho­tos taken for a wed­ding, or of the fam­ily, or your high school senior, think also about what you’d like to do with those pho­tographs.  How do you want to pre­serve those mem­o­ries and dis­play them in a way you can be proud of?

Below is a short list of some of my com­mon prod­ucts for wed­dings and por­traits.  Obvi­ously there’s always going to be more options, but I pre­fer to focus more on the things most peo­ple will enjoy.

Wed­ding Albums

You are going to relive your day and fall in love again as you slowly ven­ture through your wed­ding album for the first time.  My albums include lay-flat pages with pro­tec­tive coat­ings to ensure spills and dirty hands never ruin your price­less mem­o­ries.  This for­ever keep­sake will be trea­sure for gen­er­a­tions.  You can also add a beau­ti­ful pre­sen­ta­tion box for greater pro­tec­tion and display.

Por­trait Albums

Some­times there’s so many won­der pic­tures from a ses­sion that you just have to have them all, but you can’t fit them all on your wall.  So that’s where our por­trait albums come in.  Our most pop­u­lar ones include the 10x4 flip book, the 5x7 book, and the 4x6 accor­dion book.

Guest Book Album

A favorite among most of our wed­ding cou­ples is the Guest Book Album.  This replaces the com­mon guest book in which peo­ple only sign with an album that dis­plays pho­tos from the engage­ment ses­sion on one side and a faded parch­ment page on the oppo­site side.  Guest love look­ing through the pho­tos of the cou­ple, and then can leave per­son­ally writ­ten mes­sages on the open parch­ment page.  This cre­ates a greater wed­ding keep sake that cou­ples cherish.

Gallery Wraps

Whether using one image or a series, gallery wraps will dis­play them with an art gallery feel right on your walls.  With the high qual­ity and archival pro­duc­tion, you never have to worry about replac­ing them, and can pass them on for future gen­er­a­tions to trea­sure.  For those not famil­iar with gallery wraps, they are images printed onto can­vas that is then stretched around a wooden frame and then treated for protection.

Framed Art Prints

Ensur­ing that your trea­sured moments are both pre­sentable and pre­served, all of our framed art work is printed on fine art paper and pro­fes­sion­ally cus­tom framed with high qual­ity eco-friendly mate­ri­als.  Not only will you for­ever love it on your walls, but so will those you pass it on to in the future.

Metal Prints

If you’re look­ing for a uniquely new way of dis­play­ing your images, while also ensur­ing their longevity, metal prints do exactly that.  They can be used as wall group­ings or as indi­vid­ual, and can come in some var­i­ous shapes.  There is also the option of a stan­dard back­ing that extends the sur­face away from the way, or using a metal box fram­ing.  Addi­tion­ally, metal prints have the abil­ity to be double-floated and framed to get an entirely new level of wow factor.

Sto­ry­boards

Using the same love and detail as our other framed prints, our sto­ry­boards tell your story using mul­ti­ple images in one frame.  What bet­ter way to com­mu­ni­cate how you feel than using one beau­ti­ful dis­play piece?

The Spread 14x36 (1) 8x10 & (4) 5x7

The Study 20x20 (9) 5x5

The Quad 20x20 (4) 5x7

The Trio 10x20 (3) 5x7

Paint­ings

One of the spe­cial extra touches that can be added to a pho­to­graph is dig­i­tal paint­ing.  This is done by hand and can take a good amount of time.  Each one is unique because of it being hand done. To do jus­tice to this kind of work, they are only printed on cer­tain mate­ri­als such as can­vas or water­color paper, and no smaller than twenty inches.

Photo Booth

The Photo Booth pro­vides that extra cool-fun fac­tor to your recep­tion.  Using a portable stu­dio set-up and fun props, you and your guests are going to totally love this added experience.

Save The Date Mag­nets 4x8

These are great for our wed­ding cou­ples that want some­thing cus­tom and unique, and yet not eas­ily lost.  Your guests can dis­play it right on their refrig­er­a­tor instead of los­ing it in a pile of papers.  Plus it’ll con­tinue to stay there long after the wedding.

I recently have been exper­i­ment­ing with ways to set up stu­dio setups in my home.  With the small space, it poses some chal­lenges, mainly with the lack of ceil­ing height.  But once Amanda and I came up with some­thing that works, I knew I needed to get some ses­sions done to test it out, so I talked with my fit­ness buddy, Jeff.

Jeff is a fit­ness instructor/trainer, and he and I had already been talk­ing about get­ting some fit­ness pic­tures of him at some point.  So this seemed like a great time for me.  To play, I set up three dif­fer­ent sets.  One was a clean white, one was against red, and the third was in black.  Each gave it’s own chal­lenges when set­ting up the lights.  My lim­ited space and lim­ited lights made it so I couldn’t get all of the high­lights on Jeff that I would have liked to have had, but we still got some awe­some fit­ness pho­tos in the end.

Because I have never done these kind of fit­ness pho­tos, I found that Jeff and I pre­ferred dif­fer­ent pho­tos for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.  I was look­ing at my tech­nique while he was watch­ing his.  I would love a photo for it light­ing and pos­ing, but he loved another more because of his form or mus­cle sculpt­ing.  Need­less to say, I learned a few things about fit­ness pho­tog­ra­phy.  It was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to do more in the future.

We recently had the plea­sure of cap­tur­ing mater­nity mem­o­ries for Lee and Kristin, along with their horse, Hunter, over at Wheaton Park Sta­bles.  They actu­ally found us thru our friend April, who we pho­tographed her engage­ments, wed­ding, and dress ses­sion with her horse Ruf­fian.  And now that I think back, Kristin was early in her preg­nancy when she first con­tacted me because she wanted some pic­tures with her horse, Hunter, before the prego belly set in.  I sug­gested that instead we wait till she’s close to her due date and do the pic­tures then.  And then once she’s regained her pre-prego body, we can do cel­e­bra­tion pho­tos for her as well.

Amanda and I really enjoyed being able to do the ses­sion at Wheaton Park Sta­bles.  It’s an amaz­ing park with way more options that I can take advan­tage of in one ses­sion.  So I was very excited through­out the shoot.  Plus when you com­bine a great loca­tion with a great look­ing cou­ple, I knew I couldn’t mess up.  We really did leave that day with some amaz­ing photos.

Because the ses­sion was so close to Kristin’s due date, we’re hold­ing off on the view­ing appoint­ment till after we’ve had a chance to pho­to­graph baby Madi­son as well.  We really do encour­age that a cou­ple have both the mater­nity and baby ses­sions.  Doing so is like telling the more com­plete story instead of only one side.  Just think about it, the first expe­ri­ences of being par­ents really does start with the devel­op­ment of the baby through­out the preg­nancy, so of course you would want to cap­ture those mem­o­ries as well.

These ses­sions really are still a new expe­ri­ence for me as well, but I’m really enjoy­ing them.  It’s fur­ther reach­ing into what I love about pho­tog­ra­phy, which is telling sto­ries and cre­at­ing mem­o­rable art work that peo­ple can enjoy for­ever.  I really love my job!

Best wishes to Kristin and Lee as they pre­pare to meet baby Madi­son face-to-face any day now.

So last week, we talked know­ing the three basic ingre­di­ents to light in order to get a well exposed image.  This week I just want to expand a lit­tle fur­ther on using them.  Mainly focus­ing on shut­ter speed and aper­ture pri­or­ity modes of course.

Why would you want to choose one mode over the other, and what does the ISO have to do with either one?  Well, it depends on what your sub­ject mat­ter is and what look you are going for.

If you want to con­trol your Depth of Field (the dis­tance between the clos­est and fur­thers points of focus within your image), then you would choose Aper­ture Pri­or­ity.  Nikon just uses an “A” to rep­re­sent this mode and Canon uses “AV” to do the same.  Remem­ber how last week I related the aper­ture of a lens to the human eye.  If there is lit­tle light around you, then your eyes will be more dilated, which in turns reduces your abil­ity to focus as well.  But if it’s really bright, then your eye’s iris is closed down really small, which in turn makes every­thing seem more crisp look­ing than normal.

So here’s the thing to remem­ber with aper­ture: the smaller the f/stop, the more shal­low of a depth of field you will have, and less light is required.  If it’s really bright out, and you’re really want­ing that smaller f/stop, then you’ll have to increase your shut­ter speed to reduced the amount of time light has to hit the sen­sor.  You can also bring down your ISO to a lower num­ber to make the sen­sor less sen­si­tive to light.

The two pho­tos of the log below help demon­strate what I’m talk­ing about.  In one, you will see a very think line of focus going across the pic­ture, while the other has almost every­thing in focus.  I put my ISO to 200 for both images, and set my mode to Aper­ture Pri­or­ity.  The first was set to f/2.8 and the other at f/22.

Shut­ter Speed is for con­trol­ling the amount of motion in a image.  No image is com­pletely stopped.  They’re just recorded for a set amount of time.  The less time that light is being recorded, the less time for the image to blur.  Shut­ter speed also does some other things for us as well, but we’ll get to those in the future.  I just want to ensure basic under­stand­ing for now.

The below two images are not the great­est of work, but they are only to demon­strate a dif­fer­ence in shut­ter speeds with some­thing mov­ing.  There was mov­ing water where we were hik­ing along the C&O Canal, so that’s what I used.  For the first image, the ISO was 200, and I set the shut­ter speed to 1/500.  You’ll notice that pretty much all the rip­ples and bub­bles that are within my depth of field are frozen in time for the most part.

The sec­ond image required a lit­tle adjust­ing in order to get what I needed for this demon­stra­tion.  I wanted to ensure that there was plenty of notice­able move­ment in the water, so I wanted a shut­ter speed of 1/10.  The prob­lem I ran into was that my aper­ture maxed out at f/22 and my expo­sure was still too bright.  So I dropped my ISO to 100 instead of 200 light the first image.  This helped bring the expo­sure down enough to work with.  With this one, I did bring down the expo­sure a bit in post pro­cess­ing, but only to get the over­all expo­sure closer to the first image, so as to get a bet­ter com­par­i­son of the water.  So look­ing at this image, you’ll notice that the water is much smoother than the first image.  If you really want to get those crazy water flow­ing shots, you’ll want to go to fur­ther extremes that I took here.  For one, you’ll want a tri­pod, com­pared to me bal­anc­ing my cam­era on a log.  You’ll also want some fil­ters to help reduce the light com­ing into your camera.

One extra thing that I want to point out about this part of the exper­i­ment is how the color shifted with an extreme expo­sure.  It is impor­tant to have your white bal­ance prop­erly set before you shoot, but expo­sure will effect your image color bal­ance when not prop­erly exposed.  Using the inter­nal light meter is very help­ful, but it will be effected by what is in the view finder.  A hand held light meter would be more accu­rate.  But if all else fails, use the sunny 16 rule, while I’ll cover in a later post.  For now, I just wanted to ensure that you have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your most basic tools and how to use them.

Happy shoot­ing!

To cook a great meal requires the right ingre­di­ents, and the knowl­edge of how to use them.  You can have all of the best ingre­di­ents, but the expert chef knows how to com­bine every­thing in just the right way to cre­ate a mas­ter piece meal that you enjoy from first sight, to first smell, beyond the first bit, and leaves you with a feel­ing of plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion long after you’ve left the table.  If I cooked your meal, you’d be look­ing for desert so you can replace the taste of the dis­as­ter that I attempted to make.  I can do some things with food, but I can’t work those ingre­di­ents like a true culi­nary chef can do.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is sim­i­lar to cook­ing.  There is still a com­bi­na­tion of the tools and the knowl­edge of how to use them to get the desired result.  In pho­tog­ra­phy, our most basic ingre­di­ents are the means to get­ting a sim­ple, well exposed image.  With­out light, you don’t have a pic­ture.  So learn­ing how to play with light in the most basic way is the foun­da­tion when it comes to learn­ing photography.

There are three things on a cam­era that affect and con­trol the light nec­es­sary to get your pic­ture.  These are the ISO, the Shut­ter Speed, and the Aper­ture.  I gen­er­ally refer to these as the com­bi­na­tion of How Much (aper­ture), How Long (shut­ter speed), and how sen­si­tive (ISO).  Each one plays a very crit­i­cal role, and once you under­stand them, you will then be able to learn how to use each to gain the desired look of your final image.  The labels for shut­ter speed and aper­ture can vary between cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers, but ISO is usu­ally the same for each.  Shut­ter speed is TV on Can­non and S on Nikon, while aper­ture is AV on Can­non and A on Nikon.

Most peo­ple still remem­ber the days of shoot­ing with film.  A roll was gen­er­ally rated by an ASA or ISO, which indi­cated the level of sen­si­tiv­ity to light.  In film, there was a dif­fer­ence in film grain size that affected this sen­si­tiv­ity.  The larger the grain, the more sen­si­tive the film, mean­ing the less avail­able light required to gain a proper expo­sure.  An exam­ple would be 800 speed films.  The trade-off was see­ing the grain in your images some­times.  The finer grain films (say 100 speed) required more light to get a proper expo­sure, but gave a much cleaner image, and could be blown up much larger as well.  Now days, it’s all ISO, and there is now longer the con­sis­tency between num­bers that there was with film.  One camera’s 800 can equal another camera’s 400, and can equal another camera’s 1000.  That’s when you start get­ting into the tech­ni­cal talk of cam­era sen­sors, which I’m not going to do here.  The main goal is to sim­ply learn that ISO is what con­trols the level of light sen­si­tiv­ity of your cam­era.  The lower the num­ber, the more light required.  The higher the num­ber, the less light required, but also the more noise (grain with film, noise with dig­i­tal) you get.

The shut­ter speed con­trols How Long the light hits the sen­sor for.  Thank­fully, this is always the same regard­less of the cam­era.  Shut­ter and aper­ture are both based on frac­tions, so the math keeps them reli­ably the same across the board.  When the cam­era shut­ter opens, it does so for a frac­tion of a sec­ond.  So when you see a num­ber like 250, it really means 1/250^th of a sec­ond.  You can take your expo­sures to one sec­ond or longer, but it’s not rec­om­mended with­out a tri­pod.  It opens and light comes thru the lens, and then the shut­ter closes again and ends the light expo­sure to the shutter.

The aper­ture is what con­trols How Much light at a time is hit­ting the sen­sor dur­ing expo­sure.  The lens aper­ture is sim­i­lar to the human eye.  The larger the iris opens, the more light comes thru at a time, and the smaller the open­ing, the less light at a time.  As I said before, this is a frac­tion.  It’s also rep­re­sented by an f/stop num­ber.  In film days, we had whole f/stops.  With dig­i­tal, we have var­i­ous f/stops in between how.  Know­ing the whole f/stops is very use­ful.  Here’s the list for you: f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32, and so on.  Every time you jump from a lower num­ber to a higher num­ber, you’re cut­ting your light in half (ie: f/11 to f/16).  Every time to jump from a higher num­ber to a lower num­ber, you’re dou­bling your light (ie: f/11 to f/8).  So if you jump two f/stops, then it’s now four times instead of double.

So now you have the basic ingre­di­ents nec­es­sary to get the cor­rect amount of light in order to have a prop­erly exposed image.  Most cam­eras have a built-in light meter to help you.  Try putting your cam­era in Man­ual mode (M for most cam­eras) and play with these set­tings till your light meter tells you that your expo­sure is about where it needs to be.  Obvi­ously there’s a lot more to cover, but I wanted to make sure you had the ingre­di­ents to start with.  In a future post, I’ll start giv­ing you more insight on how to bet­ter make sure of each of these ingre­di­ents.  But for now, enjoy your new knowledge.