Manual Mode

This past week, we reviewed all the different settings and modes before finally covering Manual.  I completely understand why she selected manual settings to go over last because it is the hardest.  She uses manual only, but for someone who has depended on the other settings most of the time.  It can be challenging.  It can be done, but takes a lot of patience.

Once you select the desired shutter speed and aperture, you depend on your light meter to tell you if you have the right amount light.  She even showed us the +/- icon to adjust your exposure to accomplish your art.  If adjusting the shutter, aperture and exposure doesn't work, be sure to look at the ISO setting.  Remember to use all the ISO you need and no more because it will affect your pixels.

Knowing that manual will be a challenge, I've been practicing this weekend.  To be honest, I did end up with some dark photos.  I would have to take it again and practice getting the lighting just right.  Especially in a house like mine because I don't have enough lighting in order to take photo inside the house.   The manual does work great with moving lighted objects.

This week's homework was a questionnaire that my instructor handed out to the class.  Once we answered the questions, she requested that we take pictures of our answers.  No pressure!  On top of our 5 questions, we have to hand in 5 additional photos.  Just random photos, nothing special.  Below is the answers to my questions and my 5 additional photos.  Enjoy!

1. If you could have any kind of "life's work", what would it be?

   

In manual mode

I would like to travel around the world and taking photographs of different cultures, landscapes and God's beauty.

2. If you could live "anywhere" . . . where would you go?

   

Shutter speed mode

I would live on a golf course

3. If you could take up a hobby, what would you do?

 

Manual Mode

I would take up sewing.  I use to know how to sew, but it's been since high school.  Right now, I'm doing it the old fashion way . . . by hand.  

4. If you could "own" one thing of enormous wealth what would it be?

 

Manual Mode

I would like to own gems 

5. Name one thing that you are proud to leave behind.

 

Aperture Mode

My children 

My additional 5 photos: 

I've been slowly decorating for autumn. The first two photographs, I took manually. I so proud of myself. I have to confess that it took probably 2-4 photos before I found the best lighting. LOL!

   

Manual Mode

In this picture, I have a working witch's cauldron. Actually it's lights shining on wind blowing on white material. LOL! I love the lighting. Now that Halloween is quickly approaching, I will be taking a lot more evening photos. I love the lights.

 

Aperture Mode

Beautiful autumn flowers

 

Aperture Mode 

My lil' pumpkin! 

   

Aperture Mode

 Autumn Harvest Time

Written Word

This week, we finished going over shutter speeds and aperture settings.  The light meter decides what number (shutter speed and aperture) is needed to take the picture.  If you hear the beeping, it is your light meter adjusting based on the amount of light reflected back.

Aperture - In order to allow more blur you must use a longer lens.  Aperture settings are great to the blurred background and a little in the foreground.  This is what you'll need to make portrait pictures.

ISO (International Standard Organization) controls the speed of the light, the higher the number the more sensitive.  The lower the number, the less sensitive.  Set ISO high for low light situations.  High ISO used for dark (weddings or dark outside).  Low ISO used for beach scenes at noon because there is too much light.  The higher the ISO number, the more grain will show especially in dark.  Take all the ISO you need, but not one stop more (between 200-400 normally).  The less ISO, the less grain in your photos.

Note

• Open sky (full sun) - 100-200
• Open shade - 400
• Need help with low light set ISO at a high number

Mode Dial  - (Creative and Image Zones)

Image Zone  - Portrait Mode - When taking a portrait, blur the background.  You want to focus the subject.  Warning it affects the light especially if your on the beach must have low light (lowest F/stop and high shutter speed). 

Landscape - When doing a scene camera will not blur - it will be sharp.  Will set high F/stop and shutter speed.  

Macro/Close-up Mode - 2 or 3 feet - coming in close and will blur some, but will sharp as well.  

Sports Mode - Motion setting highest shutter speed.  For instance, a child running or fast car driving by.  It doesn't mean that it can only be a sport.  

Night Portrait - Theresa recommends using at night or in dark lighting.  The flash pops up and brightens the subject, but shutter speed will drag out to grab the surrounding lighting.  Is great inside a church with stain glass windows.  Also great for the sunset portrait or street lights.  You can use this setting as an action as well.  The flash will fire at 125 shutter speed.  The flash is only good for 5 feet.  The flash will light the subject, but also lights up the lighted movement in the background.  For instance, have someone pose in front of street lights with cars moving in the background.  Theresa wants me to try this next time.  

Moon shot - try to set camera: F/5.6  1/320   ISO-100

Panning

A lot of moving objects - camera to eye and follow and continue mashing the button half way and when subject is in front, mash button right in front and continue mashing half way as the subject goes by.  

My homework this week is to create photos with verses, quotes or poems that I feel go along together.  Below are a few I did: 

Next week, we are suppose to work with manual.  Theresa said from next week and on out, our classes will be a little more challenging.  

Life In Motion

This week, we went over shutter speeds and aperture settings.  I am loving my classes and learning so much.  I am anticipating new techniques Ms. Theresa will reveal to us the next class session.

To Remember: the higher the shutter speed setting, the subject will be stopped.  The lower the setting, more the subject is in motion and the photo will be blurred.  You must decide what you want to show the audience before you even press the button.  Do you want the action in motion or stopped?

The lower the aperture setting, the fore/background will be blurred.  The higher the setting, the sharper the fore/background.

Shutter speed and aperture work together to give you the best photo.  If your aperture setting is low, you must need a high set shutter speed.  The aperture hole will be small thus, allowing less light.  If you force the shutter speed too low, you might end up with a very dark photo and vice versa.  I've noticed with my Nikon D70, if I want a low shutter speed the aperture or F/stop will show Lo/Hi instead of the number.  This tells me there is either too much light pouring in or not enough.  Listen to your camera!  I deliberately took some pictures that the aperture was too low or too high and sure enough the picture was either over exposed or under.  I love my camera and I know it is wanting to help make the best picture as possible, but like Ms. Theresa said, it can want to help you out a little too much and that is why we don't want to go around the world taking pictures with the automatic button set.  LOL!

I am an artist!   If you see me with my camera and tripod in hand, be at ease that I'm working on my art.  :)

It's hard taking a picture of a bumble bee!  It took me a long time and loads of patience to capture this bee buzzing from flower to flower.  Bees just won't stay on a flower long enough to get all of your settings and focus ready.  The bee was just moving from this flower to another, when I took the picture.  You'll notice that the flower has a slight blur and that's because the big bee moved it.  

I actually took this picture looking up.  I love how the beautiful blue Alabama sky was in the background, giving this shot lots of vibrant color.  

This picture was actually an accident.  I was trying to catch a bumble bee buzzing around the flowers.  I didn't get the bee in the shot because he flew off so fast, but I love the warm sun's light reflecting off of this flower.  

This is an aperture or F/stop photo that I took of these beautiful flowers.  Notice the blur in the background. Just beautiful! 

Pathway under an arbor into the park's wildflower garden

Cheerful light green baby fern springing up in the forest along the garden pathway.  I wanted to show you the vibrant green color by using the white balance.  So pretty!

I love how this picture came out.  Again, I used white balance setting in order to bring these flowers to life.

I spotted this brilliant red flower in the forest by a creek bank.

Reminds me that Autumn is right around the corner

 

Butterfly flitting around enjoying a cool autumn day

Took advantage of a slight wind, moving this grass.  Notice the slight blur, the plumes look more like feathers.  Allowing more light. It was hard to capture the movement in this picture because it was so bright outside, I couldn't set my speed too low.  

Shutter speed is a little faster than the photo above.  Notice this picture is a little sharper than above.  

An example of pushing your aperture settings when making your shutter speed real slow.  Shutter speed at 20 and F/25, allowing too much light and causing over exposed photo. 

Shutter speed isn't set on 30 because it would cause too much light, but it's just enough light and still have the slight blur of motion.  I think this turned out good.  

These two pictures would have to be one of my favorite motion pictures.  On the left: night time lite church.  I used the long exposure setting for this picture.  I love the sparkle from the street lights.  On the right: city scape of my downtown.  I think it turned out very good because you see the movement from the cars, coming and going.  The street lights and signs are still.  A couple street lights even have a little sparkle.  

Fair grounds - the ferris wheel was going entirely too slow and where I was taking this picture required a lot of patience from other drivers.  Yikes!  I felt like I couldn't make my exposure too long.  

The above two pictures taken at a long exposure and turned out great.  Shutter speeds are awesome! 

My past class meeting, my instructor really liked my fountain photo.  She challenged me to go back and take two separate photos to see the difference.  It really does give you an entirely different picture.  On the left: I slowed the shutter speed and you can see the continuous flow of water, but notice the lighting and the sharp background.  Whereas the right, the water is slow motion.  The photo is darker because less light is allowed in the camera and the aperture is blurred in the background.  

My First Digital Photography Class

This week, I started my new adventure.  I finally took that large step, a leap of faith if you will.  I've been wanting to follow my heart and passion for the art of photography.  My goal is to take four classes and be able to finish in a year.  Right now, I'm taking Introduction to Digital Photography.  Next Trimester is Advanced Photography.  Spring offers the Adobe Photoshop Elements classes, which is where the creativity comes into play.  I think I'm going to love my instructor, I guess I had better because we will be seeing each other for a whole year.  After class, Ms. Theresa and I got to talking about shadowing and lighting.  She feels just from talking to me about my issues that a lot of my problems are going to be with lighting.  This is something that can easily be fixed.  I have to find out where I am and what my goals need to be by the end of these 6 weeks.

This week, we skimmed over the history of photography.  Ms. Theresa told us that the first hour will be the lecture time and the second hour will be critique session.  During our critique session, we all broke up into small groups and looked over the photographs that our instructor passed out.  She gave us 6 photographs and we had one person to write down words that describe "what we feel" about each one. Then, we had to describe why we felt that way.  Is it because of the lighting, shutter speed or both that moved me?  Our instructor would not bat an eye pointing you out and asking you "what moved you?" in a picture.  She wants us to look deep and hard at the creativity, which does include the lighting and shutter speed.

Today, when I took a few pictures I wanted to focus on the lighting issue.  How lighting can affect the emotion of a photograph.  I took pictures of the same building at the same time of day, but at different angles in order to see the various lighting can affect the picture.  Very interesting, how the angle of the sun can make a subject different.  All the photos were taken in the early morning light (8AM).


Above left: direct sunlight at the backside of the church; right: front of the church with the sun shining from the right side, causing a silhouette.  I actually appreciate the right photograph more than the left because it focuses on the crosses, which is exactly what I wanted to show.  I also love the puffy clouds in the background.  It's a sense of God's glorious peace within.  The left reflects the golden crosses, but your eyes also wander over the entire building and not just the crosses.

I would like to achieve an evening sunset silhouette.


Above left: is the right side of the church, in direct sunlight; right: is the left side of the church, with the sun shining from the right.  I actually appreciate the right photograph better because it gives emotion.  A sense of tranquility and warmth, where the left picture doesn't give that emotion.  I think it is because of the lighting, which includes a little casting of shadows.


Above left: beautiful red knock-out roses in direct morning sunlight; right: my action shutter speed of a water fountain at a local park.  I love this picture because of the movement.  The emotion I feel is refreshing, delicate and tranquil on a hot summer day.

Next week, we will go over shutter speed, aperture and F-spot.  I've been using my camera manually for over two years, so I've had a chance to play with all the shutter speeds.  I have a Nikon, which is very different from Canon.  A lot of the settings are automatic like the F-spots.  Today, I went over using the modes (P, S, A, and M).  I never use these shutter speeds because it's not what I'm looking for in a photograph. I also messed a little with ISO settings, which controls the shutter speed.  It just takes a lot of patience and  practice, practice, practice.

Hopefully with time, I will achieve these goals.  Thank you for reading and viewing my photos.  More to come at another time.

At The Bayou

Family Photos at The Bayou in Monroe, LA

Photos taken M2 Photography using a Nikon D70 DSLR with additional flash and edited by Adobe Photoshop Elements.