Photography Lessons  (March 2009)

In March 2009, we attended a photography workshop in Hawai'i that was part of the Digital Landscape Workshop Series, taught by photographers Moose Peterson, Laurie Excell, Joe McNally, and Kevin Dobler. What did we learn? It is difficult to itemize the many small but important details we picked up by watching professional photographers work. However, here are the main teaching points that we took away from the workshop.  ( back to home page) Purpose.  Perhaps the biggest difference between photos taken by us non-professionals and those taken by the pros is purpose. Most photos we non-professional photographers take are snapshots for purposes of documentation: a reminder of what we looked like, who and what we saw, or proof that we visited a particular place. In serving these purposes, our snapshots can be considered "good". However, these same snapshots would probably not be considered "good" by photography professionals because they practice for a completely different purpose: their photographs need to possess artistic or journalistic quality in order to be publishable. Despite their differing purpose, the pros can still teach us a lot about making a good photograph. While we do not have the time, opportunity, or need to make every photo an artistic/journalistic one, we might aim for, say, 1 artistic/journalistic photo for every 20 documentation/tourist photo. Technical details.  To take photographs that are consistently better than average, there is no way to avoid having a working knowledge of how aperture, shutter speed, ISO settings, and focal length affect the final image.		Tripod.  Regular use of a tripod is an important practice that separates professionals from amateurs. For supporting telephoto lenses, we found that a tripod's sturdiness is easy to overestimate. We brought what we thought were adequate tripods, but it turned out they were not quite steady enough. Sunrise and sunset.  The best times for outdoor photography are 1-2 hours after sunrise and 1-2 hours before sunset. The main reason is that the variation between light and dark is less severe at these times. Even if you miss the actual sunrise or sunset event, there are still many pictures to take in the relatively uniform lighting that occurs around these times. This favorable lighting is in contrast to direct noontime sunlight, which causes harsh shadows due to the enormous difference between light and dark, a difference that no camera or photographer can capture adequately. Rain.  Rainy weather is a blessing for many types of photographic subjects, such as waterfalls, forests, and flowers. Cloudy weather can also be favorable because the clouds act as a gigantic light diffuser over the Sun, softening its light. Small flash.  With proper technique and a few small modifications, a lot of studio-style lighting can be accomplished with small electronic flashes. Photoshop.  Photoshop is necessary to finish digital photos because the camera sees light differently than the human eye. Photography professionals use Photoshop extensively in preparing their work for presentation.

 back to home page