chapter 359

Photography Tips

composition and exposure

8/17/2014

Another of the 1%. Just too beautiful to not share. It's from Photo Club member Norm Lathrop I believe at Painted Desert, Arizona (or Paria Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, The Wave ?). Norm is trying out his Photography Lesson presentations on us at the Photo Club meetings. He goes to great lengths to achieve his results (all DSLR).

Alternatively, I choose the simpler point and shoot approach but with full camera settings control. More personal subject matter here with old friend Tony mig welding my lawnmower handle. Shot in burst mode to catch the intermittent sparks, dropped the exposure 2/3 f-stop, dropped the flash intensity 1 f-stop. Postprocess to add lens blur to the masked layered background.

Had to combine 2 images in post processing to get desired results at the Dog Show. Lucas doesn't sit still. Dropped f- stop to not burn out background. Melissa became part of the show by lifting the display table into position for the Chihuahua. I missed that photo op - timing is everything.

The Great Blue Heron was in the distance doing a kayak trip on the Anthony Kill from Round Lake. The bird chose the composition by standing tall blending in with the dead trees to look for some fishes among the lily pads. I have to always lower the exposure the camera measures to not burn out the highlights and to get better resolution.

Canada Geese can be attractive in their natural setting. They are composed and happy at this Vischer Ferry Dam (kayak accessible island). They are eating little water creatures and snapping flying insects right out of the air. The "pros" love to use a neutral density filter to lower the light input and slow the shutter speed to get silky water falls. Not for me, but sometimes creates a nice effect.

Please do not feed the geese, if you expose them to bread crumbs they might think it's good to hang around and bring their family and friends (next to our Hannaford Supermarket). Just a quick snap shot going for milk. One day a lady was feeding them bread closer to the store, which caught the attention of the whole flock in the pond just past this maple tree. One by one in single file a couple hundred birds proceeded to cross this access road going for the bread. This put a stop to the car traffic for quite some time. So cute, so stupid.

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