Gary with his new Canon 7D and hotshoe mounted 580EX during our Saint Petersburg DSLR photography lesson
Yet another overcast, blustery rain beating DSLR photography lesson in downtown Saint Petersburg! Gary's first lesson might have been the windiest yet, and the grayest, but as you can see, it was not so gray that both Gary and I did not don our sunglasses still! Gary told me that he mostly shot in auto-mode with his DSLR, and after Gary sent me his photography gear list by e-mail I was really surprised that he did because he had a huge gear list. He owns two DSLRs, the new Canon 7D and a backup body Canon 20D plus several lenses including a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and the 580EX strobe as well. It was my first time to see the 7D in person and it felt pretty good in my hands, big enough even for my large hands to fit comfortably around it.
Though Gary shot in auto-mode, he was familiar with basic photography terminology, and was pretty good with knowing where buttons were and how to change settings on his 7D, so this helped me teach him how to get out of auto-mode and into using custom settings rather quickly.
Gary sent me the above photographs he took during our lesson today to illustrate the kind of photographs he was taking before our lesson, and then after. The "after" image was taken about 40 minutes into the lesson, so you can see Gary learned quickly! The main thing I tried to teach Gary today per his request on how to add some "wow" to his images, was how to control DoF (depth of focus) to put the focus on the subject and hide the distracting background.
After two wind blown but fun hours, we made it back to our cars just in time before the rain started at 1pm once again!
I look forward to next helping Gary photograph his son's T-ball game.