Bill with his Nikon D90 practicing architecture photography outside of Signature Tower in downtown St. PetersburgMy third DSLR Photography Lesson with Bill on Saturday morning was our first 1-on-1 lesson as his wife Ria could not make it for this one.  We met at the usual spot in downtown St. Petersburg on a typcially beautiful, sunny and warm Florida spring morning.  The focus for this lesson was on making architecture shots, and how to use aperture priority mode to get a general idea of the exposure wanted, before switching to manual mode to fine tune it exactly to the desired results.  

At the very beginning Bill showed me some shots of the St. Petersburg skyline and waterfront he took since our last lesson, homework so to speak.  This was very useful to me in being able to show Bill which settings were correct, and which ones needed to be changed in order to produce a better shot.  We then simulated some of those shot circumstances during our lesson so Bill could practice getting all settings correct for better results.  

We had time during this lesson to start to discuss composition more, especially when photographing buildings.  I showed Bill my parallel edge photography tip while saying that the entire building does not always need to be in the frame.  

Our next lessons will start to include digital photography editing in addition to more shooting practice.  I am looking forward to seeing Bill's early morning dawn shots of St. Petersburg with the help of the things we practiced this lesson.

Ria & Bill show good form as they prepare to photograph me as I walk down a sidewalk during our Nikon photography lesson.Last Saturday I ended my day with a DSLR Photography Lesson with husband and wife Bill & Ria and this Saturday I began my day with our second lesson together, this time in the usual downtown St. Petersburg spot.  They both did some studying and practice since our last lesson which I highly recommend so that at the start of the next lesson they will have questions to ask and photographs to show me.  

For our second lesson we continued with the 4-steps to setting up a well exposed and in focus shot.  We started with making sure we were aware of the position of the sun relevant to our subject, which whenever possible we want our backs to the sun and our shadows pointed at the subject.  This is of course useful when photographing still and moving subjects.  The latter we practiced much more this time on passing cyclists and also yours truly as you can see Ria & Bill preparing to do in the photo above.  They are both using my suggested hand holding technique for portrait orientation, with the DSLR grip up in the right hand which allows the left elbow to become a point of stability against your body.  They lined up side-by-side like that on their own, it is a candid image!

I look forward to seeing what shots they make with a second round of photography knowledge.

Ria & Bill with their Nikons during our first DSLR Photography Lesson in St. Petersburg FloridaOnce again due to the Honda Grand Prix going on in downtown St. Petersburg, I used the small park at the end of Coffee Part Bayou as the location for a DSLR Photography Lesson with husband and wife Bill & Ria and their pair of Nikons.  It was my first time to see a vivid red Nikon D3100 body!  It looked pretty cool.  That was the DSLR Ria used during the lesson and Bill wielded the Nikon D90.  Though I market my photography lessons as 1-on-1, they are available to pairs as well.  It is actually nice teaching two people because that means I do not have to be the model for practice shots!

Being very familiar with Nikon menu settings it was no problem to get both their D90 and D3100 setup and ready to start making shots in the manner I do with my own Nikon D300.  During the lesson we practiced how to frame a portrait shot to make best use of space and put the person in a flattering composition (i.e. not having the horizon bisecting their head).  Many people's instinct is to center the subject, but putting the subject just off center even, like in the photo above, adds more interest and better use of negative space.  

It was a real fun time introducing Bill and Ria to the manual DSLR world, where before they were just using the D90 in auto-mode.  We already have our next lesson scheduled!

Photo by Sarina with editing in Color Efex Pro by Jason - before & after maternity portraitIncreasingly, the DSLR Photography Lessons I teach invovle digital photo editing practice as well.  Each one of Sarina's four lessons have been a split between shooting the first hour and editing the second hour.  If one's goal is to produce pro or as close to pro looking photographs, I cannot stress enough how one must work on shooting and editing skills simultaneously.  In Sarina's photo above, it took shooting skills to setup the strobist portrait and to pose the couple accordling and frame them well on the rocks and include the water.  The exposure is off some and that could have been improved in the field with better settings, but as Sarina realized when you have a client making constant requests, and you are standing in ankle deep water with waves coming in, and you have to keep track of a light stand as well as your camera, it can be a lot to keep track of and missing the exposure by a little bit for a portrait photographer just starting out can be forgiven.  

So without any digital photo editing skills one would be left with the image on the left.  Nicely composed, but nonetheless flawed.  However, if you do about 4-minutes worth of editing the results, by evidince of the image on the right, can be dramatically improved.  During my photography lessons, if you have Color Efex Pro, I can teach you how to transform your photos like this in minutes.  Sarina will be purchasing the full suite of Nik apps including the aforementioned Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro too, which she tells me is on sale now.  

Sarina using her Nikon D90 on a tripod to produce a level landscape shot of Tampa BayWe started out the fourth of four lessons by getting in some tripod practice.  The first tip I gave Sarina was to always make sure the front of the lens points out directly over a leg of the tripod (see above).  This adds stability.  One can almost always use the smallest ISO when using a tripod since camera shake is not an issue when having to use a longer exposure to compensate for lack of light.  Plus, using a tripod just slows ones shooting down to a nice pace.  When I use a tripod I really feel like I am crafting a shot much more than one I handhold my Nikon D300.

I look forward to following Sarina's burgeoning portrait photography career and I think I will see her again in the not too distant future for some more advanced lessons.  

--Professional Model DSLR Photography Lessons now available!

Sarina with her strobist setup of SB-600 Speedlight & Yongnuo radio remotes in St. PetersburgBack at The Pier again this evening for my third of four DSLR Photography Lessons with Sarina.  This lesson followed our established format of practicing off-camera-flash, "strobist," photography the first hour then editing digital photos she took a few days prior.  I was glad to hear that Sarina improved her portrait shooting settings week to week no longer using any ISO above the minimum 200 on her Nikon D90.  This week we worked on perfecting using the right shutter speed with the right aperture and the right speedlight power setting.  It is really important to keep in mind that the speedlight lights your subject while the DSLR's exposure settings control the ambient (background) light.  

First in our practice tonight we decided to include the background in the shots, thereby using a small aperture with a slower shutter speed.  I then said I like bokeh and longer focal length portraits, so that meant setting a larger aperture and compensating for that increase in light by setting a faster shutter speed.  Typically I would like to use about f/11 and 1/100th for the former and then f/5.6 and 1/200th for the latter.

We concluded by editing some of the photos Sarina took on a maternity shoot on Sunday.  Most of the editing questions Sarina had revolved around effectively using the quick select tool to make selective edits to very specific parts of the photo only (SEE HOW TO DO THIS).  For example, a bit of clothing material needed to be removed along a defined edge.  Without first selecting the material to be removed, it would have been extremely difficult or near impossible to maintain that defined edge just clone stamping freely.  Later I came up with an on the fly new way of whitening teach by going into the color balance settings and taking the yellow/blue slider more toward the blue end thereby reducing the yellow look of teeth.  We of course did a quick select of only the person's teeth as we did not want to reduce yellow in the overall image.

Sarina has another maternity shoot before our next lesson so I look forward to seeing her continued progress.

--Professional Model DSLR Photography Lessons now available!