Chris concentrating on getting a shot in downtown St. Petersburg during our 3rd DSLR Photography LessonIt was an extra hot morning for my third DSLR Photography Lesson with Chris in downtown St. Petersburg. The past two mornings had been almost pleasant, but not so today, even with an early-ish 9:30am start. After I met Chris and had the usual pre-shooting chat we hopped on the trolley to The Pier to practice photographing moving subjects, i.e. pelicans. Early on the pelicans were very obliging by flying right in front of us, however, catching them in frame is another story. I showed Chris my method of holding the view finder just below my eye and using the length of the lens to track the bird in flight with, all the while holding the shutter half-way in continuous focus mode until the bird comes into range. Then it's a matter of putting your eye in the view finder and being quick on getting the bird properly framed before it soars by. In case you were wondering, this is not an easy skill to master and takes lots of practice and a very fast focusing DSLR / lens combo.
Ovation Luxury Waterfront Condominium - downtown St. Petersburg commercial photographyAfter nearly melting out at The Pier we headed to the shade of downtown for a little architecture photography and random street photography as well. The Ovation Luxury Waterfront Condominium building can be seen above, or at least just the top of it. I had on my Nikkor AF-S 105mm VR micro f/2.8G lens on so no wide shooting for me, but I like to get close-up detail shots of architecture anyway. Chris was in a similar situation using his 70-200mm lens. After seeing his first shot I suggested that he use a titled axis for a more visually interesting shot of the top of the building rather than just framing it straight up as one can see with the naked eye. I always try and have the point of the building or subject point into a corner of the frame.
Next up Chris and I will return to our laptops for an editing lesson before he does some traveling and puts to use all we have practiced over our eight hours of lessons.
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