Lisa setting up her Nikon D5100 to eliminate the background (create bokeh) during our 1-on-1 photography lessonI met Lisa this very warm June morning for our first of four 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons in downtown St. Petersburg Florida. Lisa has been a DSLR owner for a long time, starting with a Nikon D40x. She now also has a Nikon D5100, but over all these years she was still just shooting on auto-mode. This morning we started to remedy that as I began to teach her my 5-step process for shooting in manual exposure mode.
After showing Lisa around her Nikon D5100 body and how to change aperture, shutter speed, etc my first shooting tip was to whenever possible always try and get your back to the sun and have your shadow point at the subject in order to produce the best possible exposure. When photographing the parking meters above, Lisa has her back to the sun giving herself the best chance of getting a good exposure. The first shot made facing the other way produced a silhouette of the meters. There are many simple things about photography that can be done to improve your final images.
Our second lesson next week will be mostly at night learning how to make cool long exposure photographs.
