Inside the visitor's center at Lettuce Lake Park with Amy & her Nikon D3100 for a photography lessonAmy and I planned to meet at Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa, Florida for the second of our four 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons this morning, but a deluge interrupted those plans, although perhaps for the better. Instead of strolling on the long boardwalks in sunshine looking for birds to photograph, we were stranded inside the visitor's center the whole time. Fortunately, since our first lesson Amy got an external flash, so actually being inside was more advantageous for practicing how to get the best use of it on camera.
So in a setting of old bird photographs and lots of wood paneling (see photo above!), and in between a large group of school kids coming in, I answered Amy's questions from since we last met and then reviewed my 5-step process for getting a well exposed and sharp photograph in any shooting conditions.
Then we put her new Nikon SB-700 Speedlight onto her Nikon D3100 and practiced photographing people indoors focusing on only changing the direction of the flash head as otherwise all our settings were locked in at indoor defaults of: f/5.6 1/60th ISO 800 & 1/4 power for the flash. Just changing the angle of the flash was enough to produce dramatically different results given the different ceiling heights in the visitor center, the location of the subject within the lobby itself, and also the type of background. We plan on returning to Lettuce Lake Park for our third lesson to hopefully better weather!
