Jim with his new Sony A33 during a DSLR photography lesson at Sawgrass Lake Park in St. PetersburgAfter a lot of lessons out on The Pier recently, it was a nice change of scenery this morning to meet Jim at Sawgrass Lake Park for our first DSLR Photography Lesson. He added a Sony A33 to his camera collection, and has already acquired a bagfull (literally) of lenses. He had a knowledge of photography vocabulary which helped as I explained to him my 4-step process for setting up a shot.
We spent most of the lesson out on the network of boardwalks in the park, which featured, as many Florida parks do, a lookout point over a body of water. We saw ospreys cruising the skies spying for fish, a lone alligator in the distance, and the usual assortment of wading birds. They were all too far away from the lookout point to be able to photograph, though. We did get a chance to see butterflies, squirrels and dragonflies up close.
Due to the treecover along the boardwalk we soon had to switch to manual mode (from aperture priority) to produce the shots we wanted to. Jim told me of a favorite spot of his in the park looking down along a long, narrow, watery path. It was our last shooting location of the day and it proved to be quite a challenging shot to get right. Once aperture, ISO and shutter speed were dialed in though, we were able to make a shot better than the eye could see in the given light at the time.
I look forward to seeing Jim's future nature and theme park shots!
--Professional Model DSLR Photography Lessons now available!