Jon with his new Sony A55 during our 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in Vinoy Park at sunsetWith sunset coming well after 7:30pm nowadays the return of springtime weekday evening lessons starts with Jon and his new Sony A55. It was my first time to get hands on with this particular DSLR. It was smaller physically than I expected and has a useful flip down LCD viewfinder. However, the motion sensor that turns off the back LCD as you put your eye into the optical viewfinder seems like a very useful feature at first, but I found that when reviewing a photo the screen it can too easily get motion detected off.
Jon had been using point and shoot digital cameras for awhile, and long ago even took a criminology based photography class, so he had some familiarity with photography terms like aperture, ISO, etc. We started out shooting in aperture priority mode, but thanks to the light transition during our golden hour lesson I was able to show Jon how switching to manual mode really allows the photography to take control over the final image by including as much or as little of the vividness of the sunset sky.
For the first time in a long time during a lesson there was time to venture out to Vinoy Park for the final part of the 2-hours. This allowed for a little sunset portrait practice.
Beyond photography Jon has also traveled in Asia so it was nice to talk about our experiences traveling there in between shooting locations. I look forward to seeing where Jon's photography goes from here.
