DSLR Photography Lesson with Kandy at St. Pete's Saturday Market

November 28, 2009 in Photography Lessons

Kandy with her Canon 50D and fabulous Canon 70-200mm L IS f/2.8 lens during our DSLR Photography lesson at the Saturday Market in downtown Saint Petersburg.

This morning was my first semi-cold weather DSLR Photography Lesson of the year, and it was a another very fun one. I met the student, Kandy, at Williams Park with the intention of beginning our lesson photographing the Art in the Park show, which we learned upon arrival was relocated more toward Straub Park. Kandy has great kit in the form of a Canon 50D and especially her Canon 70-200mm L IS f/2.8 lens. For our first lesson she wanted to focus on what settings can produce the best results for photographing outdoor events, like Art in the Park. We covered in detail the relationship between aperture and shutter speed, and what focus modes to use for moving or still subjects. Kandy learned new terms like "stop down" and "bokeh."

Kandy practicing some event photography at downtown Saint Petersburg's weekly Saturday Market.

We went over to the much more crowded Saturday Market which allowed us to practice photographing a live band, something Kandy has done on her own a lot already. Here we focused on trying to get clean backgrounds and sharp images for the members of the band.

Toward the end of the lesson we practiced some manual settings for allowing wanted motion blur in a subject, though the wooden hummingbirds did not want to cooperate very well. The lesson flew by as usual and I made the two above portraits of Kandy which is part of the DSLR lesson photography package.

Kandy will soon be putting her photography skills to use on a trip to Baja to photograph whales!

Thanks again to Kandy for meeting on a chilly morning and being such a good student, even stopping to write down notes!

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DSLR Photography Lesson with Rosa at John's Pass

November 24, 2009 in Photography Lessons

Rosa getting a little help from a dolphin during our second DSLR photography lesson.

Rosa and I met for our second DSLR Photography Lesson at John's Pass Village (first lesson report). The threat of rain loomed over the beginning of the lesson, but in the end we got lucky enough with the weather.

During this second lesson Rosa wanted to practice getting focus locks on moving objects. Her son plays baseball and she has been impressing the other parents with some of her shots already, but wanted to get some further practice in. Since her son's baseball season is over for the year already, we practiced on some birds flying around John's Pass Village instead.

Rosa and I waited for 5 minutes for this seagull to take off, but no enticing it from its perch without a food offering.

There were plenty of pelicans and seagulls flying around for focus target practice, as well as a few dolphins too. Rosa using her Canon T1i did well getting the relatively small in frame birds in focus using her T1i's multi-point focus system.

After this we walked across the street from the village to the beach to have our first portrait practice. I was the model for all of those shots so maybe Rosa will send one in to include later. The overcast skies did not offer much natural light, but some sun rays did pop out a bit allowing for some natural light portrait practice. I taught Rosa what focal lengths to use with what apertures to achieve the desired DoF for portraits.

Our luck did run out with the rain, but we were able to take cover without getting that wet which allowed us to practice low light portrait and landscape photography. We even practiced using manual settings to properly expose the John's Pass Village streetscape with long two and three second exposures.

I look forward to seeing the results of this lesson when Rosa makes portraits of her family over the Thanksgiving holiday!

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DSLR Photography Lesson with Dina at Sunken Gardens

November 16, 2009 in Photography Lessons

DSLR Photography Lesson with Dina at Sunken Gardens in Saint Petersburg

Most of my DSLR Photography Lessons are in downtown Saint Petersburg, but this time I started out my photography week with a lesson at lush and shady Sunken Gardens with Dina. She was already a competent photographer and capable with her Nikon D60 and Nikkor 18-50mm and 70-300mm lenses, so what we focused on during our lesson were a few finer points of what light to look for and how to get a sharp focus across a variety of on and off tripod situations. This was yet another fun lesson for me.

As part of my DSLR Photography Lessons, I include a portrait of the student.

We also practiced macro photography a lot during our lesson. One may think macro photography is one of the easier types of photography, but in reality it is really tricky and takes a great deal of patience and skill to do well out in the field.

Thanks to Dina for driving across the bay for our lesson!

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DSLR Photography Lesson with Rosa

November 02, 2009 in Photography Lessons

DSLR photography student, Rosa, points her lens at Saint Petersburg.With a shiny new Canon T1i, Rosa met me in downtown Saint Petersburg for her first DSLR Photography Lesson. There also happened to be a breast cancer event happening, so things were much busier on a Sunday afternoon than they normally are. This was actually good though as it gave a chance to do some impromptu event photography.

Rosa was a fast learner and her T1i was faily intuitive to use. Canon definitely improved its ergonomics with the T1i, which I found easier to navigate than even the 40D.

...just remember to take the lens cap off!

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DSLR Photography Lesson with Terry

October 30, 2009 in Photography Lessons

DSLR photography student having a lesson in downtown Saint Petersburg

This morning I had a very good first DSLR Photography Lesson with Terry in downtown Saint Petersburg. She shoots with a Canon 40D and has a Canon 24-105mm lens. She said her Canon 40D had been sitting in her closet for over a year! Well, we quickly put it to use this morning. In the lesson we covered how aperture and ISO relate to shutter speed and depth of focus, as well as which white balances to use when.

After photographing a few still subjects we moved on to moving subjects. Terry was quick to catch on to getting moving subjects in sharp focus culminating with a shot where we were able to see what coffee a guy in a car was drinking as he drove by.

We ended the 2-hour lesson with touching on how to use a speedlight (flash). Terry had never actually used hers and at first it wasn't working. I quickly discovered the problem--no batteries! So I lent her a set of batteries and a great blue heron very obligingly walked by at that time so she got to practice nature photography with flash, a very lucky occurrence!

DSLR Photography Lesson with Cralle & my first hands on Canon experience

October 03, 2009 in Photography Lessons

DSLR photography student Cralle & his newly acquired Canon 40DMy advertisement on Craigslist offering DSLR Photography Lessons, which I just put up at 2am last night, has already yielded a student! Cralle called me this morning and booked a lesson for the afternoon in downtown St. Petersburg. He said he had just bought a used Canon 40D. I am of course a Nikon shooter so I did a little research on the controls of a Canon 40D.

Cralle was a very good student, asking many questions, and best of all not afraid to ask the same question many times throughout the lesson to make sure he understood it. As every photographer knows, when you are starting out just trying to get your head around a large aperture being a small number is enough to drive you crazy.

What was my experience with the Canon 40D? I realized I greatly prefer the button layout and ergonomics of Nikon bodies. I already determined this when I bought my first DSLR (a Nikon D80), but back then I was not looking at bodies in the range of the Canon 40D and my current Nikon D300. The Canon 40D has only one dial for adjusting settings, and the button to push to adjust settings is on the same side as the dial. It took some getting used to.

We ended up having a 2-hour lesson, but the end of which Cralle was catching on to which aperture to use to get a large DoF and which to use to get a short one. He knew which f-stops to use with the lenses he had and when to use which white balance. We also tackled ISO and how to use it to increase shutter speed when necessary.

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