Photography Lessons

DSLR Photography Lesson with Hal & his Canon T1i

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Hal with his Canon T1i & Quantaray 18-128mm lens with downtown St. Petersburg in the background

Just minutes after I met Hal in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown St. Petersburg for our first DSLR photography lesson, it started raining.  We were still on the steps of the museum going over some introductory things about his Canon T1i so we took refuge under the long open corridor that runs along the front face of the museum.  I knew being stuck in this spot was not so bad because in February a photography group I was with made good use of it (2nd photo).

While the rain continued to fall Hal and I continued to go through the basic settings that need to be adjusted for any kind of shot, i.e. aperture, ISO, white balance and focus mode.  Fortunately, the rain did let up and we were free to roam to Vinoy Park to practice landscape shots.  The combination of the onset of the golden hour and the post-storm skies made for an above average backdrop to both The Pier and the downtown skyscrapers.

Despite the rain we were still able to cover all the topics I normally would on a first lesson, and then some.  

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    • DSLR Photography Lesson with Stuart in his Safety Harbor salon

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    Practicing off camera flash (strobist) with Jackie as Stuart's model in his Safety Harbor salon

    Stuart was interested in a very specific DSLR photography lesson -- how to take "before & after" headshots of his customers in his salon (website).  This very specific photographic need actually makes the lesson easier for me to teach in a way because the student and I can concentrate on just the settings needed for the type of shot he wants.  Since he has his own salon with consistent lighting, it was just a matter of finding a spot with a clean background and getting our off camera flash settings dialed in.

    Right now Stuart just has a Canon XT with the standard 18-55mm kit lens.  In the photo above I set him up with my Nikon SB-800 Speedlight, light stand and Yongnuo radio remote triggers (which allows a Canon camera to use a Nikon speedlight).  However, we started out just doing natural light, then his built-in pop-up flash, then simulating the speedlight being hotshoe mounted, and then finally true strobist style.  Of course the best results were produced using the strobist (off camera flash) method.  

    For the lesson Stuart's pal Jackie was our willing model.  In addition to teaching Stuart strobist techniques, I also helped him to pose the model (Jackie) for best impact and lighting, as well on how to best frame a shot in the limited shooting space of the salon.  I recommended a tight composition to eliminate the need to later crop the image and to eliminate what I call intruders (like those brushes on the wall) messing up the clean background.

    It was nice to have a lesson in air conditioning and fun to meet Jackie and Stuart.  Once Stuart gets his own speedlight, we will meet again for another lesson.   

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    • DSLR Photography Long Exposure Lesson with Scott on Sunset Beach St. Petersburg

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    Practicing long exposure photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/4 ISO 200 2sec tripod mounted with cable releaseNew DSLR Photography student, Scott, is a native of St. Petersburg.  He loves to photograph Florida's great twilight skies after the sun goes down.  He recently bought a Nikon D50 from a friend.  He has photography knowledge from the film days, but wanted to learn how to change the settings (and why) on a DSLR camera.  He was also trying to photograph twilight skies handheld!

    The first thing I had Scott do is get his D50 onto his (headless) tripod.  Then I explained my progression for setting settings on my own camera:  aperture -> ISO -> white balance -> focus mode & points.  I told him to say goodbye to the presets on the D50's exposure dial and that we would only work with aperture priority and manual exposure the rest of the evening.  

    Scott had a great enthusiasm for photography and photography knowledge.  He wisely had a notebook with him to write down the things I was going over with him.  As excited as he was about this preliminary stuff, his mind was about to really be blown . . .

    Scott said he like to shoot well after sunset, and as mentioned before he was not using his tripod for this.  Plus he was not manually controlling the shutter.  So I had him setup his tripod mounted Nikon and compose the shot how he liked, then set his exposure to 10 seconds and put the shutter on the timer to reduce shake (since he had no remote).  He was amazed at how long 10 seconds felt and that it seemed like magic.  You can imagine what happened when we finally did 30 second exposures and even a bulb mode shot of 79 seconds!.

    It felt great to be able to give Scott the tips he needed to be able to make the types of photographs he wanted to.  I look forward to seeing what he comes up with! 

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    • Strobist DSLR Photography lesson with the Digital Divas Meetup Group

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    Strobist lesson on location with the Digital Divas Meetup GroupFor over a year I have been teaching 1-on-1 private DSLR Photography lessons.  A couple weeks ago April from the Digital Divas Meetup.com group contacted me about teaching some photography lessons.  I proposed a beginner's off camera camera flash (strobist) lesson and 11 divas signed up.  We met at a beach on Treasure Island about an hour and 15 minutes before sunset, and as you can see in the photo above, went well into complete darkness.  

    For in the field lessons, i.e. when you actually shoot, I choose to teach 1-on-1 private lessons because I want to maximize how much a student can learn in the normal 2-hour lesson block time.  Basically it comes down to teaching one student a lot, or, for group lessons, teaching many students potentially only a little.  

    Also with a group lesson there are many more unknowns that come up.  Pretty much each of the eleven students had a different camera, save for two students how had Canon 50D's.  However, I assumed that anyone signing up for a beginning strobist class, a semi-advanced photography skill, would already have mastery over changing basic settings on their DSLR.  

    Despite those challenges, I was able to setup a situation where each student got a multiple chances to use an off camera flash.  I ended up just setting up my own speedlights using my own triggers and just passing the transceiver to the next student, one after the other.  Although my teaching efficiency was far lower than during a private lesson, it seemed all the students learned something about off camera flash, especially how cool it is and now have a new area of photography to explore. 

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    • Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts Quick Guide

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    Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5 are two key applications in my digital photo editing workflow.  I have been increasingly teaching my DSLR photography students my post processing workflow, in addition to in the field making photograph lessons.  I rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts for greatly speeding up my editing, which is necessary when I have to deliver hundreds of images to clients in a short period of time.  

    So I put together a quick guide of the keyboard shortcuts I most commonly use in Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5.  Most of these keyboard shortcuts should also work in older versions.  I learned them by looking through the menus and seeing the shortcut letter, by accident and by reading other photography websites.  

    Let me know any additional keyboard shortcuts you use in the comments below. 

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    • DSLR Photography Lesson with Aaron and his Nikon D300

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    Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D @ f/4 ISO 400 1/200th Strobist: Nikon SB-600 Speedlight with diffuser cap in TTL mode triggered by commander mode handheldAaron used some bargain hunting skills to get himself a used Nikon D300 for a very good price.  He then went and got the well received Nikkor AF-S 35mm f/1.8G lens.  Since I have shot with a Nikon D300 myself for the past year and half I know the DSLR very well.  We started the lesson going through very specific menu settings that I have honed over time via my own experiences with the camera and things I heard from other photography podcasts.  

    As always, weather was an issue, but we got really lucky with the rain.  It was raining before the 5:30pm lesson, and poured at 7:45pm, but in the middle there was only a slight sprinkle for a few minutes, so no real threat to our gear.  

    Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D @ f/4 ISO 400 1/200th Strobist: Nikon SB-600 Speedlight with diffuser cap in TTL mode triggered by commander mode handheld

    Since Aaron was using his fast 35mm and I was using my fast 50mm, we spent a lot of time talking about DoF (depth of field) and controlling the background in shots.  We did not stick with large apertures though as Aaron was also interested in how to use his 35mm lens for landscapes.  I just had him use f/11 and showed him very steady handholding techniques (since he had no tripod with him) as well as where to set his focus (1/3 of the way into the shot) and in the overcast conditions he was still able to produce some nice landscapes of the harbor in front of The Pier.  

    I also stressed the rule of thirds composition guidelines, especially for when using one's camera in portrait orientation.  Basically that means not putting the horizon in the dead center, but rather the upper or lower third of the frame.  

    Aaron has an interest in portraits which will probably be the focus of our next lesson.  

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    • DSLR Photography Lesson #2 on The Pier with Henry & his Sony Alpha A230

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    Henry setting up a shot using his Sony Alpha A230 and newly acquired Tamron 70-300mm lens on The Pier in St. Petersburg

    Henry took his first DSLR Photography Lesson with me back in April.  Then he had no telephoto lens.  After the lesson he began doing research into which lens to get and last week his new Tamron 70-300mm f/4-f/5.6 lens for his Sony Alpha A230 came in.  This was all just in time (lens arrival and our 2nd lesson) before his big trip to Costa Rica today.  Rain was definitely threatening out ability to have a lesson out on The Pier, but in the end we were pretty lucky having plenty of time to practice using his new lens outside before the rain returned and we took cover in a very deserted Pier food court.  

    It was very overcast outside, so I had Henry adjust his exposure compensation to give his shots a little extra light.  A number of pelicans and some trash eating birds were our practice subject matter.  His new Tamron lens had a macro setting which we turned on some old screws in a forgotten section of a lower dock.  Macro photography and external flash are definitely linked, and I showed Henry that how you point the light direction makes for a very different photograph.  We found that bouncing the light off the white wall that was connected to the dock produced a very pleasing light fall off across our exposed screw subject matter.  If there is no white wall next to what you want to shoot?  Well, just have an assistant hold a reflector for you!

    The last part of the lesson was a surreal off camera flash lesson inside The Pier itself, mostly in the food court area.  I cannot say I had ever been in a more abandoned feeling public place in Florida before.  Not a single customer in the entire food court.  This was good for us as we were able to take up all the space we wanted to in practicing off camera flash with appropriate white balance in mixed/horrid lighting conditions.  

    I am looking forward to seeing Henry's shots of Costa Rica when he returns. 

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