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archived posts

Sunday
Aug032008

sunday school: fill-in-the-flash

 

I know that many of us here are natural light shooters who adore super fast prime lenses like the magical 50mm f/1.8 (or f/1.4 if you're lucky).  Let's see the hands of those of us who have raised our noses ever so slightly whenever witnessing someone using their camera's built in flash.  Now let's see the hands of those of us who would much rather embrace the blur than use a flash.  Yeah, I thought so, and my hand is in the air along with many of you. 

Considering that our chosen symbol for the sisterhood is a beautiful big old flash bulb, I've decided to make friends with my flash and to apologize for all those years of neglect and contempt.  And you know what?  I've actually found that our flash (even the built-in camera one) IS our friend, and that if you take the time to figure out its capabilities, you can take better photos.

One situation in which a flash as simple as the one that came with your camera will come in quite handy is when you are shooting in bright glaring sunlight.  Unless you're shooting exclusively in the shade, you will find that many of your shots have harsh shadows.  You can minimize this by using just enough flash to fill in the shadows especially if you are shooting into the sun.  This is a technique called fill flash.

I played around with my aperture, shutter speed and flash compensation to get the photo above with fill flash.  Without the flash, the photo would have looked something like this.  Pretty dull, huh?  For those of you who love shooting into the sun for that pretty sun flare, try using flash next time, especially if you have a person in the foreground with their back to the sun.  Most digital cameras these days have either a fill flash feature or flash compensation feature that allows you to control the brightness of your flash .  You'll probably have to play around with your settings a bit before you get the result you want, but you'll probably find it well worth the effort.  I know I did.

Finding photos taken with flash in the Shutter Sisters Flickr group pool is like pulling teeth, but I did find this one by Angela (angs*photos), this lovely portrait (with the flash stopped down -1.3) by Kathy (work2snap) and this adorable baby shot by Lawyer Mama [Steph].  How about the rest of you?  Have any flash pointers, or images you want to share in which the flash proved to be your friend?

Saturday
Aug022008

Superhero Photo Challenge: A self-portrait of your feet

If you haven't already discovered them, I can't recommend the Photojojo newsletter enough! It offers up tips, photo ideas and resources in a fun, unintimidating way. Their article on sharpening images totally changed my life. They did a piece recently on vacation photos with a twist, that included one of my personal faves: pics of your feet! 

As I searched around for images to inspire you, I learned a thing or two about good feet photos!

1. Feet up against the sky is my all time favorite method. You can grab or friend or go solo.

2. Cool backgrounds for your feet always help.

3. Feet on the counter totally works too (who would've thunk?)

4. Putting your feet at the bottom of the frame, or leaving a lot of space has a cool effect.

5. Simple is always beautiful.

I look forward to hearing what you discover and what creative ways you take this challenge on. Up with feet! or down with feet! Your choice.

Friday
Aug012008

street photography

Lately I’ve gotten a bit tired of shooting with my Polaroid cameras, and what I usually do when this happens (quite often!) is that I try and learn something new about photography: portrait, medium formats, photojournalism, documentary and even sport photography. Exploring different genres and formats not only allows me to widen my perspective on life, but it also helps me experiment, discover what I like, what I don’t like, and eventually expand my understanding of my own creativity.

This is how my interest in street photography has grown into an abounding source of inspiration.

"Street photography often tends to be ironic and can be distanced from its subject matter and often concentrates on a single human moment, caught at a decisive or poignant moment. On the other hand, much street photography takes the opposite approach and provides a very literal and extremely personal rendering of the subject matter, giving the audience a more visceral experience of walks of life they might only be passingly familiar with."

A moment, a conversation, a gesture. Beauty, excentricity, simplicity. Joy, sadness, boredom. Small, big, exuberant or discreet.

My friend Jolayne is very good at blending in the scene as if she belongs there and taking photos while walking down a scanty street and the rain is pouring down. Even with her mittens on. I love how she sees something that catches her attention and is able to spontaneously take a picture of it. I am more self-conscious. I am very shy. I hide in the crowd of tourists, I turn off most of the "bip-bip" sounds of my camera and unashamedly take my kids with me as a solid alibi.

Street photographer Markus Hartel writes "just be yourself and act naturally, don’t be sneaky or overly “in your face” and everything will work itself out with practice. Let the camera be an extension, a part of yourself as opposed to the intrusive instrument it can be".

Have you tried street photography? What do you like about it? Share your photos, and share your tips! If you’ve never tried it before, grab your camera, walk around in your neighborhood and see what happens.

Some of my favorite street photography links:
Myla Kent
Ying Tang
The hardcore street photography Flickr group

Thursday
Jul312008

The Last Day to Vote

Sisters, as you may remember, we are creating our very fist Shutter Sisters group book through Blurb. Today is the last day to leave your comments on The Daily Click images as a way to vote for the clicks you want to see in our book. Be sure to leave your comments today (if you haven't already). Thank you! Oh, and Hapy Love Thursday all.

Thursday
Jul312008

Love Thursday: Follow your heart

 

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

-  Author unknown



Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  Please leave your links of love in the comments section, below, and be sure to check out the amazing hearts by Quixotic Pixels and sabine's fotos left in the Shutter Sisters Flickr pool.

And may you follow, feel and trust your heart today.