The first picture of Kew got a good critique in terms of the framing of the shot, and the way the eye is led from the crocuses up to the building behind. It could be cropped slightly on the left apparently, and the crocuses could have been slightly more in focus had I made better use of aperture. Obviously I took that photo on the automatic setting, but by the end of class this week I understood the need much more to adjust the settings on my camera.
The second photo of Half Dome was much admired. I was chuffed with this, but frustratingly this was taken on my digital compact using the automatic settings, rather than my fancy new SLR! We talked about the famous photographer Ansell Adams, who took many truly wonderful photographs in Yosemite long before the digital age. When we were in Yosemite we visited the Ansell Adams gallery and also purchased a photograph developed from one of Ansell Adams original negatives, which is proudly hung in our hallway at home. I can only dream that any of my photographs would even come close to his work. The other amazing thing about Ansell Adams photographs is that they were taken way before the digital era. Whilst many photographers these days can manipulate and enhance their images using digital technology with Ansell Adams it is the real deal. With my photograph we could only comment that I had centred the camera well and the camera had done a good job on the rest. If you ever get a chance to look at the picture in our hallway you can see how it's really meant to be done.
The other students had brought in a mix of different photo's. One of the most impressive was actually taken on a Mobile phone of a street scene in Hong Kong. The student had taken three pictures and merged them using a photographic package on the computer, and I can tell you it looked pretty good. We also touched on how we are going to be able to use Photoshop / Photoshop Elements to adjust our images. The tutor quickly erased a poll from a beautiful beech scene on one students photograph in seconds. That's the only trouble with digital - we no longer know what is real.
We then moved on to talk about some of the technical terms shutter speed, aperture and ISO - those words I have never really understood. It turns out that depending on the type of shot you are taking, you need to adjust these to get the best possible exposure - or the best photograph you can. In automatic settings, which is what I have always used until now, the camera will adjust these for you, to produce what it thinks is the best photograph can. However, there are times when you need to tell the camera what it is you are trying to do, as it cannot work that out for you. For example, what part of the picture you are trying to focus on, or what affect you are trying to achieve. This became particularly necessary with the night time shots that we took later in class.
So what do these terms mean? In short, shutter speed is simply the amount of time that the shutter is open. It is the length of time the film or image setter is open to the scene that you are capturing. It can be adjusted on your camera in degrees of halving and doubling. Aperture is the degree that the lens is open i.e. the amount of light that is being "let in" through the lens. Again this can be halved or doubled on your camera. In film photography, the ISO measured the sensitivity of the film to light. In digital photography the same term is used to adjust the sensitivity of the image sensor to light. This will affect the fineness of your images. We were focusing on the impact of shutter speed and aperture for this weeks session.
So now I knew what these terms meant but was still somewhat unsure how these affected my photo's. The tutor had a clever website to explain this. By taking the same photograph using lots of different setting of changing shutter speed and aperture, we could see how one image could come out very differently in terms of exposure. Sometimes it was too dark, sometimes too light and it was the balancing act between these two variables that gave the best image. We then went on to look at the tutors own website of pictures he had taken, and how he had adjusted his camera manually to get pictures of the same image looking very different.
Time was pressing on and before you knew it, it was time for us to have a go. A great photograph of moving traffic taken at night, with streams of white light on one side and red lights on the other was projected up on the screen at the front of the class and we were told we were collecting our tripods and heading outside to take something similar ourselves. Having only just heard the concept I was struggling to see how I would be able to even get the effect but keen to have a go.
We were on a footbridge above a dual carriageway outside the college. I had just about figured out how to attach my camera to the tripod. A tripod is essential for this to get a stable image. Even with the tripod some of my images were all over the place as the bridge vibrated with the moving traffic beneath us. I started snapping at the cars as they past. Looking at my images on the back of the screen I wasn't getting the affect at all. "Dave. Help. What should my SS and Aperture be?!" Slow shutter speed. Of course. To get the lined effect I needed the camera to see the lights for a few seconds at least. My camera was set on a standard 1/60th of a second. Aperture didn't hugely matter in this situation - it was dark and the headlights were strong. I had another go. A different concept to the "click" I am used to, I pushed down the shot button and the camera "froze" for the number of seconds I had set it to. 2, 4, 8 seconds later and I had the effect on my pictures. Not even close to the one at the front of the classroom we had seen but I had the effect. Totally addictive I was the last to leave the bridge.
Below are some of the pictures I took.
This first one was taken on a 1 second shutter speed. I started to get the effect of the lines of the headlights.
This second one is taken on an 8 second shutter speed. I got the effect of the lines much better but it's not a great photo!
To be fair, to get the effect well we all needed a far greater volume of traffic. This is one of those rare situations on London that I actually wanted more traffic. However, it proved the point I needed to get my camera onto the manual setting to achieve some things I want to do with it.
My first proper assignment is to go away and take photographs of the same image adjusting aperture and shutter speed on my camera. This I will be doing over the next couple of weeks.
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