Our Photography Courses Blog

Rachel had a great time with two lovely ladies today near Derby….the sun was shining, and a productive day was had by all! It’s always nice to be with people in their own environment to learn at their own pace and concentrate on aspects of their camera’s/photography interests etc.with no pressure.  We covered aperture,shutter, depth of field, white balance etc. Carol was chuffed to learn how to blur the background, and get that professional look! Sally took an amazing free-frame photo of water! Well done both of you!

Once again we’ve had some great and diverse pictures this month at the Mentoring Service Once again we couldn’t narrow the selection down to a dozen, although there are no more than one picture per person here. The theme was mirror. We think there are some astonishingly good pictures here, both technically and artistically. Some have been very gently cropped or edited as part of the mentoring service and sent back to the photographer, but nothing much and only in good old Picasa!

Once again a great improvement from the previous month. Well done everybody, and good luck with the new theme in April.

Beautiful blue skies today in Henley, which always helps! The Creative photography course got off to a flying start with some really great, imaginative shots…..and as per usual, Rachel sent her poor, un-suspecting students out almost straight away to photograph ordinary, household objects in an extraordinary way!

Then, some amazing shots related to specific themes…don’t forget that it’s always best to have a ‘job to do’ when out with your camera! No snapping without intention!

Angry water, shutter speed of 1/640th

It’s pretty easy to change how you make water look:

Smooth water, shutter speed of 1/10th of a second

It’s easy to forget the massive range of shutter speeds that our cameras can do.  Most beginner’s cameras can do from 30 seconds to 1/4000th of a second.  Thing about how wide that range is.  These pictures look so different because one is sixty times longer than the other.

Want to make the effect even more dramatic?  Change the ISO – both these pictures were taken at 400 ISO, the speed we usually recommend for typical British conditions, but if the first shot had been taken at 1600 (four times the sensitivity) the shutter speed would have been four times quicker, and the water even more, er, dropletty. If the ISO had been put down to 100 ISO in the second shot, the shutter speed would have been four times slower, and the water look even more smooth.  The only thing to be careful about here is that you can push the camera to a it’s fastest shutter speed, where the camera might not be able to do a faster speed, and your ability to keep the camera still at the slow end.  But all cameras these days can work perfectly well at 800 and often 1600 ISO, so why not make your vision even more dramatic?