Wow my brain is buzzing with information and ideas following a fabulous day spent at BTHQ yesterday learning to use my camera.
We were fortunate to be joined by Tracy Williams who is a fantastic local photographer who specialises in working with natural light to take all sorts of wonderful photographs from newborns and weddings to Woodland fairies and product photography.
Tracy was running a course at our studio to help those of us with digital cameras get off the ‘Auto’ setting. The great thing about owning a studio like mine is I can often join in with the fun and so I took the day off and joined in with the other pupils.
We had a great day learning about Aperture and ISO and how we could use them to let in light, blur out our backgrounds to gain ‘depth of field’ and capture movement and motion with our shutter speed.
After a morning of theory we ventured out to Thorndon Hall to try out what we had learned in the class room.
We started off in the shade of some trees capturing portraits using a light reflector. As you can see we played around with our angles shooting from up high, straight on and down low.
Then it was off along the footpath to the hall itself to shoot some of our crafts and makes in the brighter light. Below are a number of collages with all the pictures the group took (There were 4 of us). It’s very interesting to see how the photos differ in both lighting, composition and depth of field.
On the way back to base Laurie was super lucky to even capture some cyclists whizzing past us at great speed with this fantastic shot.
We then had great fun jumping off stools in the courtyard to play with our shutter speeds.
Needless to say I am going to be spending some quality time with my camera over the next few weeks and am now looking forward to my holiday to turkey even more. Just think how beautiful those souks and sunsets will look now I know how to operate my camera to it’s best.
If you would like to have a go at getting your camera off auto then Tracy is joining us again on the 8th October. You can book the class online HERE
