Unplanned photo class

I went out for a walk on Sunday to try and catch some Autumn colours but things didn't go quite as planned.

Accompanying me and my wife and son were a friend and her twin daughters. 

I was travelling light and only had an EOS 5d MKII coupled with a 28 - 135 lens.

I took a few pics and was reviewing them on the monitor when one of that twins (I think it was Lera) asked if she could take a picture. "Sure" I replied and handed the camera over. Bringing the camera up to eye level she snapped three images in quick succession of her sister, Jeniya. One thing that I noticed was that she didn't hold the camera at arms length to look for an image on the rear monitor.

 Lera takes aim at Jeniya

 The resulting image

Lera then handed the camera over to her sister, who before I could say a word proceeded to take some pictures of her sister. This continued with the girls snapping away at each other and striking various poses.

 Now it's Jeniya's turn

Jeniya's portrait of Lera

They stopped after a few minutes and reviewed the images. The questions came thick and fast:

Reviewing the images

"Why is she not sharp?", "How can I make the background look soft?", "How can I delete that one?" "Why is it too dark / too light?".

I tried to answer as best I could in a non technical way and was surprised at how readily the twins absorbed the information. After each clarification, one of them would start taking a few pictures and eventually they would master that little bit of technique. The most difficult proved to be the focus lock, although that only took about five minutes (and maybe ten attempts) for them to master. After about forty five minutes, I had given up on taking pictures for myself and let the girls have free rein. With the basic techniques mastered, they snapped happily away for the next hour or so.

I didn't want to come away empty handed so I decided to snap a pic of the two girls jumping. They both readily agreed, threw off their coats and began jumping at my command!

My pic safely onboard, I handed the camera back and let them get on with it.

Here are some of the girls' images.

Jeniya by Lera:

 Lera shoots Jeniya

Two hundred and twenty six images later I was sat back on my PC for the download process. The girls had done well. Of 

the 226 images, 27 were rejected due to being unsharp. These were mainly from early in the day when the girls were getting to grips with the (admittedly heavy) camera.

I learnt three things that day: 

1. Switch off the continuous shooting mode. The girls don't need two or three nearly identical images.
2. Shoot RAW and JPG. Editing a couple of hundred images from RAW is time consuming and many of the images didn't need anything else done to them.
3. Take a spare camera for myself next time!

Luckily I had my Samsung with

me to record the day!

I think that photography now has two new converts!

Thanks for reading.

Because I want to (Part 2)

Last April, almost one year ago from today, I wrote a post about photographing a place called Diegten near where I live. It's a place that I always look at when driving by because it is so photogenic.

Last year I finally made  the decision to photograph a rather picturesque cow barn surrounded by cherry blossoms.

Diegten April 2011

The thing with photographing the blossom is that it only stays on the trees for a couple of days before falling off. If the weather isn't nice during those few days then you're out of luck.

My friend Stephan rang me this morning to say that the blossom was now in full bloom and that the sky was a deep blue. Ideal conditions except that the position of the sun meant that I'd be shooting directly into it. I decided instead to wait an hour or two then see what would happen with the weather.

True to form, it was overcast when I got there. my plan had been to try and get a picture of the barn framed through the cherry blossom tree branches.

I met with Stephan as arranged and we set off to find a good vantage point to shoot the barn through the trees.

Unfortunately, there was a crop growing in the field beneath the barn exactly where I would like to have stood. Also, the trees were all grouped to the left which meant that when I shot through them, I'd only be getting the left side of the barn. Not an ideal situation.

Not wanting to go home just yet, we decided to take a walk up the hill behind the barn. I'm glad we did. The sun came out and there was lots to photograph. 

The barn itself was photogenic but of more interest was the trailer standing nearby.. I switched to a 17 - 40 zoom and took a few images.

 I switched back to my 70 - 200 and tried a few "selective" landscapes.

Carrying on along the road gave us more exercise for our trigger fingers.

 A buzzard was always flying by

Finally I had to call it a day and reflect upon what we'd done.

On the way back to the car I snapped these with the 70 - 200

 1/320 sec @ f10

1/1000 sec @ f5.6

I was really pleased to be walking with the Hama Katoomba rucksack. I've previously briefly mentioned it here and here.

My days of carrying everything in a shoulder bag are ended. I could have kept on going. The bag is really comfortable. I'll write more about it soon but in the meantime here's a pic of yours truly taken today by Stephan.

Image by Stephan Abt.

Thanks for reading