I’ve had one of those weeks where personal blogging just didn’t happen. A few professional blog posts made it to print though, and you should to go look at them, because they make me especially proud.
There was a problem with my work professionally – the photos coming out of my camera were good but not measuring up to the photos in my head – and I didn’t know how to fix it until it came to me in a dream that the camera settings could be different. When I woke up, I reconfigured my camera and immediately noticed a huge difference. Huge to me, anyway; no one else probably notices, but I’m so excited! How cool is it that my brain solved a problem for me in my sleep?
These photos are from several weeks ago (it takes a while for a shoot to make it to the blog), and I think I’ve gotten even better since I started using my new technique.
I love making art!
Out of curiosity, what camera settings did you change?
Your photos look great!
Kara
30 Jan 12 at 11:11 am
I upped my default shutter speed and raised my light sensitivity. I tend to shoot slow, like 1/80 on a sunny day, because I like bright photos. I now start at 1/125.
A few days ago I was working with Katie Jane on Katie Jane photography; we were four hands setting up one photobooth camera, and she set the aperture really, really wide.
“What are you doing?!” I yelled. “That’s too wide!”
“I always set it here. What’s the big deal?”
For the record, Katie Jane takes gorgeous images.
“I love your work, don’t get me wrong, but right now I think you’re a big weirdo.”
So! I tried opening up my aperture, too, on my next shoot. I’m not convinced even though I see her point, but it works for her. I’m going to play around with it.
Amber
30 Jan 12 at 12:10 pm
Cool! Thanks for the info.
Kara
30 Jan 12 at 4:40 pm
Katie Jane indirectly gave me an epiphany moment recently too! I was reading about how she used VSCO presets and since I have them too, I realized that I could use them to batch process my RAW images in Lightroom. I did it with the Photo Walk images and my ALT Summit images and it has saved me SO MUCH TIME. Unbelievable.
So happy to hear your brain was working in it’s sleep. I LOVE that. I find that I need a 1/125 shutter speed if I am shooting hand held. 1/60 gives me blur with my big heavy camera. A wide aperture should be fine for pictures where you are far enough away, with close-ups it’s trickier to get it perfectly focused on what you want. I tend to shoot wide open too. With our cameras, you can safely shoot at higher ISOs and not see any difference, but I have also begun playing with fill flash as well, for those darker days.
Leslie
1 Feb 12 at 1:12 pm
Hahaha, Amber your comment just made me cackle.
Katie Jane
5 Feb 12 at 1:40 pm