Simple exercise. Ask a friend to drop things (in this case a leaf) and practice trying to catch it. You’ll want to use a high shutter speed, at least 1/1000th of a second, and to make the game harder, a narrow depth of field, maybe even wide open (f1.4). You’ll have to pre-focus and lock focus on the spot that where you expect the object to be (use your friends hand) and then have them [more]
Students have often been surprised to see how my Canon 40D is configured – so I thought I’d go through it here in detail. 1. Always shoot in RAW mode. That goes without saying. 2. The LCD on the back of the camera is set to off. You never want it turning on by itself while you’re shooting on the street for the obvious reason that it draws attention to you. 3. I have the [more]
The histogram, whether it’s on the back of your digital camera, or in Adobe Lightroom, or Photoshop – wherever you find it is the great tool for learning how to make a reasonable exposure. Ansel Adams spent many chapters in his fine books explaining what can easily be seen in the digital histogram. The camera’s light meter measures the brightness of an object, it has no way of knowing what that object is supposed to [more]
The idea of the right angle finder is as old as the hills. Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt and many other early street shooters used them. It is a small device that is attached to the viewfinder and allows you to point the camera in one direction while you appear to be looking in a different direction. You can still buy them for most modern SLR cameras. I have one for the Canon SLR I use. In [more]
The techniques for shooting on the subway haven’t changed much since the early days of small portable cameras. The “candid” unposed shot is at the heart of street shooting. The idea of capturing the subject(s) without having them pose or being aware of being photographed. Street photographers will also play with the startled or humorous looks they get when the subjects know they are being photographed – but the idea of finding reality in the [more]
Cartier-Bresson used to say that he could tell whether a photographer was any good by seeing how the photographer held the camera. I can’t go that far, but I can give a few tips that would tell me whether the photographer was a novice or not. The street photographer is a bit like the old western gunfighter – which is to say they are twitchy – and always ready to take a shot. Their world [more]
One of the scariest things for the beginning street photographer is – yes you guessed it – photographing strangers. Whether they are walking alone towards you on an empty street, or even in the relative comfort of a crowd – many photographers are afraid to put the camera to their eye, aim it at what might be an interesting street scene, and press the shutter. I began this over twenty years ago, so in order [more]
This is a take off on an old exercise. It used to be something like, “shoot one roll a day.” Or some variation of that. The idea was to force you to keep an eye out for some possible shot during the day, especially while you went about your normal business. The 35mm roll has 36 exposures. My exercise is much easier: shoot 20 digital shots every day for 30 days. The part of the [more]
UPDATE AUG. 21 It helps to read the Epson manual. Turns out that you can press a few buttons on the control panel and it will either print out, or show you the status of all the printer parts. Turns out that according to the firmware, there’s nothing wrong with the cutter. So – either the blade has become dull and somehow it senses that; or it’s not seated correctly (how did that happen); or [more]
The photo workshop finished around 12 at the Metropolitan in the Dendur Wing. I think it went pretty well, but I learned a few things. The main thing was that even with only five people, it was hard to connect to the needs of all five people at once, as they were all somewhat different. I thought that the one-on-one lessons I’ve done so far were more productive for the students since they could be [more]
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