Leonland - Leon Barnard
March 31, 2008
Daily photo for March 31st
My photo for today:
And that's that.
For me, this project has been an exercise in deliberate practice. I've tried to not to be so concerned with the end results of my photographing as with what factors seemed to make one shot preferable to another.
Learning how to make my camera work for me better was a great skill that I picked up. Here are a couple of lessons that I learned.
Tips for reducing blurriness.
I think this is the bane of most amateur photographers. I love the look of indoor and night shots without flash, but they often come out too blurry to be usable. I came up with an ordered list of factors that I adjust when I'm worried about blur.
- Zoom. Zooming in makes your camera more sensitive to hand shaking. It's better to zoom all the way out and crop later.
- Exposure. Under-exposing will generally increase the shutter speed (since less light is needed). It's relatively easy to increase the exposure once it's on your computer.
- ISO. It's great to be able to take bump your camera up to 800 or higher ISO to prevent a blurry photo, but it's become my last resort since the graininess is hard to get rid of and seems to negate the benefits of not using flash.
- Embrace Blurriness. Another approach is to use blur to your advantage to create a cool effect. Especially when there's motion in the scene, the blur can add to the shot.
Zoom in a bit to get rid of distortion.
As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I tend to take a lot of shots with strong horizontal and vertical lines. What I started noticing, though, was that they didn't look as nice because the lines would have a light curve to them, creating a very slight fish-eye effect. This is caused by lens distortion.
By stepping back and zooming in, that effect disappears and the lines look normal.
I used this technique a lot once I internalized it.
Underexpose night shots.
Your camera is designed to make every photo the same average level of brightness. But, it's dark at night and photos at night should be dark. Usually, you don't mind if the sky or the shadows are nearly black because you're not interested in all the details. Underexposing makes any light that is in the shot stand out more, and that's usually what you want to draw attention to. I often underexpose my night shots by a full stop or more. Of course, this also helps with blurriness.
Other than that, I'm not sure what I can say. I've definitely gained an appreciation for good photographers. I struggled a lot with composition and cropping. There were a lot of interesting scenes that I couldn't quite seem to turn into interesting photos. I did learn to be a little more deliberate with my shooting. I found that it was worth it to take the extra time to get the shot right, whether that meant waiting for people to get out of the way, stepping back and zooming in to get rid of the distortion, making adjustments so that it wouldn't come out blurry, standing on top of something to get a better angle, or coming to the same spot the next day when the light was better.
Any thoughts or feedback? Anyone have a favorite photo from the month?
Posted by Leon on March 31, 2008 12:53 PM
Comments
Even your blurred photos have strong architectural elements.
Can't wait to see what's on for April!
Posted by barb on April 2, 2008 06:47 AM