Wednesday 24 January 2007

Photography Lessons. Why?

A friend of mine is very fortunate to have a digital SLR camera. The other day he very proudly showed to me a picture he had created, it was of his young niece at her birthday party, in a crowd, reaching up to take something from the entertainer. My friend had taken the photograph and then at home spent a considerable amount of time, using Adobe Photoshop,editing it so that his niece was in focus while all around her was out of focus. This is a technique often used to create a visual highlight of one element of a picture, in this case the niece, and it can be very effective. He had achieved what he wanted but agreed with me that the results were somewhat crude. I asked him how long it had taken to create this effect and his mumbled answer of "an hour or so" suggested it was more like two. He was astonished and embarrassed in equal measure when I explained that with a good camera like his it was possible to create this effect when taking the picture, it only takes a couple of seconds to set up, the transition between in and out of focus elements would be more subtle and professional and if he didn't like the result when viewed on the camera he would still be 'on-site' and could try again. It became apparent that although my friend is an early adopter of new technology, there is still a gap between the new techniques of using modern software and the old skills of using the camera to do the work, the skills I was taught over thirty years ago. It was at my friends suggestion that I decided to start a series of photography lessons here on my blog, passing on some of the basic camera techniques as taught to me. I would never claim to be an expert but hopefully I can pass on something useful or enjoyable from the experience I have. With my friend's experience in mind I will call the first lesson Selective Focusing. I will now pour myself a large Bells and start writing, the lesson will be posted separately in the next day or two. Hopefully blog readers might like to suggest future photography lessons or indeed ask questions about photography for me to answer, it would certainly help me to know what to write next. It will help keep me occupied while saving for my goal of buying my dream camera, a Nikon D80 Digital SLR!