Beginner Photography Workshop

1. Beginner Photography Workshop: E. I'm photographer, author and instructor Steve Winery been in my one hour photo workshop. I'm going to teach you how to get off auto mode. I'm going to teach you all about the APP returner camera with shutter in your camera, I'll teach you about aperture priority mode and shutter priority mode. I'll teach you all about the little dial on the top of your camera, and you'll learn the controls that you need to take great pictures. Whether you have a digital SLR or high end digital camera that has more bells and whistles than you know what to do with Okay, you're comfortable with what you need to know. I'll teach you camera techniques and you'll learn lighting tips as well as composition tips . You'll learn everything you need to know to go out and start taking pictures with your wonderful digital camera. 2. A Brief Overview Of Your Workshop: I'm going to break this workshop into four sections. First, you're going to learn the controls in your camera, the most important controls. Once you master those, I'm going to talk about composition and give you some very basic and simple composition techniques that will make you a better photographer. Then I'm going to talk about lighting because they want you to learn how to see light. If you concede the light around you and see the light that's in your photographs, you'll also be a better photographer, and then I'll introduce you to some basic people and landscape techniques so that when you go on that next vacation, you'll be taking some great voted rats. 3. Your Camera's Auto Mode: If you have a digital SLR, you probably have a dial on the top of your camera. If you have a plane shoots, thes items said, I'm going to talk about next might be found in your menu on the back of the camera, but you might also have a little dial on the top of your camera, even if you have a plane shoot. But if you have a good digital SLR, you're that dial on the top of your camera that has some letters and some little picture icons for your auto shooting modes. And then you also have a green icon. That green icon might be shaped like a rectangle, or it might be an A. But that green item on that dial is your fully auto mode. In full auto mode, their camera is controlling the aperture, the shutter and likely your I S O. So I'm going to talk about all these three things and you'll understand them fully in a few minutes. But I can. That green icon on your dial is your full auto mode, and if you just want to put your brain to sleep, you can just set your dial on that green icon and go around taking pictures. But if you're doing that well, why did you go out and spend a lot of money on a nice digital SLR? If you're going to shoot pictures like you're using a point and shoot or maybe your phone camera. So let's get off of that green icon. And when we talk about our other settings, you'll understand even more with that green icon does. Now, before we get off that I am going to say that if you're going on vacation and you want to apply some of the techniques that I'm teaching you, you should practice. If you don't have time to practice, go ahead and it'll pretty use on a mode. I'm not going to tap in your shoulder and say, Hey, you're using auto mode. You should be using one of those more advanced modes. I wouldn't worry about it. The main thing is, when you get home, you want to have some great pictures. OK, now let's get off auto mode 4. That Other Auto Mode: we're ready to get off auto mode, and we're ready to turn our die away from that green icon. But before we dio, as I mentioned before, you have to auto modes, and the other auto mode in your camera is another dialled item that is going to be designated by a P on most of your cameras. If you have a canon or Nikon or many other camera types on that tile, you're going to see a P. The letter p and that letter P stands for program mode. Now what's the difference between program mode and that green icon on your dial? Because they're both auto modes. So I'm going to tell you the fully auto mode. The Corine icon on your dial controls the three things that control your exposure shutter aperture and your I S o I S O is the gain or sensitivity of the chip in your camera. Shutter, of course, is how long the shutter is open. But we'll talk more about the shutter in a minute, and the aperture is out wide or narrow. The aperture is in your lens, but we'll talk more about the aperture in a minute. Just know that That green icon controls all three items the shutter, the aperture and the ISO. But you have another dial item with AP Program Mode. The differences program mode sets your shutter and your aperture, but you control the I s O. Now your camera might be set to Ottawa s. So if it is, then even if you're in program mode, there isn't going to be a difference between that and that green icon. But would program mode lets you do is set your own, I s. So why would you want to do that? Because the isso controls the cane or light sensitivity in your camera. We'll talk more about that in a little bit, but the I s So just to make things really simple can make your pictures noisy if you're using a very high I eso and that's going to happen if you go indoors or in a dimly what situation when I say noisy, I mean specially, the pictures are going to be very greeny, and that's going to make them not look as sharp as they could. So if you're endures, maybe you're shooting in a concert or at a party or at a wedding and you don't want your pictures really greeny. You might want to control the I S O by using a low rise. So where the chip isn't is sensitive. That might force you into a wider aperture or a longer shutter speed Again, This will make a lot more sense to you once we cover those topics. But just be aware that other auto mode program mode lets you control the isso. But the camera will control the shutter and the aperture, and that is your other auto mode. 5. Shutter Priority Mode Part 1: Okay, Now, let's definitely get off auto mode. And on the top here, camera, you have a dial on that dial, you have a s for shutter priority moves. If you have a canon camera, you're going to have a TV that stands for time value. So on canon cameras, a TV for time value And on Nikon and many other hammer types, you're going to see an S for shutter priority mode. Whether it's a TV on canon cameras or an S on other cameras, that is your shutter priority mode. Shutter priority mode lets you control the shutter, and the camera will control the aperture. That's the key to shutter. Priority moved. You going to shutter priority mode so that you control the shutter? Why would you want to do that? Because one you can avoid blurry pictures and two, you can make blurry pictures. Why would you want to make blurry pictures? Well, it gets it out a little death 6. Shutter Priority Mode Part 2: Why would you go into shutter priority mode? You're going to shutter priority mode so that you can control the shutter on your camera. You control the shutter in your camera largely to prevent blur. There are two kinds of blur. There's blur from your camera, moving and blur from your subject. Moving. If both are moving your camera and your subject, then you definitely will have a blurry picture. Holding a camera steady isn't easy. We'll talk about that in a minute, but you want to take pictures at a short shutter speed to stop the action in your pictures . If either there's a chance of you moving or your subject moving, there's a rule. Very simple rule of thumb and photography. Use a shutter speed that's at least asses fast as the focal length of your lens. In other words, I have a 60 millimeter lens on my camera right now. That means I should use a shutter speed of at least 1/60 of a second to make sure I don't have blurry pictures. If you have a zoom lens and you zoom to 35 millimeters, then you should make sure you're using a shutter speed of at least 1/30 of a second. If you zoom out 200 millimeters or 200 millimeters, then you would want to make sure you're using a shutter speed of the least 100 or a 2/100 of a second, 1/100 of a second when you're zoomed to 100 millimeters and 2/100 of a second when you resume to 200 millimeters. If you have a 500 millimeter lens, then you would want to use a 5/100 of a second. In other words, the longer you zoom, the more likely you're going to get blurry pictures. That is because the bigger the lens and the longer the zoom, the more your blur. Tamar Shake Camera movement is magnified if you want to completely stop action, so you're shudder to a shutter speed of 503,000 of a second. At a 530,000 of a second, you'll be able to stop water droplets in mid air, so don't worry about stopping that dog running in the yard. A child playing or possibly AH, sports event, like somebody leaping for a basket or ah, football player or soccer player. If you want to stop that action, then you want to use a very fast shutter speed, like a 530 or thousands of a second, or possibly even faster. Your camera likely goes up to faster shutter speeds like a 2000 or 4000 of a second. At those shutter speeds, you can definitely stop any action. Ah, Hummingbird's wings would get stopped frozen in your frame. Now what is the shutter? The shutter is inside your camera with shutter is a curtain that pulls aside and exposes the chip behind the lens. When you take a picture, you press the shutter button. The mirror flips out unless you have a mirror lis camera, in which case you wouldn't have a mirror flipping up. But neither case the shutter pulls aside and exposes the chip behind the shutter. That ship is the line sensitive element that captures your picture. It's where film used to be. An old film cameras, and that chip is very light sensitive, so it doesn't need to be exposed for very long. When that shutter pulls aside, the longer the shutter exposed at the chip, the brighter their picture, the shorter the shutter exposes the chip, the darker your picture. That's important to be aware up. Shutter priority mode will make your shutter when you adjust your shutter longer shorter, but it will also expose that ship when you make your shutter longer for a longer period of time. Your cameras smart, though it will make your aperture smaller to let less light in if you're using a longer shutter, letting more light in with a shudder. Conversely, that aperture will open up to let more light in if you're using a short shutter speed. Now let's talk about the shutter speeds in your camera. If I set my shutter to 1/2 of a second and that is going to be a two on my screen or on your screen, is going to be a two or 1/2. Now that is 1/2 a second. If you see quotation marks next to the two, that's two seconds. You want to be careful the difference between two seconds and 1/2 of a second. If you see those two little quotation, the little quotation marks the two little hatch marks next to the two or one or another number. That means your shutter is in seconds. If you want to be shooting in a practioners a second, you don't want to see that quotation marker hatch mark next to the number, and you're going to control it with a dial, either in the front or the back or a jog. Dial up and down or right and left on the back of your camera. If you have a little neural dial that is going to control the shutter when you're in shutter priority mode and the aperture when you're an aperture priority mode, any case and 1/2 of a second this is what my shutter sounds like. Did you hear that? That was the shutter opening and then closing and exposing the chip for half of the second . Now I'm going to set my shutter to 1/4 of a second. That was the shutter opening for 1/4 of a second. Now here's 1/15 of a second. You hear that? And here is 1/100 of a second and a 5/100 of a second. Now, there you can't hear the shutter open and then close. But when I come down to 1/15 of a second, you can hear the shutter open and then close at, ah, eighth of a second. You can definitely hear the shutter open and close and 1/30 of a second. You could barely hear the shutter opening and closing, and it is 60 of the second. It just one sound. The shutter opens closes so fast the year can't hear the shutter open and then close. That's important. I can tell you from experience that you're going to be very hard pressed to hand hold a camera at shutter speeds slower than 1/30 of a second or even 1/60 of a second. If you have a steady hand, you could hold the camera steady at 1/30 of a second. You will not be able to hold the camera steady at shutter speeds slower than 1/60 or 30th of a second to even a few of the lens that goes down to, say, 17 millimeters or 15 millimeters. Don't think you're going to be able to shoot at 1/15 of a second. You want to say your shutter up to 1/30 the 60th of a second? I have a pretty steady hand. I could take pictures at 1/30 of a second with pretty good confidence. If I have a heavy lens, though, that's going to be very hard. If you have optical stabilization in your lens or stabilization in your camera, that's going to help you steady your pictures so you can get away with a little extra length on your shutter speed. If you have stabilization in your lens, if you don't have stabilization your lands beer than in 9/60 30th of a second if you have stabilization 30th of a second, but you're still going to be hard pressed anything below anything longer and his shutter speed longer than 1/30 of a second. 7. Shutter Priority Mode Part 3: e. I'd like to demonstrate shutter priority mode, and I'm going to show you two techniques. One to take pictures at a fast shutter speed and another to take pictures at a slow shutter speed. First, we're going to do a fast shutter speed. There's a great technique for stopping action. So at the camera and shutter priority mode, and I have the shutter speed set to 500 of a second, that's 1 5/100 of a second. You could work with 1/1000 of a second as well, or anything faster, but you want to be at least at a 5/100 of a second. So I have my lovely model here, my daughter Camille, who's going to pose and take this. And I want you to just shoot the hose off this way, and I'm going to take a picture off the water coming out of the hose at a 500 to the second . Now go ahead. Oh, and that is how you take a picture at a fast shutter speed to stop action. Now we're going to do the same thing at a slow shutter speed, so I'm going to set the shutter to 1/30 of a second and same picture God, and that is the same picture at 1/30 of a second. So you see how AH 1035 100th of a second construct the water in motion but a slower shutter speed. You'll see a steady stream. So if you're doing a waterfall picture if you're going, one of my students was going to Niagara Falls and wanted to get that sheet work from a waterfall. Then you would put your camera on a tripod because you're going to be doing a slower exposure or something like I just did, which was at 1/30 of a second. If you can handhold the camera at 1/30 of a second and take a picture and you'll get that sheet, look from the water. 8. Shutter Priority Mode Part 4: Now I'm going to show you another technique that works with slow shutter speeds for action pictures. Imagine if you want to do an action picture, you stop someone in motion. But if you're taking a picture of a basketball player, a soccer player or even somebody running or a pet running, then you want to get a feeling emotion and that feeling emotion is something you can actually get from slow shutter speeds. So I'm going to set the shutter to 1/15 of a second. I'm going to have my model walk across the camera, and I'm going to just take a picture as she's walking across the camera camera plane laterally to me. I'm going to take a picture halfway through the movement. I'm going to keep the camera moving with my subject. So as the cameras moving with the subject, I'm going to press the shutter button. Let's give it a try. Stand back a little bit. Okay, on the count of 3123 Great. Let's try that again on the count of 3123 go. So that's a great technique. They can use four action pictures to get a sense of action from your photos shooted a slower shutter speed and the subject will be fixed in the picture. But the background will be blurred. Remember, the key is have the camera moving with the subject. The camera moves with the subject, and the subject and the camera are in sync and movement. But the background is being blurred. One of the keys is don't take the picture at the beginning. Don't take the picture at the end. Take the picture and as you're moving the camera and make sure you press steadily just naturally on the shutter button. So as the cameras moving, you'll press the shutter button and take that picture, and it's a great technique. Try it at home. That will be one of your assignments at the end of the workshop. 9. Aperture Priority Mode: Now let's talk about aperture mode. Aperture mode is going to be designated by an A on your dial on your camera or on a canon camera and a V for aperture value that puts you into aperture priority mode. What is aperture priority mode? Why would you want it? Aperture priority controls the aperture in your lens. The wider your aperture, the less is in focus, though narrower or smaller. The aperture the more is in focus. Think about it when you're driving in a car and your see a sign off in the distance and you squint, you squint to bring that sign into focus because you're making a smaller aperture with your eyes. The aperture controls focus. When you go into aperture priority mode, the camera will adjust the shutter automatically, but you control the aperture and you're going to control it with a dial, either in the front or the back or a jog. Dial up and down or right and left on the back of your camera. If you have a little neural dial that is going to control the shutter when you're in shutter priority mode and the aperture when you're an aperture, priority mode. Now what is the aperture? Let me grab another lens here and let me show you. I think you'll be able to see this in the lens. We have a aperture that opens and closes. Can you see that? I'm going to hold it close to the camera. And that is a small aperture that is a wide aperture small apertures moors and focus wide apertures less is in focus. So when you have a wide aperture on your lens, you will have very little focus What's called a narrow plain of focus Now I'm gonna show you from the rear case that will give you a better view Just going to turn this style small aperture wide aperture Now again, Why do you care? Because Aperture controls plane of focus If I take a picture of a subject and maybe I'm standing over here and the subject is here at a wide aperture, I'm only going to have my focus from a little in front of the subject to a little behind the subject. Maybe even from the subjects tip of the subjects knows to their ear from very close up. The closer you get, the less depth of focus you have no matter what your aperture, and the farther you are away, the greater depth of focus you have, no matter what your aperture. But as you make that aperture smaller, whether you're close or far away, your depth of focus is going to get creator and greater. So when you make your aperture small, your depth of focus might be far behind your subject and far in front of your subject. Now here's the tricky thing about aperture. Aperture is controlled by numbers, but the numbers are in reverse of what you would think. High numbers are small apertures. Small numbers are wide apertures. This is probably the hardest leap you'll have to make in this workshop and something you want to remember and write down. Large numbers are small apertures. So in that lens, I was showing you an aperture of 16 or 22 was a various very small aperture. But an aperture of 1.41 point eight or two is a wide aperture, so those high numbers, or where you want if you want to great depth, the focus and the small numbers, or what you want. If you want a no depth. The focus. Now we're going to do a technique with a wide aperture, and you'll see how wide aperture gives you a narrow depth of focus can send a background out of focus and be very attractive for Portrait's. So I'm going to go into aperture priority mode, and I'm going to set my aperture to a wide aperture of 2.8, and I'm going to focus on my subject. You look straight off that way, my lovely model Camille, and I'm going to just take a picture and you can see how the background is super out of focus. Milky smooth, and it brings the foreground subject into a center of interest for the I, and this is key when you're doing Portrait's that you want the person to stand out and not a lot of quarter around them. So I'm going to do the same picture with a small aperture. So I'm going to set my aperture to 16 and I'm going to take the same picture, work off that way great, and you can see how the background is much more in focus and that is more distracting for the subject. This is the technique you want to use when you want the subject to stand out from the background, whether it's a portrait, still life or flower shot, and you want the background to just go milky smooth, make the foreground sharp and you get a great sense of depth. Wonderful technique. So again, aperture priority mode. Wide aperture. Here's another example of depth of focus using a wide aperture shooting something in nature . So I'm going to set my camera to aperture priority mode, and I'm going to set my aperture to an aperture of 2.8, and I'm going to get close to this tree. I'm going to focus in on the branches, and as you can see, the background is out of focus. It's beautiful. It brings out the subject in nature, whether it's a flower, pretty tree or ah, statue or anything that you want to get in close, close, focused. Take a picture. You want the background to go out of focus, and it will accentuate the foreground. Now I'm going to take a picture with a small aperture. I'm going to set my aperture to 22 take the same picture, and you could see in that picture. The background is in focus now. I don't want the background and focus because the background takes away from the subject. So I want the picture with a wide aperture when I'm shooting in nature, that is the great technique. It's a way that you want to take pictures so that the background goes out of focus and accentuates the foreground. That's why you go into aperture priority mode. Now. Landscape photographer would use a small aperture. They want everything and focus. If you're a portrait photographer, you want a wide aperture. You go into aperture priority mode so the background goes out of focus. Accentuates your subject or a nature photographer shooting close ups of flowers, for example. But if you're a landscape photographer and you want everything and focus from trees in the foreground to the mountains off in the distance, then you would want a small aperture. And again, that's why you might want to go into aperture priority mode. 10. Shutter Priority vs. Aperture Priority: Sometimes I'm asked, when would you use aperture priority mode and when would you shutter priority mode just to keep it simple? Well, if you have a heavy lens, and this is kind of an extreme example of the heavy lens, if you have a heavy lens on the camera, then it's harder to hold the camera steady. And you want to be in shutter priority mode so they can use a fast shutter and ensure you don't have camera blur. Motion blur from the camera moving. If you have a fast moving subject and you want to stop the action, you also want to be in shutter priority mode. On the other hand, if you want to make sure the background or foreground goes out of focus, then you want to be an aperture priority mode city. You can ensure you have a wide aperture. If you are a landscape photographer, you're taking a picture you where you want everything and focus same thing. You want to be an aperture priority mode so you can use a small aperture to make sure everything is in focus. Remember against small apertures of the high numbers 11. How And Why To Adjust ISO: Now let's talk about I s O S O stands for International Standards Organisation. It's simply a standard so that all cameras I S o r the same Theis So on your camera used to be called s a back in the old days. Now, if you remember, if you ever shot film if you're old enough to have ever shot film that you would get a high speed film to shoot for indoors at parties and that sort of thing and a low speed film to shoot out outdoors and sunlight, that is the same thing as i eso and cameras today high I esos air good for shooting indoors or in dim situations, darkly lit situations where you need to boost the gain of the chip in your camera and low I , ISOS are good for outdoor shooting and sunlight if you say your camera toe Ottawa s so the camera will adjust the isso automatically. As I said earlier, though, you want to be careful if you're shooting in a dark situation, you don't want the camera to set the I s o to such a high, I s so that you have greeny or noisy pictures that will show up as speckles and blur the detail in your pictures high I esos might be an I s oh, of 1000 1632 100 so forth. It depends on the camera that you have. That's something you pay for when you buy a more expensive camera. More expensive digital cameras generally handle high. I esos better and less expensive digital cameras may not. These days, most digital cameras, most newer digital cameras will handle high. I esos pretty well until you get up to an I s O of about 1600 or above. When you get into ISOS, a 32 100 or 6400 you're really going to start seeing a lot of noise or grain in your pictures. Be careful about So if you're indoors and you're taking pictures of something like, for example, every year I photographed my daughter in The Nutcracker, I sit in the front row and I take pictures. Well, I don't want those dancers blurry and the dancers air moving fast enough that I have to use a faster shutter speed that's letting less light in to the camera. Now I might have the aperture as open as I can And so I'll allow the i s O to go higher or I'll set the I s o higher but not so high that the pictures air graining usually and I eso of about 800 or 1000 is what I use and I don't like to go beyond that for those pictures. I want to make sure I'm in shutter priority mode so that I can control the dancers from being blurred because they are moving. I'm not so worried about the i e isso as much or the aperture because my auto focus is going to take care of the focus. But I don't want those dancers blurred. Are they going to care if they're a little greenie or blurred from movement? I guarantee they're going to care if they're being blurred from movement and not care so much if they're a little grainy. So I let the i s o creep up a little bit. I go up to about 800 or 1000 maybe even 1200 in extreme situations, darker situations. But again, I try to keep my eye eso lo. And because of that, I never use Ottawa s. So I always in control of what? My eye eso is so outdoors Here on a sunny day, I just sent my I s O to a low I s o like 200 or 102 100 400 maybe in the shade. But if you go indoors, you can set it to 800 or 1000 you're not really going to see grainy pictures again. If you're in program mode, you can control whether your camera has Ottawa is so set or a manual I s o number set. But in your green icon, the fully on a mode your camera controls the I S O and your shutter or aperture priority moats that we talked about that you just learned again. You can either have Ottawa eso or you can control the I s. So if you want more control over your pictures, you should control the I S O. And you want to set your eyes so awful auto mode. Bata y eso You will do that likely in a menu item in the back of your camera. But some cameras have a dedicated I s o button. And if you press the I S o button men, you can turn the dial on your camera or press up and down on the little jog dial in the back. If you don't have a neural dial on the front of Backer Side and Sethi, I s so that way. Otherwise again, you're going to see it as a menu item. And then you're probably going to press a jog, dial or turn a dial to get that I s o higher or lower. 12. Camera "Scene" Settings: you're probably wondering what all the little icons are on the dial on the top of your camera. You might have a little pictures or the word seen or the letters SCN, and they will give you menus on the back of your camera for different scenarios. Or, again, the icons on the little dial on the top of your camera. I would give you those same scenarios. You might have a picture of a person that would give you a portrait setting, which would simply give you aperture priority mode and send the background out of focus. With a wide aperture, you might have an action scene setting, which would give you shutter priority mode in a fast shutter speed to stop action. These air variations of what you've already learned and you'll do better by using aperture and shutter priority mode and getting used to the controls on your camera and how your camera works. But if you want, sure, go ahead and use those scene settings. They again are simply variations of what you've learned, but they'll give you quick control or quick access to those different scenarios 13. How To Stabilize Your Camera: Now let's talk about how to hold a camera. You want to hold a camera with your left hand under the camera and your right hand gripping the camera. Make your left hand like a shelf. Don't hold your camera like a steering wheel that is going to promote camera. Shake much a limb or likely you're going to get camera. Shake holding your camera like that again. Take your left hand, hold it under your camera. If you have a heavy lens and the weight of your cameras on the lens, then sure, go ahead and just steady your camera with your palm under the camera and your fingers on the lens. But be careful. So hold a part of the lens that isn't going to turn so that you don't make any adjustments that you didn't mean to make again. Your right hand should be gripping the camera and then very steadily pressed the shutter button. I had a friend who used to press the shutter button. Anyway. Go click. Don't do that just with your finger. Press the shutter button. Don't press the shutter button with your hand. Press the shutter button with your finger if you want to shoot vertically. Just turn the camera so that your left hand again is under the camera and your right hand is on the shutter button. So left hand under the camera, whether horizontal or vertical, right hand on the shutter button and take your picture that will give you steady pictures if you're forced to take pictures at a slow shutter speed than just use anything sturdy. One of my favorite things to balance a camera with is a tree. Just hold your camera up against the tree like this, and you can get a very reasonably slow shutter exposure with the camera held very steady. If you bring a tripod, that's great. But you know, as I do that in most situations where you realize you need a tripod, you forgot to bring it with you or, if you're traveling, you don't want to bring a heavy item like a tripod with you. But holding the camera against a tree like so or like that won't let you get that something really steady. If you have a bench, just put your camera on a bench, and if you're traveling with somebody, balance the camera on their shoulder while you take the picture, just told them to hold their breath for a second, and then you could take a great picture at a slower shutter speed. You can usually gain about a full stop or one full shutter speed slower by studying the camera on somebody's shoulder. And, of course you can on a bench or a table where a tree get a much slower shutter speed without having a blurry picture. 14. Wide Angle vs. Telephoto Lenses: white angle vs telephoto. Well, if you have a wide angle lens, where you're doing is you're pushing the scene farther away and getting a wider field of view. If you have a telephoto lens, you're bringing the scene closer to you, and you have a narrower field of view. Wide angle lenses are great for landscapes or for large group shots. Interiors. If you're shooting inside a building or a room, you want to get as much as you can into the picture. Use a wide angle lens. If you have a zoom lens, you might be able to zoom from wide angle to telephoto when you go to a wide angle or telephoto, we'll talk about that in a minute. You very often might see some distortion in your pictures. More expensive lenses will have less distortion. What's called barrel or pincushion distortion? Barrel distortion is when edges straight edges look curved outward and pin cushion. Distortion is when straight edges look curved inward versus outward, so barrel distortion or pin cushion distortion can occur when you're using a wide angle or telephoto lens again, wide angle lenses push the scene further away and give you a wider field of view. That's great if you're shooting again, an interior or landscape. And one of the advantages wide angle lenses or shooting at wide angle with a zoom is that you have more and focus, so it's easier with a any given aperture to get a greater depth of focus. The downside is that if you're taking pictures of people, you can end up with four shortening and distortion along edges. So if somebody's faces near the edge of the frame, their face might look unnaturally distorted. Also, for shortening means that objects that are closer to the camera look bigger, and something further from the camera looks smaller in a wide angle shot. You have to be careful. If the subject is close to the camera, there knows may look unnaturally large on their face compared to even their years. Think about it. If you ever held your face close to a Christmas ornament around Christmas ornament and your face looks distorted, that's what a wide angle lens does, and the extreme wide angle lenses, a fisheye that we all know is very distorted. But any wide angle lens has four shortening. What's closer to the camera looks bigger. What's farther from the camera looks smaller. Telephoto lens us. Do the opposite. Telephoto lenses bring the scene in closer and give you a narrower field of view. That's great for shooting portrait's or anything where you want to bring the scene and close. Telephoto lenses give you less. Step the focus so it's easier at any given aperture to let the background go blurry with a wide aperture. That's one reason portrait lenses are always telephoto lenses. It's easier to have the background go out of focus with a telephoto lens. Also, telephoto lenses, unlike wide angle lenses, which to foreshortening or extend distance, telephoto lenses compress distance so something near and something far won't look as far from each other. Normal, they look a different size. They will look equally large so you can have someone close with a telephoto lens. Fill your brain and the nose won't look any larger compared to the year or any other feature. So again, telephoto lenses compress distance, and that's actually very flattering. And portraiture 15. Composition Part 1: Now that you've learned about your camera, that's really the hardest part of the workshop. Let's have some fun and learn about composition and lighting and landscape and people photography with composition. You want to make an interesting picture. My first and foremost rule of composition as simple. Don't center your subjects. If you have your subject off to the left or the right of your frame or towards the top or the bottom of your frame, you'll have amore interesting composition than if your subject is dead. Center. If you take a picture of a person or a flower or building or waterfall or anything of interest, if you have thing is in the middle of your picture, it's going to look like a driver's license photo or a mug shot. Don't center your subjects by having your subject off centered. The I will travel around the frame the canvas of your picture and seek out what's interesting and then circle back to it. But when something's in the middle of your frame, the eye tends to drift off on either side and look at what else is around the picture. So you want the subject of interest at off center off to the side of your frame, one side or the other and not centered in your picture, and you'll get a better composition. That way we have something called the rule of thirds very traditional painters. Compositional trick that is, that interesting objects in your picture will make a better composition if they're placed at intersections of thirds in the frame. 1/3 on horizontally or vertically, not in the center but up down on the right side or the left side. And that will make an interesting composition. That's the rule of thirds, and your camera might have a rule of thirds grit in it. Even cell phones, thes days. Cell phone cameras have room with thirds grids in them where he might have one in the screen on the back of your camera. Personally, I turned that off. These aren't paintings. When you're taking a picture, you have a moment to decide where you're taking a picture of. You can't start composing what is going to be at exact intersection of thirds. And what if there two interesting things in your picture? One is at an intersection of thirds worst, the other likely not at another intersection of thirds. So I turned that off. Use your eye to guide your compositions, but that rule of thirds will give you an idea of why you don't want to center your subjects . 16. Composition Part 2: My second rule of composition is another simple one. Don't cut off parts of your subject If you're taking a picture of people, don't cut people off at the shoulder or the knees. When you're taking a picture, it's OK to cut somebody off that the waste generally in a frame? Or that the thighs, but not at the knees. Not if the ankles and not right across the shoes have a little bit of ground in front of the shoes or again. It's okay. It compositionally generally if you're doing a portrait to have someone from waist up and or chest up, and that works. But don't cut somebody off at the head. Don't cut somebody off at the shoulder. Don't cut their hand out of a picture if they're pointing at something. And if you're shooting a building, don't cut part of the building off. If you have any subject of interest, be careful that you have the entire thing in your picture or your crop again in an interesting way, not arbitrarily. Very important. You're in control. That frame that you're looking through or viewing at the bound. The back of your camera is everything that's going to be in your picture. When you are adjusting your frame, you are in control of what is in your picture. Don't cut off subjects unnaturally. 17. Composition Part 3: last composition tip is shoot verticals. Don't just shoot horizontal. You want to shoot both, but when I'm shooting, I've very often will take some horizontal pictures and then go into vertical. And very often you find that you get an interesting composition with verticals. Most people think because the camera is oriented horizontally, they just take pictures horizontally or because if you're shooting video, video is always going to be horizontal that you might just get used to shooting horizontal pictures. But vertical pictures air fantastic, and I love shooting vertically. We're used to seeing vertical pictures if you look in magazine covers and those air always going to be vertical, so shoot vertically. If you have a scene, take some pictures horizontally and then just take some pictures vertically. See how the composition works. It gives you more options, and more options is always good. You might take many pictures of the subject to get that perfect one. It's worth trying. Both horizontal and vertical people tend to be vertically oriented, so if you're taking pictures of people, you very well, especially might want to shoot verticals even if you're close to a face which tends to be vertical, whereas the horizontal picture might be difficult to get the entire face or figure in the picture. So if you're taking pictures of people, you should definitely shoot some horizontal but also shoot some vertical alternatives. 18. Learn How To "See" Light: Let's talk about lighting. I want you to learn to see the light. Look at the light that's around. May we see sunlight shadow, and that creates line and form. When something's being lit by the sun. Like this tree, you get a sense of shape. If you're shooting on a gray day, you don't have the sun giving you that sense of shape. You are very flat lighting. When you're shooting on a gray day, you need to use colors to create interesting compositions color like light colors, dark colors. They will create contrast in your pictures. But when you have a sunny day, you're not so worried about color because you have the sun in creating these shapes and you have contrast from lights to darks. And that makes interesting pictures as well learnt to see these things, whether your outdoor shooting in sunlight or in shade war on a cloudy day, maybe rainy day. And if you're indoors, same thing where the light sources that's going to cast light out from light to dark and create shapes. If you're taking pictures of people, then it's not a bad idea to have them somewhat backlit you like the way the sun is falling across my shoulders that can create a sense of shape, and it's flattering. Sunlike falling across the head can also be flattering. You've got to be careful, though you can have a lot of contrast now. It's very easy. If you have a reflector, you can always bring a reflector in to someone's face toe. Lift up the shadows. Reflector is a very simple way to lift up shadows. You can have someone hold it. We have these cheap coop reflectors that you could buy, or you can even use a white piece of paper white card. If you have someone to hold it, that's great. If you don't have someone to hold it, then you could clamp it to a light stand or a pole or a tree or something like that. If you need to, you can always pop the flash up on your camera. The flash will fill in shadows before it has any effect on highlights, so the flash on your camera will lift up the light and shadows but isn't going to brighten the really bright parts of your picture. Just be aware that the flash on your camera may not pop up. If you're shooting at a very fast shutter speed, the flash of the camera has a duration. It gets bright and then get stem. Maturation is usually around 125th of a second. Many cameras will not let you take a picture with the flash at shutter speeds faster than 125th or a 250th of a second. Some cameras even faster than an 80th of a second. The flash just won't pop up. So if you try to pop up the flash to fill in shadows and it doesn't pop up, it's because your shutter speed it said it too high. A shutter speed used one of the controls that I tell you to say your shutter speed to a slower shutter speed, and then the flash will pop up, fill in the shadows and give you more even lighting 19. People and Landscape Photography: Now let's talk about people in landscape photography. Used the environment to say something about your people. Pictures. If you take a picture of somebody outdoors and you get up close and you don't see any of the environment around them, they might as well be in their backyard. If you're in another country or even out for a stroll in the park, get some of the part. Gets some of the setting in the picture. Let the environment say something about your people. Pictures with landscapes. Look for something to anchor your composition. If you're taking a picture of a scenic, you don't have anything to anchor your composition. The viewer won't have a reference point. Think of that photo of the Grand Canyon. It's beautiful, the sun setting, and you've got that gorgeous rock and the colors are very nice. But when you have a person standing off in the distance looking into the Grand Canyon, now you have a sense of scale, and you see how vast the Grand Canyon is versus house small. That figure it's that's what I mean by having something to anchor your see Nick's. So whether it's a person, a bridge, a bench, UH, anything. A statue building something that gives a sense of scale or setting to your scenic photos. Consider including that in your composition. Here's an important people in landscape tip level your camera. This may be the simplest and most effective tip of the day. It drives me bananas when I go into somebody's home and I see they're beautiful bacon vacation photos framed on their wall and they may. There were out on a cruise, and they got a sunset over the ocean and the ocean is tipped. Level your camera. These days, a lot of cameras have levels built into them, but just try to be conscious. If there's a horizon line in your picture, make sure that Horizon line is straight, not crooked. And if it is crooked, crop it after the fact. Crop the picture so that the horizon line is straight. Before you start sending that photo out or make a print for your wall. Here's another very simple compositional trick. Use a worm's eye view when you take pictures for amore. Interesting perspective. Worm's eye view means get down low when you take your picture. Get down low and look up. Aim the camera up and you get a sense of drama to subjects. If you're shooting a statue or any object, you can really make a much more dramatic by getting down low and shooting up. If you're taking pictures of Children or anything down low pets, anything that is lower than you get down on its level to take the picture or even lower, you can get great pictures of kids or pets by getting belly on the ground looking up, taking that picture. Try it. You'll love some of the pictures that you take. And again, this is an old painter's trick. It's called a worm's eye view, but it simply means getting down really low. Looking up a great way to get a sense of your composition before you take their picture is to frame the scene with your hand. Do this with me, take your right hand, hold it palm in and thumb up. Now take your left hand and hold it palm out, thumb down, and this way you can make a rectangle with your hands again. That's right. Hand calm in, thumb up, left hand palm out, thumb down and you make a frame with your hands. You can make that closer or farther from your face. To give yourself a wide angle or telephoto view, you could turn a vertical or horizontal. This is a movie directors trick. Think about it. If you have a crew of 100 people before you tracked them over to that mountain top, you better go up there and frame out the scene and then decide if this is what you like. Bring everybody over. Another reason is if you're standing on the edge of a cliff and you're taking a picture before you bring the camera up to your face and start walking around, you probably want to frame the scene. Get a good sense of what you want to take a picture up and you'll be able to see where the edge of that cliff or precipice is, and then bring the camera up. Once you bring the camera up to your face, you're lost in a sea of choices. You've got the frame of the camera. You've got the shutter and aperture, all the cultural numbers and things being displayed. You have your focus indicators popping on and off, and it's very distracting. So sometimes you're just better off framing the scene with your hand, getting a sense of what you want in the picture before you bring the camera up to your face . 20. Bring out Smiles!: last tip of the workshop. If you are taking pictures of people, bring out smiles. People always look better when they're smiling. If you have somebody that's looking serious, do whatever you have to do to get him to smile. Tell them not to smile. Sometimes that gets him to smile if they're laughing hysterically. If you're taking a picture of a teenager and they just don't want their picture taken sometimes I just tell them if I'm doing this with one of my kids, I'm just going to take your picture to test out a new lens. I got this new camera are really This isn't for anything. Just let me take a picture. Okay, that looks great. You might as well give me a little bit of a smile while I'm taking the picture. Sure, go ahead and then you've got a great picture, but we're seriously, if you can bring out smiles. Whatever you need to do, learn a few jokes, laugh. Do whatever you have to do to get somebody to smile, and you'll get great pictures. If they are not smiling, you know, people will generally give you there most serious intense. I'm cool expression especially when you're traveling and now somebody. If they you could take their picture, let them know give them a que Sometimes it takes you to smile to get them to smile, and I guarantee they will smile, too. 21. Simple Shutter and Aperture Exercises: that brings us to the end of our workshop. Go on, take some pictures. I want to see them. Send them to me. Post them to my Facebook page. I'd love to see your pictures that let's see whatever you dio happy to make any comments. I only make constructive comments, and I would love to see your work. But the main thing is, go out there and try out some of these techniques. You have a nice camera. Use it. Don't let it sit in a shelf collecting dust. Get on your backyard. Take some pictures. If you have Children or a spouse, get them outside and impose for you. Do a portrait. Try out a wide aperture shot. Try out a narrow aperture shot an aperture priority. Go to shutter priority and try a fast shutter speed in a slow shutters. Beat. This is your assignment. I would like you if you like this course to send over some photos posted Millie Facebook Page or send me a link or email them to me. And what I want to see is two pictures, an aperture priority mode. One picture with a wide aperture where the background is out of focus and one picture where they now aperture There were everything is in focus, or a lot is in focus. So those two aperture priority mode shooting with a wide aperture, narrow depth of field and a small aperture, great depth of field. Remember wide apertures of the smaller numbers and narrow apertures are the high numbers. And then I want you to take two pictures in shutter priority mode. I want you to take a picture with a fast shutter to stop action and a picture with a slow shutter to get intentional blur. So you're going to go into shutter priority mode and take a picture with a fast shutter like a 503rd. Thousands of a second or faster. Take a picture water running out of your posit. Stop that water in action if there's a found capture, the found the water coming out of the fountain. If you have something moving. Ah, you have a pet and the pet is moving. Stop the pet. If you near a road, go out and take a picture of a car moving at a high speed, stopped the car in action, then do a picture at a slow shutter speed and with a slow shutter speed, used the technique I showed you were You pan with a subject and the subject stays still. But the background blurs, and I want to see both of those. So two pictures and aperture priority mode to pictures and shutter priority mode. Do those and you'll understand how they work, and I'd love to see your work. 22. It's A Wrap!: thanks for taking the workshop. I hope you learned a lot. I know you learned a lot about how the shutter and the aperture in your camera work and some great techniques for using those go out and take pictures. You shutter and aperture priority modes. But don't be afraid to use autumn. Oh, the main thing is, you'll learn something every time you press the shutter button and see what happens. So go take pictures. Don't let your camera collect dust. Get your spouse your pet out in your backyard or out in the street. Takes and photos. I'm Steve Winery and thanks for taking my workshop.