Through the Gadling Lens: 7 photography exercises for the brand-new photographer

by Karen Walrond on

I bought my very first SLR camera about 15 years ago. I knew nothing about photography at the time, so I enlisted the aid of a professional-photographer-friend to come with me to help me choose my camera, and, since I had his attention, teach me a few pointers about photography as well. “You’ll be buying second-hand,” he informed me, “and you will pay nothing less than $500.”

Gulp.

A few days later (and exactly $501 poorer), my friend and I walked out of my local camera store, a 10-year-old Nikon SLR in my shaking hands. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now,” he responded, “we shoot.”

For the next week or so, my friend took me to various sites in and around Houston, and had me burn roll after roll of film. In addition to teaching me the technical basics, he also gave me some exercises so I could learn about form, composition, contrast and colour. What he taught me was invaluable, and I’ve never felt the need to take a photography course as a result.

Recently, I’ve met a lot of people who have just bought their first digital SLR (or received one as a gift), and really don’t know where to begin. So if you happen to be in that boat, I thought I’d share some of my favourite exercises for a bit of inspiration, and practice. Since these days, most people aren’t putting rolls of film in their cameras, instead, I would suggest that you shoot 20 photographs for each exercise — and then, if you like the results, please share them with us in the comments section below.

And so, without further ado, the exercises:
1. Set your camera to black and white, and shoot away.

My photographer friend was adamant that the first roll of film I ran through my camera be black and white film. “That’s the way you’ll really become a photographer,” he said. “Colour can hide a multitude of sins. Once you’re comfortable in black and white, then you can move to colour.”

In many ways, he was right: shooting in black and white can teach your about form and texture and contrast in a way that colour photography really can’t. For example, in the second shot above, you don’t notice the sunset, but you do notice the “texture” of the rippling water, and the shadow created on the ocean’s surface as the sun sets. When you first take your camera out, go ahead and take several shots in black and white mode, and really study the results. You may never shoot in black and white again, but the lessons that you learn will be ones you’ll take with you when composing all of your shots in the future.

2. Once you’ve got black and white down, start focusing on colour.

Once you’re comfortable with shooting in black and white, go ahead and start shooting in colour. But what I would suggest is to choose a colour, and then go out on a photo shoot and try to capture that specific colour in all your shots. For example, if your chosen colour is yellow, shoot as much yellow in as many locations as you can — and notice the different tonal changes, how light can change the hues and how the colour “handles” translucence, or opacity. This exercise can help you to train your eye to really search out colour as the focal point of composition.

3. The 100 paces exercise

This exercise is one I actually read recently online (and for the life of me I can’t find the link, sorry!), but I think it’s a great exercise to inspire creativity when you don’t have a lot of time to travel somewhere fabulous to practice your photography. The premise is as follows: grab your camera, walk 100 paces in any direction, then stop. Take 20 shots of whatever you find at that spot.

The point of this exercise is to force you to look closely at your surroundings, consider various angles and find something unusual about your specific location. I’ve actually done this exercise (two results of which are shown above), and it was a great way to clear away the creativity cobwebs, and look at familiar places in a whole new way.

4. Play with the rule of thirds.

To refresh: the rule of thirds is a general rule of design and photography that states that if you were to divide each dimension of the frame, or viewfinder, into thirds, then to increase visual interest, your subject should line up along one of the lines or axes that you’ve drawn.

So to do this exercise, when you go out for a photoshoot, instead of placing your subject directly in the middle of the frame, offset it slightly, so that the subject roughly lines up along an axes drawn at a third of the frame. Note that this “rule” doesn’t mean that every shot should be taken on thirds (some shots just work better perfectly symmetrically), but it does force you to think about different angles and ways to shoot.

And also, when doing this exercise, don’t forget that you have axes both vertically and horizontally — for example, in the shot of my daughter above, her eyes and mouth line up pretty perfectly on the horizontal axes; conversely, in the bottom image, the tree lines up pretty well on a vertical axes.

5. Tap into your inner photojournalist.

This is a great exercise to do at local festivals or fairs in your town: grab your camera and head out to the site, and start snapping away. But instead of just taking photographs of your travel companions, or your travel companions next to some landmark or a particular street performer, actually compose shots using what you see around you. Notice things like forms and patterns — for example, in the shot of the artist suspended in silks, above, notice how the position of her body mimics the shape of the tree in the background. In the second photo, notice the angry message juxtaposed with the woman flashing the beautiful smile and the peace sign with her fingers. Really look for the story you can capture within the shot.

6. Get close.

In this case, the distance to your subject will be somewhat limited by the focal length of your lens (in both shots, above, I used a macro lens, which lets me get really, really close to the subject), but in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes that new photographers make is failing to fill the frame with their subject. So I would suggest that a new photographer take her camera out, and for at least 20 shots, fill the entire frame with her subject. Get used to getting close, and really testing how close you can get to your subject without losing the ability to focus. Once you’ve developed that comfort, then you can start backing up, and playing with shots from farther away.

7. Schedule a photoshoot.

Who says photoshoots are just for professional photographers? One of the funnest, most educational things I did when I first started shooting was invite two friends of mine to drive down to the beach with me, so I could practice using my camera — and I was very careful to ensure that they understood that in addition to shooting the beach, I would be taking their photographs as well. We picked a beautiful day, drove down early, and made a day of it — we shot all morning on the beach, grabbed a bite to eat at a local restaurant, and drove back. The result was a beautiful day filled with great memories, coupled with some great shots that they cherish to this day.

Of course, one of the best ways to make sure that you get great shots is for your subjects to feel comfortable with you — and that’s what spending a morning shooting can do — your friends will eventually forget about the camera. But the other, biggest trick about taking a great portrait?

Don’t stop shooting.

Don’t just shoot the posed shots — shoot when one of your friends wanders off to feel the water on her bare feet (as shown in the first shot above). Don’t just shoot the image of your friends holding each other and smiling into the camera — capture the moment when they think the shot is over, and the pull back to smile at each other (as in the second shot). Just shoot, and shoot and shoot — I guarantee you you’ll be thrilled with one of the resulting shots.

With that, grab your cameras, go out there, and practice, practice, practice — and feel free to use the exercises above for inspiration. And please, if you love some of the results, don’t hesitate to upload your images onto the web (Flickr‘s great for that sort of thing), and then, please, share the links in the comments below. I’d love to see what you capture, and read any insights you may have discovered along the way.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more, Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: learning photog lingo

by Karen Walrond on

One of the pieces of advice that I seem to find myself giving over and over again to those who are new to photography is about looking at as many photoblogs or Flickr pools as possible — if only to get some inspiration on different angles to try, different processing techniques, or even just want to expect when you finally embark on that long-awaited trip to that faraway land. If you’ve been doing this, you’ll find two things: (a) looking at beautiful images is addictive, and (b) photographers sometimes use some strange words, phrases, abbreviations or lingo to describe what’s going on with a picture, or how they took the shot. So this week, I thought I’d take a moment to define some of the more popular terminology that seems to be showing up on the internet these days — that way, when you upload and describe your own travel photographs, you’ll sound oh-so-in-the-know.

And so, on with the show:

Bokeh. One of the most common comments you’ll often read on Flickr has to do with bokeh. “Nice bokeh,” you’ll read. “How did you get that bokeh?” a viewer will say. I will admit to you that a year ago, I had no idea what people were talking about.

The term bokeh refers to a relatively shallow depth of field — in other words, bokeh appears when a part of an image is in sharp focus, and the rest of the image fades away to a smooth, buttery, out-of-focus blur (see the image above). According to Wikipedia, the term is derived from the Japanese word boke, which means “blurry.” You would be forgiven for not having ever heard the term before, as it’s relatively new — Wikipedia says the term was first published only as recently as 2000. And while, obviously, not every photograph has or requires bokeh, it obviously makes for an interesting shot. To add bokeh to your images, try setting your aperture to a low number — 1.4, say or 2.8 (and if the term “aperture” is a bit foreign to you, click here for a previous post on what aperture is all about).

There are some, however, who use the term bokeh to simply mean “out of focus” — for example, I got some kind and complimentary bokeh comments when I uploaded this shot into my flickr stream:


But I would argue that the above shot doesn’t actually have any bokeh, since there’s no part of that image that is in focus — it’s just a blurry (albeit kind of interesting) image. Greater minds, obviously, might differ.

SOOC. “SOOC” is a commonly-used acronym for “straight out of camera” — in other words, the image you’re looking at (in this case, the woman with the pinkish-purple wig, above) hasn’t been post-camera processed at all — this is how it looked exactly as I downloaded it out of the camera. It is a perfectly acceptable image.

What I think is interesting, however, is that the term “SOOC” is not usually used as a point of comparison between the pre-processed work and the post-processed work. Instead, it’s primarily used to illustrate how perfect an image is without processing at all. And while, certainly, it is possible to take a photograph which, really, is better left unprocessed, please remember that there is no real shame in processing images digitally after downloading: as I mentioned before, all photographers pre-digital-era processed their images, they just did it with chemicals rather than computers.

In other words, don’t let a term like “SOOC” make you afraid to process your image. There’s nothing dishonest about it, if you use post-camera processing to help communicate what you’d like the viewer to notice and receive from your image. For example, in the image above, I was struck by the woman’s bright hair colour, her funky glasses, and the message on her shirt. So with a bit of post-camera processing …

… I help draw the viewer’s eye to those items — but the photograph is no less honest than the original. And if your original really can’t be improved by post-camera processing, then more’s the better.

Rule of Thirds. This refers to a general rule of design and photography that says that the eye tends to find images which are slightly off-kilter more interesting than one that is perfectly symmetrical. For example, in the shot above, I could have taken the picture of my daughter so that she was exactly in the middle of the frame, but theoretically, it’s a more interesting picture because she isn’t. See? It’s pretty much that simple.

Oh, you want the technical explanation?

Okay, then.

The Rule of Thirds, speaking more technically, says that if you were to divide each dimension of the frame, or viewfinder, into thirds, by drawing lines like so:


then to increase visual interest, your subject should line up along one of the lines or axes that you’ve drawn.

Now, obviously, it’s sort of impossible to actually draw lines on your viewfinder; however, the idea is to just ballpark it. And this technique works for more than just portraits. For example, in the following image of a street in St. Ives, what struck me was the little old man walking quietly up the road:

So, you’ll notice that the little old man lies directly along one of the Rule of Thirds axes:

Make sense?

Again, this “Rule of Thirds” doesn’t mean that you have to take every image with your camera in this manner — it’s just something to keep in mind while you’re shooting, to add a little variety to the images you capture.

Through the Viewfinder (or “TtV”). This actually refers to a cool little technique that is currently gaining popularity online — the use of a vintage camera to help capture images that look retro and grainy, and therefore somewhat timeless. Here’s how it works:

The photographer gets her hands on a duaflex, or twin-lens reflex camera — one of those cool box cameras that were popular starting from about the 1960’s — you know the ones, where the photographer holds the camera about waist-high, and looks down into the top of the camera through the viewfinder? They’re lovely little cameras, and can often be purchased on eBay for as little as US$ 25. Once purch
ased (or borrowed), the photographer often creates a tube that fits over the viewfinder, to help block out light and glare. Then, though the open end of the tube, the photographer inserts her digital SLR camera lens into the tube and focuses through the vintage viewfinder — the result is a square format image, which can then be manipulated within Photoshop or other post-camera processing software. The final image often shows the imperfections of the vintage lens, giving a soft, retro feel to the shot (as shown above, or in the Through the Viewfinder pool on Flickr).

Twin-lens reflex camera purists would argue that these cameras are being wasted — that the photographer should just buy the appropriate film and run it through the vintage camera. Still, it’s hard to argue the convenience of digital media, and the ease by which the resulting image can be manipulated. Either way, the result is sort of a fun twist on the type of photography and images you can capture on your travels.

Obviously, there are many more terms which are used by photographers: the traditional terms, as well as the more trendy ones, as shown here. But hopefully this sheds a bit of light on what all those online photographers are talking about — and helps gives you some ideas for how to add a bit of variety to your own travel images going forward.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Five things to do when things go bad

by Brenda Yun on

I opened the front door to my apartment yesterday evening to find an early, unwelcome, and unpleasant Christmas present waiting for me inside: my power had been turned off. Apparently, the Hawaiian Electric Company finds it completely acceptable to turn off your service when you are a new tenant in the building — and gives you NO warning, by email or otherwise, as to when or why it is happening.

What made this matter worse is that my friend came over to cook steak on my electric stove. We were hoping to drink a bottle of Merlot, and watch “Superbad” on DVD. Instead, we both showered by candlelight, ate out at a mediocre Vietnamese pho restaurant, went to Walmart to stock up on more candles, and are calling it a night.

There are, however, some awfully good lessons to be learned from such an experience as this. If you’re one of the many travelers stuck at an airport in the northern U.S., an unhappy backpacker in the middle of nowhere, or a peeved resident living in a city serviced by an incompetent and unresponsive electricity company, then please resist the urge to cry about it. Here are a few things you could try to get your life back on track when things go bad.

  1. Be creative: If you’re not having fun in your current situation, find a way to make it fun. As long as there’s gas in it, your car can be one of the most enjoyable tools for happiness. Turn up the heat in your Chevy, take a road never traveled, and slowly find your way back home. If you don’t have a car, use your feet. You’ll be surprised how much you never noticed about even the most familiar of surroundings.
  2. Reach out to a loved one: So, you’re all alone in some backward country that you thought you’d love, but it turns out you hate it. Think positively: things will not be this bad forever. Take out a piece of paper and write a letter to a loved one, using your pen as an outlet for frustration, anger, sadness, and expression. Or, if you can get to a phone, give that person a call and tell him/her how much s/he’s missed.
  3. Strike up a conversation with a stranger: I love making new friends in the most random places. The conversation starter here would be your current, shared, miserable experience/existence. My best friend met her husband while waiting for flight in Albequerque. It’s amazing how much a light conversation can ease your inner tension. If nothing else, your little debate can pass the time.
  4. Indulge in your favorite food: Forget that Weight Watchers diet. Take out that stash of Baskin-Robinns Peanut Butter ‘n Chocolate ice cream (sorry for the food plug here, it’s my one weakness) and go to town. At least your belly will thank you.
  5. Get some zzz’s: Sleep is one of the best cures for whatever crisis you might be in. Shrug off your problem for a few hours with a little shuteye.

I hate the sight of frustrated tears, and I particularly detest angry protests by customers upon innocent flight attendants (though, I must confess, I too have instigated such arguments). The best thing you can do in rough times is grin in bear it. Things always get better in time.

Galley Gossip: Packing Light – Rome, Italy

by Heather Poole on

“Okay,” said the husband, shoving his cell phone into the back pocket of his blue jeans. People, all of them very fashionably dressed, whizzed by us while we stood on the cobblestone street outside a large glass window displaying freshly baked pizza. We had just exited the train station in Rome and were looking for our hotel, The Gregoriana. “The guy said to walk up the Spanish Steps, turn right, and the hotel is at the end of the block.”

“At least we’re close,” I said, eyeing a slice of pizza. It looked amazing. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one.

Sighing, the husband grabbed his black rolling bag, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and said. “So…any idea how many steps there are?”

“A lot,” I said with a laugh. Though I did not know the exact amount of steps (I do now), I had an idea there would be more than we’d like.

We turned a corner, walked a good ten feet, all the while taking in the history and beauty that surrounded us, and five seconds later found ourselves standing at the foot of the steps. “Oh. My. God,” said the husband.

“Good thing we packed light,” I said, and meant it, because we had, in fact, packed light, very very light for a ten day trip to Italy. And then I laughed, because all I could do was laugh, as I took in ALL THOSE steps, as well as all those people sitting on the steps. There were well over a hundred – People and steps! I’m not sure which frightened me more -the people or the steps!

One thing a flight attendant knows how to do is pack light. We do it every day. My secret to packing light, wearing only black, white, and brown, along with a couple colorful accessories. That way everything goes with everything else, creating several mix and match outfits from just a couple basic pieces. Of course, the other secret is to roll your clothes, not fold.

“Roll them military style,” advised Dee, a flight attendant I worked with from Dallas to La Guardia a few months ago after I told her I was going to Italy for ten days and would only be taking along my flight bag. “You can get more in the bag that way.”

I’m not sure what she meant by military style, but I figured it had something to do with rolling my clothes tight, really tight, which is exactly what I did, getting way more than I anticipated into my crew bag.

“You are not going to need all that,” said the husband, as he watched me on the floor from the bed.

“You don’t know that,” I said, as I proudly zipped up my bag – one bag. And a tote.

That was not the first time I had uttered that particular phrase, “Good thing we packed light.” Nor would it be the last. The first time I said it was in Venice. We had just arrived at our hotel in Cannaregio after walking the winding cobblestone streets for a good twenty minutes, going over bridges and across canals and through narrow alleyways, too many times to count, making our way from San Marco Plaza to Cannaregio, also known as the Jewish Ghetto. The last time I had mumbled that one particular phrase had been that very morning as we lugged our bags up the steep flight of stairs on-board the Eurostar train that would take us from Naples to Rome, after having visited Positano for a couple days, which is now one of my top five favorite places to go in the world. I do hope to make it back soon.

“Give me your bag,” ordered the husband, his eye on the prize as he wiped the sweat from his brow. We were still standing at the bottom of the Spanish Steps.

“I’ve got it!” I said, grabbing the black plastic handle of my Travelpro bag a little tighter, because I did, indeed, have it. Though at that moment I must admit that I kind of wished I did not have it, even though all I had was just a rollaboard and a small tote bag. But since I was the one who had packed it (okay fine, over-packed it!) I’d been prepared to carry it. That was only the fair thing to do.

“Give it to me!” demanded the husband, who had become, upon arriving in Italy eight days prior, very macho in the bag carrying department. Before I could resist he grabbed my bag, and with a rollaboard in each hand and a backpack over his shoulder, he began his long journey to the top of the stairs.

Behind him I followed, huffing and puffing the entire way up as I carried that one little tote-bag, which, as I took each step, began to feel not so little, along with a beautiful black leather briefcase the husband had found in a quaint little shop under a bridge in Amalfi. Together we zigzagged between all those tourists sitting on all those steps. For sure there were well over one hundred steps. I never thought we were going to make it to the top.

Finally, we dropped our bags and took a break, looking down from where we had just come, before continuing on to the hotel which was just a short block away. I’ll never forget the look on my husband’s sweaty face when the desk clerk greeted us with a curt glance and said, as his fingers typed away on a keyboard, “I forgot to tell you, there’s an elevator in the train station.”

Forgot to tell us? Yeah right.

Nor will I forget the sight of my husband as he stood, panting for air, behind a junky souvenir cart at the top of the Spanish Steps trying to catch his breath. For a good ten minutes. Maybe longer. Or course I took a picture. I’d love to share it with you, but he’d probably kill me, so you’ll just have to settle for these….

(Been to Rome? Share your favorite places to go and things to do here by posting a comment below)

%Gallery-31571%

Galley Gossip: A question about tipping flight attendants

by Heather Poole on

As a chronic over tipper in restaurants I’ve always been a bit confused when on a plane. While very occasionally an attendant will accept a tip, most often they move off before you can even try. Sometimes they outright won’t accept a tip. I’ve been in union jobs where the union disallows tipping in order to get a higher wage. Is this the case? I tip at the very least a dollar a drink at a bar, and I figure an attendant deserves even more than that. What gives?

Cliff F.

Before I can address Cliff’s question about tipping flight attendants, I have to say that I want you, Cliff, on one of my flights! Please let me know when you’re traveling again and I’ll trade onto the trip. Why? Because you sound nice. Because good passengers make good trips. Trust me, I’m not saying this because you’re a big tipper, but because you understand the plight of the working class. As for your question about tipping on flights, flight attendants, at least the ones at my airline, are not supposed to accept tips. Why aren’t we allowed to accept tips? I’m not sure – exactly. But my guess is it has something to do with the higher wage flight attendants make opposed to other service industry workers, like Cliff mentioned. Even though I do not accept tips (it’s my job to serve you that drink!), that tip, the one I did not accept, is greatly appreciated. So thank you, Cliff, for thinking of me. And I’ll be looking for you on my next flight.

Heather Poole