Photography Basics

The best way to improve as a photographer is to take your time. We are all so visually literate with so much of our world image orientated with TV, magazines, newspapers etc. that if we take a second to think about our photos we can intuitively improve our pictures.
Simplify your photos. If you can eliminate distracting details your "Story" will be become clearer.
Compositional tools:
Lines Lead
Patterns are Pleasing
Diagonals are Dynamic
Some of your cameras actually can show those "Rule of Thirds" lines. On the camera those are called Grid lines.

White balance can usually be left on "AUTO" but if you see the picture in the LCD on the back of the camera is a funny colour try switching the white balance.

ISO settings control how sensitive the image sensor is to light. Cranking up the ISO enables us to take pictures in dark areas like gymnasiums. As we increase the ISO the image will gather more "noise" because we are amplifying the electronic signal.

I recommend that you use the highest quality (file size) available. You can always size down the photo later but trying to increase the size may degrade picture quality.


Two things control how light is gathered into the camera.
The aperture and the shutter.
A large aperture lets in a lot of light and creates a shallow depth of field. That helps throw the background out of focus while emphasizing the subject that we are focused on.
Portrait mode will open up that aperture.
A small aperture lets in much less light but creates more depth of field. That helps keep everything from foreground to background in sharp focus.
Landscape mode closes the aperture.

The shutter controls how long the exposure will be.
A fast shutter speed stops the action and a slow shutter will blur anything moving.
Sport mode uses the fastest shutterspeed available for the amount of light available.

Tourism Calgary Board of Directors Photo Shoot

Good challenging photoshoot today. I was asked to photograph the board of directors of Tourism Calgary. The photoshoot had been postponed several times because of the directors busy and changing schedules so it was no surprise that I was asked to photograph this group in the middle of the day. A location was chosen with a good view of Downtown on top of a new building. The wind was gusting but the sky was clear so no chance of rain. Because the sky was clear the sun was beating down on the scene. I had to balance a background and foreground and light them well. I can't obviously light downtown but I can control the light level I choose to show the background. My first test shot of downdown read 160 of a second at f 10. It was too bright for my liking so I added a polarizer filter to darken the scene 2 stops and cut the glare from the leaves on the trees and the glass from the windows downtown. This let me keep my shutter below 1/250th so that I could use a Travelite (Bowens) 300ws monolight to fill in the dark Rembrandt shadows caused by the harsh directional sun. In a group photo, deep shadows become very distracting so I try to keep all faces as evenly lit as possible. I set my travelight up 2 metres (six feet) in front of where I was to position the group with a regular reflector (no diffusion) and tried some test shots. I was pretty close to balancing the exposure right away. When the group arrived I was ready! As with most group shots it was over in less than ten minutes but the half hour I spent getting ready was well worth it.
http://public.fotki.com/djjsm/don/2009-portfolio/don0022-jpg.html

Update on Using x sync and hot shoe to fire multiple flashes. If all else fails, read the instruction manual.

Well it was worth a try but it didn't work. No matter how I try when I pop up the on camera flash my flash wired to the x sync terminal does not fire. It seems the pop up flash disables the flash sync terminal.
The quickest and easiest fix may be to buy "Digital" slaves. I have several peanut slaves that I use to fire remote flashes. When I fire the camera with a manual flash attached, the slaves sense the original flash and fire the flash it is attached to. Digjtal slaves do exactly the same thing but somehow they ignore the pre-flashes that TTL auto flashes emit to determine the correct flash exposure before they fire.

Using x sync and hot shoe to fire multiple flashes. If all else fails, read the instruction manual.

I have six flashes that I carry with me everyday in my camera bag. Some are made by different companies so they don't always work together too easily. I recently read Joe McNally's "Hot Shoe Diraries". It has got me excited about using small flashes in a new way. I have always been very much a STROBIST (http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/) kind of guy where I use all my flashes on manual and adjust accordingly. Joe's book (http://portfolio.joemcnally.com/#p=-1&a=0&at=0) encourages people to use the brains of Nikon's engineers and the "Creative Lighting System" of the Nikon wireless flashes. They work great! It's really amazing to throw a couple of flashes around the room, flip up the little pop-up-flash on the camera and control everything from the camera. The only thing is I have a couple of old dinosaur flashes that I use regularly too. I was photographing a renovated kitchen the other day with a big bright window in it so I needed every flash I had to raise the light level in the kitchen (really dark cabinets) to balance the scene through the window. I thought I could use the dinosaurs to give a general over all level by pointing them up to the ceiling and use the new techie Nikon flashes to tweak different spots. I placed my flashes (6) all over the room and started firing. I couldn't get these things to all fire! What's with that? I finally put everything on manual and slaved them and fired everything from a dinosaur mounted on the hot shoe. It worked but I was a little disapointed I couldn't use the new technology. I was trying to fire the Nikon Speedlights from my pop up flash set as commander. They worked perfectly but the older flashes would not fire from the wired x sync terminal (front left little socket on the front of the camera). I could not figure out why! I finally had a brainstorm. Read the manual. It took less than 5 minutes to figure it out. Page 384 of the Nikon D-700 manual (Flash Contacts) says, "The Sync Terminal. A sync cable can be connected to the sync terminal as required. Do not connect another flash unit via a sync cable when performing rear-curtain sync flash photography with a flash unit mounted on the camera accessory shoe." I presume that also means when using the pop up flash (in effect a mounted flash). I always have the rear shutter curtain flash set for when I need low light mix of ambient and flash.

Super Excited!! I've been asked to give a seminar, workshop type 1 day thingy. Some ideas off the top of my head:
Flash! Turn it ON.
A is for average.
The workshops will be in an artists space with hopefully people hungry for photo tips.

Welcome to Don's Photography Blog. I'm not too sure what will happen with this blog but I guess we'll find out together. One main reason for starting this blog is to avoid the negative flames in discussion boards. I went to one today and found someone saying he was happy or at least didn't see vignetting with his lens and several people said he was blind because he didn't see it because it only shows up if you shoot a clear sky only. Well if it's not noticeable then in my opinion it's all good.
I am a professional photographer in Calgary, Alberta Canada. I used to shoot weddings but not so much anymore. I shoot a lot of ads as well as editorial content for the Calgary Herald, newsletter and other stuff for the City of Calgary new homes and condo show suites for New Home Living and Condo Living Magazines as well as various other clients.