Do What Ya Gotta Do! ~ Photographing People

I bought my first camera with my High School graduation money.  It was a Canon T50 with a hot shoe flash.  I loved that camera til’ the day it died.  I set that baby on “Automatic” and took pictures for years.  I have albums filled with those pictures. 99.99 percent of them were of people….and I am so grateful for the memories.  I didn’t know an absolute THING about shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, yadda yadda.  I just composed the picture, shot, and hoped for the best.  But that was also the film days.  Every picture was money…so I composed very carefully.

I learned a lot, and my photography passion grew.

Enter now.  I’m desperately trying to learn about all those “technical” things so that I can become a better photographer.

…Now still life is  99.99 percent of my subject matter.

It’s really patient.  I can manipulate it, move it, and make sure I find the right light for it…It doesn’t even moan  when I drag out my tripod and the photo session goes on for-e-ver!

The other day, I discovered I was completely and utterly out of practice with people!  A sweet neighbour family asked me to take a few shots for their Christmas card.  I was happy to oblige.  From past experience, I know they are very patient and will still love me if the pictures don’t turn out at all!  (Thanks, sweet family!)

I drug my white church pew into the driveway, and they were game with all my wild ideas.  I thought at first that I would practice how to set my aperture, etc.…  That thought flew out of my head pretty fast.  You see, the pace is a bit quicker with actual moving subjects…

When the shutter speed is a little slow, the baby’s hand wave becomes a blur…

Those kids were so sweet and patient, but I knew I needed to step it up a notch.  So, I whipped that camera button around to “P”  (meaning “program” setting…the next thing to “automatic”), amped the exposure to plus.3 (giving it a tad more light) and just started snapping pictures.

Sometimes, you just need to do what you need to do to get the picture done!