Hi, I’m back, sorry to have neglected this portion of ladies learn. This season of photography proved to be busy and one of my best yet! However, I am committed to bring you inspiration and education in this department. I want to use this blog as a way to “give back”. I know how frustrating it can be to look at other people’s pictures and think, “How did they do that?” I’m not saying I know everything or that my style is the greatest, I’m still in learning mode and want to seek out workshops or blogs for help…. (this is me looking dazed and confused)
I had a nice morning doing a mentoring session with Ashley. She is an aspiring photographer and has a love of learning. We spent the morning talking photography and then when we were finished we went through a list she typed up. It was a list of questions for me. So I am going to answer some of her questions here:
1. Do you use manual or auto focusing? What settings do you adjust to get what you want in focus. I have a hard time getting all faces in focus when photographing two or more people.
Okay, for sure I have my camera do the focusing for me – I have it set to auto focusing. There is a little button that looks like a rectangle with a plus sign in it that you press and then you can choose what dot focuses on what. I am constantly changing that focus point. I believe it is called back button focusing (I could do an entire post on this subject). If ever you feel like you aren’t getting all the people in focus make your f-stop number bigger. I would stick to a f5.6 or f6.3. However, I think it’s interesting to show depth so I usually don’t mind if some people are out of focus.
2. Which lenses do you use and for which occasion?
In general, use my 50mm 1.4 lens for babies, seniors, and couples and I use my 24-70mm 2.8 lens for weddings and larger groups. But there are a few more lens I would love to buy in the near future: 85mm 1.2 and the 35mm 1.4.
3. What type of equipment would you recommend for beginning photographers?
I’m a canon girl so for canon I would recommend getting the 40D, 7D, 5D, or 5D Mark II. They are all good cameras, but the higher the price the more advanced the camera tends to be. I shoot with the 5D Mark II and love it. As for lenses? Here’s what to start out with : 50mm 1.4 and the 85mm 1.8. In particular the 50mm – it’s the best lens to learn on:
4. Do you use a flash and under what circumstances. Was it a learning process using a flash?
I don’t use flash, if I ever did in the past it was after the sun went down during a wedding. I love natural shadows and would rather have a high ISO with some grain than pull out my flash.
5. What are some tips you could give for posing families and what are the most flattering angles to photograph large people?
Sorry, Ashley, I did a poor job answering this question when we went over it. I really just throw them together, I usually put the parents in place and then go from there. of course it’s awesome when you get a super candid feel like there was no posing at all. As far as posing larger people? I don’t do anything different than I would with anyone else.
She had a couple more questions that were more related to establishing a business, marketing, and post processing. Let me know if you have any specific questions you want answered and I could add them to the next “Q and A”.
