Mary Ann's Photo Gallery and Tips

Gene teased me about never getting past page 38 in my Canon Manual.  Well, I decided when I got my new Nikon D5000 that I wasn't going to let that be the case.  In the 1st few days the complete manual was covered and highlighted in yellow.  Proof that I had made it all the way through.  Did I understand it all....of course not but I must admit Nikon has a better way of designing their manual. Each area starts at the beginning so you can easily see the steps in walking through to set your aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  Each division of a task begins at the beginning and walks the walk! Now my only job is to remember it all!

I am also taking a Composition class at Western Technical College.  The class ought to be called Falling in Love with Your Camera as we started by knowing what our camera does and then get assignments to do it.  Sounds so simple 5 little 4 by 6 photos is all we needed to bring in last week.  Start shooting the same object early in the day, through the day and into dusk and dark.   You needed a tripod because since your sensors on the camera are taking a long time to record the insignificant light.   When reviewing your photos if your LCD is black something is wrong go back to notes and reset something.

In an book I have called Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson he tells that there is more than one way to set your camera to get a correct exposure.

Let’s say you take a person’s shoulder to head shot and in the background 10 feet or so away is something like rows of crab apple trees in pink bloom.

               ISO                          F stop or Aperture         Correct exposure indicated in viewfinder

1.       100                                        f/4                                        1/500 sec

2.       100                                        f/5.6                                     1/250 sec

3.       100                                        f/8                                         1/125

4.       100                                        f/11                                       1/60

5.       100                                        f/16                                       1/30

6.       100                                        f/22                                       1/15

7.       If your lens goes higher than f/22 you could conversely have more “correct”exposures.

Then you have to chose your creative mode that you like to decide which photo you like the best.  The one with sharper depth of field (Aperture setting( f/4) which is the smallest amount of light and the greatest depth of field), or one with more bokeh or blurred background (which is the largest amount of light, smallest aperture number or f/stop (f/4) and a blurred background ((bokeh)) . 1/4  of a pie is bigger than 1/22 of a slice!

A few weeks ago we went to visit friends in Door County, Wisconsin.  Coming home we passed a beautifully restored red round barn.  I just had to stop and take a photograph of it and would like to share it with you.  At one time there were over 215 of these gems in Wisconsin but with the modernization of the farm equipment the layout didn't work well.  The straight line 2 aisles barn was better designed to use the new milking and cleaning equipment.

Enjoy,

Mary Ann