THE JOY OF LOVE, DAY 5

Willette Photography & More is offering a free, online photography class this February, called The Joy of Love. There's still time to sign up, if you're interested!

Lesson 05 - WHAT YOU LOVE TO HATE. My husband and daughter drive me nuts making noises. There is a noise they make with their hands that drives me around the bend and they LOVE to do it. Besides the driving me crazy part, I thought it would just be a cute picture to see them with their hands together. This photo comes from my second attempt at the photograph. I just couldn't get a sharp enough picture and that annoyed me. However, the second set of photos were better than the first and I did manage to adjust for fluorescent lighting and adjusted my exposure right on my camera. This photo has been tweaked a bit in Photoshop. I really need to read up more on focus.

Willette Photography's tip of the day was:

Selective focal points and metering: I recommend learning how to use your camera’s selective focal points. You need to read in your camera manual how to do this. Even point and shoot cameras have this ability. Using the selective focal points is more accurate than focusing and recomposing because you are positioning the focal point OVER the exact spot you wish to focus on.

I also recommend using spot metering for portraits. Combined with the selective focal point, you will have the winning combination for a great exposure since the spot metering will be metering off of your subject’s skin and face.

The other metering options your camera may have are: spot, matrix (or evaluative,) and center weighted. There are times when matrix/evaluative metering is necessary….for instance, when you want to make sure the sky is not “blown out” or overly white, when you want to have EVERYTHING in the frame well-exposed, when you have the subject wearing all white and you don’t want to overexpose the skin, or when you are photographing people of different skin tones.

I'm still 'digesting' all this information. I'll get it yet...