But it’s Just a Picture

Extra, extra! Read all about it. Trent, my incredible husband, is talking about his experience taking pictures for “With Love, Melanie”. One of the challenges we have as new bloggers is the “who”, in who will take my picture. He’s working on becoming quite the photographer and has surely evolved from “but it’s just a picture”.

Making his “Friend’s Edition” debut, my husband…

A great photograph is like a great piece of music.  As soon as you see it you know it’s something special.  Gasp – how do I orchestrate a sonata when I’m not sure what a Treble Clef is?  This is for Melanie’s new blog.  I really need to execute here and present something that will represent her well!  After that initial sense of anxiety, I reflected.  This is like any other task and has two simple steps.  First, educate yourself and second, listen to your wife and she’ll pretty much tell you what she wants.  The former is easy for a man.  Like any other man with an internet connection, I can Google something.  The latter is one of those challenging things that has troubled the male / female relationship since the cave man drew on a cave wall, while the cave woman told him the saber tooth tiger he drew looked like a squirrel.   But, she’s obviously right.

I’ll address the technical first.  I was told by the guy at BestBuy that the Sony A6000 is a very competent mirrorless camera, and if you’re a normal person, it should be all you need.  Today, I can tell you that if feel he wasn’t wrong.

So, here is the Google stuff.  Good photos have everything to do with exposure.  A photographic exposure is dependent upon three variables: aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  Today’s digital cameras allow us to change all three.  The main creative effect of aperture is depth of the field; the ability to focus on objects in the same field of view.  Shutter speed is the length of time that your image sensor ‘sees’ the scene you’re attempting to capture. For static images, this has the least amount of effect.  But if you’re capturing a moving wifey, you want a fast shutter speed to make sure she is crisp and not blurred.  Lastly, ISO, the amount of light.  Ya gotta know it’s all about the light.  ISO adjusts the right amount of light for the aperture (depth of focus) that you’re going for.  The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. Combining all three just right, you can keep your foreground image (like my Boo Boo) in focus, in stride and well light.  #optimalexposure.

So…how about that squirrel?  Lucky for all of us, we live in the digital age, and we don’t have to try fix those squirrels with the stone age version of a dry eraser.  I will take well more than 10 duds for every gem photo.  Melanie and I will talk about what she is looking for, and then I’ll take a couple of photos.  I’ll show her, and we will make adjustments.  We may take 100 or more shots.  But, by working together and honing in on the look we’re looking for, we can come away with a few good ones.  100 sounds like a lot, but it isn’t.  I’m like any other guy who does not want to spend all his “free” time snapping photos of a new outfit.  I’ve honestly been surprised how quickly we can get it done.

To wrap this up, here are my tips.  First, learn some camera basics.  It is a little scary to take the camera off “auto” for the 1^st time, but well worth it.  And second, it takes that ever elusive but very rewarding good communication and teamwork to get some really nice photographs in a short amount of time.

-Trent