Learn to be a photographer

Last Tuesday we went to Disney World to celebrate my youngest daughter's birthday. While we were in the park I took the opportunity to look around and notice what sorts of cameras the other vacationers were carrying. If I had to guess I would say that maybe 25% of the cameras that I see now at Disney World (or at a school function) are really nice DSLR's.

While it makes me happy to see so many people buying cameras that are capable of taking great pictures, it also makes me sad to see so many people using a $700 camera the same way that they would use a $100 camera. It's like buying a Ferrari and not learning how to drive a stick.

Learn about shutter speed and you can take pictures like this...

I've been trying to put together a lesson plan for a class (or classes) that I want to teach after the holidays. I meet so many people who have these nice cameras and just don't understand how to use them. The problem for me is trying to figure out what it is that people really want to learn. I have no desire to teach someone what all of the buttons do on their expensive camera. I do, however, love teaching people how to take good photographs. Once you learn how to take good photographs you can do it with any camera.

The trouble with photography is that the hardest thing to learn is the very first thing that you have to learn. The great thing is, once you learn that very first hard part, the rest is much easier. My fear is that people will come to my class thinking that I will simply show them what setting to put their camera on so that they can take a good picture and then be shocked when they discover that I actually planned to teach them how photography really works. The truth is that modern cameras have a hundred different settings for every possible situation and yet none of them will ever be able to take a picture as good as a photographer with his camera set to "manual." Only the photographer knows what he is taking a picture of. Only the photographer knows how he wants the picture to look.

Learn about aperture and ISO and you can take pictures like this...

The good news is that you don't have to try and learn what all of the buttons do on your fancy camera because you really don't need those buttons at all to be a good photographer. In fact, if you plan to use all those "auto" settings on your camera then you really wasted your money. While it's true that your $700 camera may take better pictures than your $200 camera, I can guarantee you that it won't take $500 worth of "better."


The bad news is that you are going to have to learn a little bit about photography if you want to be a good photographer. You need to understand shutter speed and its relation to motion blur and ambient light. You need to understand aperture and its relationship to depth of field. You need to understand ISO and its relationship to grain. Finally, you need to be able to put these three things together and understand how they interact with each other. It sounds daunting, I know, but if you can just find your way clear to learn it you will suddenly discover a whole new world is available to you.

You can see much more of my work on www.boorayperry.com.

Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Schaarai Zedek in Tampa

Congregation Schaarai Zedek in Tampa has some of the most beautiful stained glass. The temple is very modern with low ceilings (for a temple) so instead of the typical tall windows, it has these beautiful long windows that take up the entire wall. I love shooting Bat mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah portraits against those windows.

For this picture I used a flash off-camera left with a shoot-thru umbrella. This allows me to really frame the face with light.

This shot is all natural light but requires careful positioning to balance the face just right. Turn the face too much towards the window and you will wash out the right side... turn it too little and the left will be dark.

For more Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah pictures taken at Zedek, please visit my photography website.

How to balance flash with ambient light

I just finished up an article on Photocrati.com that details the steps I take when shooting an outdoor portrait with a flash. The trick is knowing how to balance out the flash so that it doesn't overpower the ambient light. One of the pictures that I show in the article is from a recent portrait session with Kelly:

For more Tampa portrait photography, visit my website.

Tampa Wedding Photography and the garter toss

Time once again to show-off a favorite image from a recent wedding. Wedding photography is funny sometimes because the things that you think would be easy can be quite hard and vice-versa. The garter toss is a good example.

Most of the time, the garter toss is really several pictures. There's a picture of the groom throwing the garter and there's another of the men catching. Seldom do you get a chance to capture the entire thing in one shot. You need a lot of light, a large enough space to frame the shot and a little bit of luck.

At this wedding I got everything I needed. I set my off-camera flash on a tripod to my right and bounced it off the ceiling above the guys and I used my on-camera flash to bounce left and light the groom. Then I waited and prayed for the Hail-Mary shot...

You can see more Tampa and St. Petersburg wedding photography on my website.

A wedding cake picture that's a cut above

As a wedding photographer in Tampa Bay, I see a lot of cake. All kinds of cakes. Big cakes, little cakes, red cakes, blue cakes. I also see a lot of cake smashing.

Photographing the cake cutting at a wedding can actually be challenging. To the outsider it might seem simple because the subjects are standing right in front of you but it's actually tricky to do because of the typically fast motion involved when someone starts smashing cake in their spouse's face. The more motion involved, the more you must increase your shutter speed to "freeze' the action. Every increase in shutter speed means less ambient light in the picture. This is why you will often see cake shots where everything behind the couple is dark.

But I'm getting away from the subject of this post which is to show a picture from a wedding a few weeks ago that I love. As a wedding photographer, I love a picture that tells a story and this one tells a story loud and clear:

There's a lot that I love about this picture from the great color in the background to the groom's obvious attempt to explain why his new bride has cake on her nose while his face remains clean. But without a doubt, it's the little boy that I love the most. I love everything about him, all the way down to the glass in his hand. He just adds so much energy to the shot!

For more wedding photography in Tampa Bay Florida, visut my website.

Never let a black cat critique your work

One of the great things about having a father who is a professional photographer is that you get beautiful portraits from every event that occurs during the year. One of the bad things about having a father who is a professional photographer is that he's always bugging you to let him take beautiful portraits during everything that happens during the year.

Yesterday being Halloween, I of course wanted to take some nice shots of my two daughters in their Halloween costumes. So, after they were dressed, we went into the studio and took some pictures.

Because they're my family and because I do this quite a bit, I don't typically spend as much time or care when taking pictures of my two girls. As a result, yesterday when I looked at the pictures I had taken of my youngest daughter Mackenzie, I discovered that her Strawberry Shortcake hat was pulled down just a little bit too low over her left eye. The left eye, though visible, was in shadow. As my wife and I were looking at the picture I turned to her and said, "I'm probably the only person who will even notice that." No sooner had I said it when my oldest daughter, Samantha, walked up behind me, looked at the picture and said, "that's a great picture of Mackenzie but you can't see her eye."

Let's keep in mind that my oldest daughter is only five years old.

Now, I don't know if the shadow on Mackenzie's eye was that obvious or if Samantha, having spent her entire life being photographed, has actually developed an eye for spotting mistakes. What I do know is that five minutes after she said it, we were back in the studio taking new pictures of Strawberry Shortcake.

These two pictures are actually good exanples of how I like to work when it comes to portraits. When photographing Sam (the cat), I lit her in a more dynamic fashion with more shadow on her face. This creates more depth and contrast in the picture which I thought was appropiate for a "roaring" cat. Also, because she is in black, I shot her against dark blue. When Mac came in for her picture, I changed the background to a more red tone to match her color scheme and moved the light more on center to remove most of the shadows on her face. Strawberry Shortcake shouldn't be scary.

You can see more of my work on my website.

This picture cracks me up...

Some of my favorite pictures are the ones that I take when I'm not supposed to be taking pictures yet. Typically, I'll take a few pictures while my model is still getting ready so I can test the lighting, etc. Sometimes this results in a picture that I like, even though it's not really something you would print and frame.

Today I was photographing The World's Most Photographed Children © when I got this shot. Bobbi's arm seems so loooong. Meanwhile, there's Mac..... the bored Diva.

See more Tampa children's photography at www.boorayperry.com