Getting started

Lately, I know you will have noticed or perhaps not, lol, my posts have been about getting started and the beginnings of your career or your hobby as a photographer. The very beginning, I think its a good place to start, Maria said so on The Sound of Music, most won’t know what I mean, its okay.

I bring up the beginning more often than not, because I love stories and telling them and re-telling them. I am who I am with respect to my approach to photography and what I do or don’t do because of my beginning with photography and how I started and the bumpy road to get to where I am now.

I also refer to the beginning and helping out those who are getting started because, I didn’t have the internet as a 12 year old kid with a new camera, well new to me, in my hand. I had no reference no instructions nowhere to get information to learn my craft, there was only trial and error and being as how I was a 12 going on 13 year old kid, I didn’t really have loads of money to spend on mistakes to learn.

My very first photos were of my classmates, in the 8th grade at St Anthony School. I couldn’t bring my SLR to school so I received, one Christmas, a Kodak instamatic, it used 110film and it was great, it was completely automatic and there was no autofocus it was focus free, meaning most of the time you got great pics if people were about 3 ft away, and for a 13 year old it was great, but I wanted more, I needed to ‘create’.

Sadly, my Freshman year in high school, I loaned my cousin that Canon FTb and it was stolen and that as they say was the end of that, luckily my senior year in high school at Christian Brothers and freshman year of college at American River College, I was able to acquire another camera and started taking photos again around campus. It was what I gravitated to, people photos, so for my purposes that is what I will mainly touch on but the fundamental basics of photography remain.

My greatest challenge was always exposure, and I know I wrote a post about metering previously but I’d like to talk more about exposure and the stigma that photogs today have about being existing light photographers, as there is absolutely nothing wrong with using the light around you to light your subjects.

Best light? an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset, give or take, remember that and love it, it is definitely the best time for taking portraits. The light is soft and not harsh and is just a great light and I will never stop gushing about how good of a light it is!

So, assignment, take your child, a loved one out one day about an hour before sunset and bring your iPhone or your Samsung Galaxy and take photos. Have the light not behind your subject but a little bit to the left or right so that there is light on the hair as well as the face, a little bit of shadow on the face is great it gives character the whole of the photo. Give that a try and see what you can get!

Happy Shooting!