photo credit - craig42k (that's me)

The Photography Lesson

Jon Washburn helped me with some photography last week at Pat Kennedy's house. Pat Kennedy hosted the DC area Active Rain gathering while Jon was in town for his presentation to NAR. In a conversation about Social Media, I explained I'm following Teresa Boardman, Kristal Kraft and Chris Griffith on Flickr, whose photography I enjoy, admire and try to emulate.

We took two photos where the Sake was the subject. In both pictures, we turned the flash off, positioned the camera on the table and set the timer. The photo above is the 2nd one.

photo credit - Margaret Woda

The difference between the two though was Jon had me move the Sake closer to the camera in the second photo. He also had me raise the camera how I wanted, by using the ring from the Sake cap, and position the candle so we could get a reflection in the Sake.

Jon explained natural lighting and lens are very important in capturing depth photography. The larger the maximum aperture (size of the hole), the more light the lens will allow in, the more natural or real the photo will look. I thought that was very thoughtful of him to share his experience with me.

Subtle Change, Dramatic Difference

Here are the two photos side-by-side. While the lesson was brief, it was not short on usefulness, it was fairly comprehensive. You can see the reflection of the candlelight in the second photo. The color of the shrimp is also brought out and the reflection from the blue plate is caught from the glass table.

Are there any other differences that you see?

Photography 101

I realize some of these techniques are probably photography 101, I thought I'd share my experience and what I learned. Even though my hardware is old and limited and really don't know what I'm doing, I had a blast doing this and thought the outcome was pretty darn cool.

Do you have some photography tricks, thoughts, ideas or experience you'd like to share?