Fortunately, the spotlight was on the presentation.  I turned off the flash, found the ISO settings – those control the light sensitivity of the digital flash card –  and set it for a high sensitivity level,  pushed my telephoto out to the maximum to get the reading and frame the shot, and went for it.

The light sensitivity reading was high enough to cause the camera to set a fast shutter speed.  That froze the action.  There was enough light on the people surrounding the presentation to give a good sense of what was going on.  The internal light meter in the camera read the light on the demonstration, so that stood out.

In order to do this, you need to find three topics in your camera manual and learn how to use them:  the icon settings – chosing one that will give you a fast shutter speed, such as sports or portrait, the telephoto controls, and the ISO controls in the menu options.  Those three options will allow you to take control of your camera.

Taking photos of flowers seems like it should be easy.  After all, don’t you just drive along the road, stop when you see a pretty scene, and get out and shoot?  Well…..yes…. driving along and noticing pretty scenes is certainly what gets you there.  When flowers are this prolific, though, getting a shot that has interest and dynamic qualities takes some observation.

Look at this scene for a minute.  What do you notice?  Here’s what I saw.  The contrast of yellow flowers against the white salty field and  blue shadows on the hills certainly makes the flowers stand out.  Still, though, as a sea of flowers, they looked flat and uninteresting.  I could see a few curves in the floral landscape, but nothing strong enough to stand out.  I could tell if we drove down the road to look for angles in the pattern of flowers, I was going to lose the light and the shot.  I studied this scene for a while before I saw the one yellow flower sticking up above all the rest, standing out against the white background.  That lone flower added the dynamic quality and interest I wanted.  That was the shot that told the story of the flowers.

Tulips at Les Tuileries

Les Tuileries – once a royal garden and now a public paradise in the middle of Paris. My husband Dale and I were walking around the center of Paris on a very dreary spring day. As we strolled by Les Tuileries, I brightened up. The tulips were in bloom, a colorful field in the midst of grey.

I set the camera for a landscape shot and tilted the lens down to cut out the flat grey-board sky, just using the light grey statuary and walls to set off the color of the garden. My zoom provided a tight frame, cutting out the rest of the garden and isolating the brilliant color. The whole experience sure put a spring back in my step!

Rainbow at Grand Canyon

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: how we all love to capture it in a photo. We were returning from a full day at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon late one September afternoon when I looked out the side window and saw this glorious rainbow diving into the trees.

I had to take this shot through the window of a moving van, so I had to work quickly. I made sure the camera was on the fastest setting – on most point and shoot cameras, that is the sports or animal icon. I aimed the camera at the grey sky to get a reasonable light reading and kept the sun behind me to accentuate the colors in the trees. Fortunately, the sun was behind the shot and the whole thing worked. Sometimes, you just need to go for it.

Barcelona Beach Sculpture

Color says Wow! in a photograph. What better place to see color in operation than Barcelona, the city of Art and Artists, among whom Joan Miro and Picasso are just two of the better-known. Art is part of the landscape in this city, and my husband and I had been admiring the works of art placed throughout the city as we walked its many streets.

One of our strolls took us along this beach in the heart of the city. As I surveyed the scene to decide how I was going to photograph the metal sculpture to show it off against its environment, a young boy decided to stoop down and play in the sand right in front of me. His bright red shirt caught my eye immediately, and I shot, centering him so he didn’t block the sculpture. He draws my eye right into the shot, and created the third of the four elements of a Wow! photograph: light, color, action and pattern.