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.

As my husband walked down to the lake, I took a few steps back and surveyed the image in front of me.  He had stopped by one of the trees to get a wide angle view of the lake.  I told him to stay put, and took my reading off the mist rising against the mountains, hoping to get enough detail of the lake to show the mist as well as silhouette the darker parts of the scene.  My strategy was to blend the exposure readings of the mountains in the background with the light from the rising mist.  I had learned how to do this in an introductory class I took from the shop that sold me the camera, and this was one of my first practice shots. I wanted my husband in the shot.  I felt his presence would add interest and character and deminsion the lake itself.

The strategies worked, but I didn’t find out how well until I got home and had the film developed.  This trip was in 1983, long before digital cameras were even in the development process.  I still have the enlargement of this print on my wall. 

Remember, no matter how simple or complex the camera, it is just a light box.  The lens lets the light from the scene into the box and records it on the light sensitive mechanism in the camera.  In 1983, the light sensitive mechanism was film.  Today, for most people who grab a camera, it is an electronic chip or disk.    It doesn’t really matter which you use.  The basic principles of light management are the same.

This man was one of the docent participants, playing the role of one of the gold seekers stopping off at the Fort for provisions.  I loved his hat and the character in his face.  The problem was that the hat threw a huge shaddow on his face, intensified by the sunny day.  What to do?  I couldn’t ask him to remove his hat or tip it back to reduce the shaddows.  I finally got down low, since he was sitting, and focused the exposure reading on his face.  I cropped down with my zoom lens, hoping to even out the light between his face and hat so I wouldn’t lose too much detail in that wonderful hat. 

This workshop was years ago, and I was shooting slide film with an analog camera.  Slide film is a good teacher.  There is very little room for error.  When I reviewed the developed film, I was delighted to find I had achieved my goal.  Today, I could brighten up his face in photoshop, but I didn’t.  My purpose has always been to get the shot in the first place.

Family Portrait at Golden Gate Bridge

Is there any doubt about where we are?  On this very special outing with my family, I wanted a photograph of our day that was a portrait, but not a close-up, and that would be a good memory of where we were and what we were doing. Isn’t that what most of us want when we are traveling with friends and family.

In order to show off both the place and the people, the people need to be slightly to one side of the frame or the other, filling either one-third or two-thirds of the frame, but not dead-center, and not tiny dots in the foreground of a vast landscape.  In this shot, I placed them on the left side of the frame to accentuate the Golden Gate Bridge, which we had come to see and to walk.  The bridge angles off into the background, providing a dynamic line in the frame and making very clear what we were about to do.  I had to be sure no elements of the bridge were “attached” to someone’s head, and so I shifted slightly so the center tower was placed off the center of the heads on the right.

In a brief few minutes, we had a great photographic memory of our day in San Francisco.