Please sign up early.  Thanks.  Marsha

Pleasant Hill Recreation & Park DistrictArt for Personal Enrichment

320 Civic Drive Pleasant hill CA 94523

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED AT LEAST THREE DAYS PRIOR TO CLASS.

PLEASE REGISTER EARLY; CLASSES WITH LOW ENROLLMENT ARE SUBJECT TO CANCELLATION.

Point & Shoot

Your Way to Perfect Photos

(1 workshop) (2 weeks)

Don’t know how you got that fantastic shot that everyone it raving about? Learn simple, easy-to-remember techniques so that you can use your camera more effectively.

Topics include how to: define your subject to tell your story; manage the available light so that it is perfect in the final photograph; use the three basic photographic composition techniques – color, pattern, and action. Bring camera; there will be an easy photo assignment. Fee includes a copy of The Accidental Photographer.

Instructor: Marsha Black

…graduate, New York Institute of Photography; author of The Accidental Photographer; educator, traveler, photographer.

4504.902 Aug. 14

. Sat., 1:30–4:30 pm

4504.903 July 14–July 21

. Wed., 6:30–8 pm

. Fee: $60 / Dist. Res. $50

. Community Ctr.: Upper Club Rm.

Got Email? For the latest District news, please add Cservice@pleasanthillrec.com to your allowed list.

To register: use the internet, at

www.pleasanthillrec.com

or call 925-676-5200 or

by fax 24 hours a day at 676-5630

Big Sur Coastline: Line and Light

Our Christmas gift to ourselves in 2009 was a leisurely trip up California’s Central Coastline.  The late fall and early winter months are the most beautiful along this coastline.  The light is subtle and the weather is either raw and stormy or drop-dead gorgeous.  We got lucky.  Our scheduled drive from San Simeon to Monterey, taking in the Big Sur Coastline, was scheduled for New Year’s Eve morning.  We got lucky.  We hit the drop-dead gorgeous window in the weather fronts.

We stopped at all of the famous view spots, including this one just north of the Coast Gallery, just before entering the Carmel area.  These are the moody cliffs of paintings and many photographs, with distant hills fading into the background or under the fog.  When we were there, the cliffs were also badly back-lit.  As is so often the case, we didn’t have the choice of coming back later in the afternoon, so I had to deal with the light as it was.  I aimed the light meter for the neutral greys in the center of the hills, moving the focal point over about six frames to get what I wanted.  This is the only way to deal with this kind of difficult lighting situation.  The beauty of digital is that you can delete the ones you don’t want.  I shot below the sun line, but still have a few sun spots in the frame, which I will eventually stamp out in photoshop.  The clouds cooperated by creating an angled line pointing directly at the cliffs, creating the lead line I wanted.  The natural angle of the cliffs is an angle and not a straight line, so that also worked with me.  I just had to stand in an area of the parking lot that emphasized the line and showed off the repeating pattern of the hills.   Happy shooting, folks.  May 2010 bring you many joys with your camera.

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.

Along with a few hundred other people that spring, my husband and I went on a wildflower search. We were doing roadside photography to get an overview of the Park, and weren’t walking on any trails for our views.

No flower shot is simple, but this one was especially challenging.  These are tiny white flowers that grow close to the ground.  We had been photographing the flowers spread across the valley in front of the hills when I spotted them.  I tried several ways to photograph them, but they were too tiny to stand out against the brown hills.  Finally, I decided to see if I could position myself close enough to create a line of flowers against the blue sky in the background.  I set the camera for landscape shots, laid down on a blanket I had spread in front of the flowers, and tipped my camera up until the hills in the background were spread along the bottom of the frame and the flowers were positioned against the blue sky.  Lines create a sense of motion, and angled lines create the strongest sense of action.  I wanted an angled line of flowers against the blue sky to bring out the delicate flowers and create a strong sense of action. 

When you are looking for strong nature shots, looks for lines and angles.  If you can’t find them, position yourself so you create them.

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.

A group of women were in the shade catching up on their knitting, an important task when stores weren’t available to provide warm socks.  Full length shots didn’t get the detail of their handiwork.  After several attempts to show the “whole person,”  I decided to use the telephoto to frame the hands at work.  The exercise taught me a valuable lesson that I have practiced many times since when trying to photograph what people were doing.  The craft itself is a big part of the story.  I also made sure she was in even light.  The light created some texture and deminsional shadows, but theydon’t distract or cover her work.

This workshop took place many years ago, before the invention of digital cameras.  All of our work was with slide film, so we could show it in the workshop.  Slide film is quite sensitive to exposure errors and therefore a very unforgiving teacher, and we couldn’t evaluate our results until we got the film back.  Today, I might crop this further, to remove the neck and hat strings and just show the hands.  However, I didn’t do that for this commentary because I wanted to demonstrate that many interpretations are possible.

I saw the wonderful full-length human sculptures made from wood and wanted to get a shot.  All of the gallery lighting is ceiling spotlights, which provide lots of light, but also lots of glare.  The sculptures I wanted were in the middle of the gallery, surrounded by these ceiling lights.  I walked around the case, looking for the best, least-interferring angle.  I finally decided it was impossible to avoid the lights and glare, so looked for the angle that had the least amount of light hitting the sculpture itself and put as much as possible in the background.

I had already turned off my flash and set the camera for a mid-range light sensitivity reading, known as the ISO reading.  I used 400 – a mid-range setting, because the light in the gallery was good.

The results weren’t great, but they were acceptable.  I could still see the figure in some detail, and the lights were mostly in the background.

  I could, of course, stamp out the lights in a photo editing program, but lots of photoshop work isn’t what I want to do.  I would rather get the best shot I can out of my camera.  It’s a challenge sometimes, but a little thought and observation does make it possible.

DeYoung Museum New Guinea permanent exhibit

The lighting in this gallery is quite bright, illuminated by dozens of ceiling spot lights.  Photographic glare is almost impossible to avoid.  I walked around this case, holding a wonderful sculpture depicting “the Mother of a Tree Kangaroo” from the 17th (or so) century, trying to get an angle that would show off the texture of the sculpture without obliterating the sclpture itself with lighting glare.

I had, of course, found the flash control button on the camera and turned off the flash.  Flash glare would make the problem worse, and flashing cameras is one of the reasons museums eventually prohibit photography altogether.  The gallery wasn’t crowded, so I didn’t need to worry about people in thebackground.  I found the light sensitivity controls on the menu button – labeled as the ISO Auto selection, and changed the light sensitivity reading to 400 ISO.  The light was bright enough in the casing and museum that I could use a mid-range reading and still get a sharp photograph.

As I walked around the case, I watched the light from the ceiling as it played on the sculpture.  After a couple of walk-arounds, I chose my spot, stepped back and use my telephoto lens controls to frame down on the sculpture, and shot.  The results weren’t bad.  I still have some ceiling lights, but the “Tree Kangaroo Mother” is still sharp and the side lighting shows off the textures and colors in the tree.