Wednesdays - Photo Fun

OK so I think Wednesdays are going to be about Photography.  I will post some tips I have learned, maybe some good articles I have read, a photo I really like that I have taken, things like that.


So send me anything you want to know and I will answer any burning questions!


Today I want to talk about equipment.  I think you can take good pictures with anything (cell phone, iphone, point and shoot, etc) if you know some key things.  Over the weeks with some of the tips I will give you, I think that you will see what I am saying.  The key is to be creative!!


I shoot with a Canon 60D DSLR.  I started with the entry level Rebel.  After that I found an amazing deal on Craig's List and got a Canon 40D.  When we moved to the DR I upgraded (thanks to a donor) to the 60D since it does video too.  If you have any DSLR where you can change lenses, then my first recommendation would be to spend under $125 and get yourself a "nifty-fifty" lens, which is a fixed lens (doesn't zoom , so you have to get used to moving yourself around instead of zooming your lens) 50 mm 1.8f stop.  This is a quick lens, which means you can take pictures with bad lighting situations.  The f-stop is 1.8 which gives you that dreamy bokeh!  Bokeh is ummm....cool!  Here is the real definition:


In photography, bokeh (Originally  /ˈboʊkɛ/,^[1]  /ˈboʊkeɪ/ boh-kay, and also sometimes heard as  /ˈboʊkə/ boh-kə,^[2] Japanese: [boke]) is the blur,^[3][4] or the aesthetic quality of the blur,^[5][6][7] in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."^[8] Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—"good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively.^[3] Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

So the lower the f-stop, the more the blur!  OK I am hoping that I can get my point across with all these tidbits I want to share with you because I am pretty much self taught, with only an amazing summer photography class for "training".  So I know enough to be dangerous.  I don't always know how to get a "professionally correct" photo with the right exposure, no blown whites, and blah, blah, blah!  I take pictures and if I like them then I am happy!  So if you are looking for technical explanations then you might want to get some Scott Kelby books.  He is actually really good at explaining in a way you can understand.


So what I am trying to say is if you have a camera, get this lens and play around.  It is an affordable investment to start off.  I wish I could do a cool example to show you the difference in a photo just to have a lens makes, but I have no charger to charge my battery.  Can't wait to get it back on MONDAY!!

Here is an example:  These are both SOOC (straight out of the camera with no editing), but you can see how ho-hum the first one is, then how the other is much more interesting.  But blurring out the background, you really see what you are focused on more.  I promise I will have more interesting examples!!