This Issue: Workshop Report, Oil Spill Photography,
Tips On Metering, Cool New Products
Workshop Report
I'm having a good time sharing what I know about photography with 5 really nice people who signed up for my first photography workshop. So far I've talked about the basic functions of the camera, exposure value, depth of field and many techniques that will make photographs more interesting. The aim of the workshop is to get DSLR owners familiar and comfortable with their cameras and enable them to make photographs that stand out and look more artistic than the average point and shoot pictures. Darlene, Ann, Patrice, Chris and Mike have been great students and I think they're learning some useful things.
After describing various camera controls and functions in our first session I got in to some tips for making more interesting photographs of people. Just showing off I used this shot of Sean Payton speaking at a meeting of the Metairie Rotary Club to illustrate the value of good cropping.
Fortunately the class agreed that the closer crop and offset of Sean made this photograph more interesting.
Another topic was the use of natural light as I did in this shot of Mayor Landrieu. Natural light can be very soft and flattering.
A big plus of being in the workshop is that we get to look at your camera together. I've looked at the user manuals of everyone's camera so I'm somewhat familiar with the way the different makers, in this case Nikon and Canon, approach the functions. I've been able to tell my participants where to find the buttons and show them what they do. I'm thinking of doing another workshop in mid-Fall. I'm discussing it with Mary DuBuisson at the gallery and not sure if I'll repeat the basic stuff or concentrate more on some more advanced techniques.
Photographing The Oil
My July was very busy as I took several trips down river to the Myrtle Grove, Empire and Venice marinas. From there I traveled on speedy boats with a video crew and my wife, Paula, the media representative for DRC Emergency Services. Our purpose was to document the oil spill recovery work of DRC as one of the many subcontractors to BP. I was repeatedly amazed and dismayed at reports that no oil was visible during the BP and US Coast Guard surveys. We found oil and plenty of it every time we went out.
This is a "biofilter", something new, that collected all that red oil in less than a week in a part of Barataria Bay. This was shot from about 130 yds away with my new Canon EF 100-400mm f 4.5-5.6 IS USM lens. One of three new Canon lenses in which I've recently invested.
This is a patch of oil about 3 ft. wide on the beach around Bay Chaland.
That's a New York Times reporter that we took along on the trip to Bay Chaland so he could see that the oil was not gone. My aperture gave me a long DOF on this shot.
A 55 gal. drum of sucked up oil is being transfered from the small boat to a barge so the small boat can get back to work quickly. This exposure setup is my general purpose setup for these daylight shoots in which people are moving but not so quickly that you need a faster shutter speed. The "+0.33" is my Exposure Compensation to get some detail from the dark areas in and around the 55 gal. drums.
All of my travels have been on the West Bank side of the river around Barataria Bay and down to South Pass. I've also been out to some of the quiet rigs with a group of divers from the Cousteau Society who wanted to see if they could find oil beneath the surface.
They only dived near one rig and found some undefined stuff floating about 10-20 ft. down that really could've been anything. I boosted my shutter to 1/800 here since my subjects were jumping off the back of their boat. As you can see, it was fast enough to freeze their movements.
This is a little crab caught in the oil in the biofilter. The nearby beach was black with oil and thick with crabs.
Our friend and video shooter on this day, Crista Rock, took this photo of me making photos.
Yippee For New Subscribers
A lot of new folks have signed up since my July newsletter; Misty McElroy of Houma, Rosita Henley of Mandeville, Ellen La Rocca of Mandeville, Jane Aucoin of Slidell, Ann Casadaban and Darlene Rudiger, both of Slidell and both members of my ongoing workshop.
Tips On Metering
One of the topics at my workshop sessions was the different types of metering your DSLR offers you. Typically you'll have 3 or 4 methods by which the camera will evaluate the scene and determine which is a correct exposure. You can have the camera meter the entire scene or add some weight to the center part of the screen or just meter the central part of the scene. The different manufacturers like to call these modes by different names but the functions are the same.
This is one of the handouts I give my workshop participants. It shows you some metering modes and some examples of metering for the scene at hand. It's important that you remember that you get to choose your exposure settings. The TTL meter just lets you know how your settings compare to an average proper exposure. For my purposes the Center Weighted Average and Spot metering usually do the trick.
New Stuff
The newest trend in cameras seems to be the EVIL camera. That's an acronym that stands for Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. Pretty clever, huh? These EVIL cameras are smaller than the average DSLR, much smaller in some cases, because they've done away with the mirror to prism to viewfinder arrangement that has become iconic on SLR and DSLR cameras for decades. In other words the ONLY way to set up your shot with an EVIL camera is through the LCD screen. No traditional viewfinder is available. Here's an example.
This is the Olympus EP-1. It's definitely small but not as small but not as small as my Canon PowerShot SD780.
The thing that occurs to me about the EVIL camera and the size benefit is that the lenses are still going to make this a somewhat bulky camera compared to the little pocket type. When someone comes up with lenses that do all the wonderful things lenses can do in much smaller sizes you might really have something there. Still another of the EVIL camera's attractions is the feeling that it doesn't look like an expensive camera and so isn't as likely to be stolen.
I think the coolest looking EVIL camera to come along is from Sony. It's the NX-3. Very cool but by no means a pocket camera.
You'll still be spending about the same for an EVIL camera that you would for a traditional DSLR so for now it's a matter of taste. As far as I've seen none of the EVIL camera makers, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, offers a lens selection anywhere as large as what you could have for the larger DSLR.
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