Kenny McKeithan visited us again and presented "Ten Ways to Improve Your Photography." See the notes below and visit his website at:
www.kennymckeithanphotography.com
10. Don’t be afraid to experiment
a. Don’t be afraid to try new things
b. With digital experimentation is free
c. Instant gratification with playback
d. disposing of a failed experiment is as easy as the delete key
9. Slow down, take your time, be patient
a. Stay with your subject.
b. Compose and wait for your subject to do something amazing
c. Enjoy the experience
8. You’ve gotta get up pretty early…
a. Capture the beautiful early morning light
b. Very few great nature scenes captured in midday
c. Don’t forget to look behind you. Very pretty light to shoot in
7. Select and use the proper filter
a. Polarizer
b. ND
c. Graduated ND
d. Warming-or change White balance
6. Spend some time learning to set the camera up properly
a. ISO
b. White Balance
c. Color/Monochrome
d. Auto Rotate
e. Review Time
f. Auto Power Off
5. Recognize when to change metering pattern
a. Evaluative or Matrix good for most scenes
b. Centerweighted
c. Spot (or Partial) better in contrasty light (bright background)
4. Learn and understand your histogram
a. very advanced/sophisticated light meter
1. Shows quantity and quality of light
2. 256 levels from black (left) to white (right)
b. Avoid clipping (too far right) over exposure
c. Clipping on the left not so bad, under exposure
d. There is no such thing as a perfect histogram
e. Use the camera’s “blinky highlights” feature
3. Learn and understand the qualities of light
a. color….. either warm or cool
b. intensity….. either bright or dim
c. contrast….. either harsh or soft
d. direction…. front, side or back
2. Understand what makes a good composition
a. rule of thirds
b. power points
c. leading lines
d. repetition
e. simplify or get closer
f. be able to sum up your composition in a phrase
g. living/moving things need room to move
1. Become best friends with your tripod
a. A tripod is a necessity even with IS or VR
b. helps with composition
c. Repeatable Results
d. Helps with Shutter speed slower than IS or VR can handle
e. Takes some of the load off of you
f. Avoid the pitfalls always shooting at full height & always shooting horizontally