Hey Everyone! Hope everyone is doing well this week. This week is about customizing your camera to you.  If you have a modern camera there are many ways to customized your camera to the way you shoot and the way you like to have things organized. Now I can't go into specifics of every camera because they are all different but they can all be customized in some way to make , making pictures more easy.  First I will go over how I have one of my camera's set up to shoot. I wouldn't expect anyones else's camera to be like mine. Yours should be your configuration unique to you. The camera I'll tell you about is mainly used for street, product and almost anything but my landscape and wildlife stuff which I use another camera.  I only shoot prime lenses on this camera so no zooms. I have many customizable buttons on my camera and I'm guessing you do too. Lets go over those first.  My C1 button I have programed to toggle between mechanical shutter and electronic shutter. If I get in a situation where I need the quiet I can just push this button without fumbling through the menu's trying to find it.  My C2 button turns the touch screen on and off. I am a left eye dominate shooter which means my nose touches the back display and if touch screen is turned on my nose will change the focus.  This button lets me keep this feature off until I want it like doing focus stacking where I can touch where i want it to focus and snap.  My C3 button toggles between eye autofocus and animal eye focus.  This stays on people most of the time but if I come to a dog or cat I can press this button and it will focus on the animals eye.  My C4 button is to toggle between regular shooting and Super 35 ( crop sensor) mode. In this mode if I'm shooting a 35mm lens and I need a little reach real quick I can press this button and it will crop 1.5 times making this lens to shoot like a 50mm. This comes in handy while shooting street stuff when you see things and don't have time to change your lens.  As you can see these 4 buttons have been customized to how I shoot. You may have totally different things to put here that fit your style of shooting.  Doing any changing will take some reading the camera manual and googling how-to do whatever your planning to do. Don't feel bad about googling I have to do it all the time and sometimes looking at a how to video or a step by step procedure is a great help. Here are some other things to think about while customizing your camera.

Mode and Custom Settings.  If you have an advanced camera you will have a dial that has M,S,A,P ,Auto, Scene, movie and maybe custom set up. So there are many modes to shoot from. Manual , Sutter Priority,  Aperture Priority, Program, Auto or Scene.  Some people shoot in manual all of the time. Me I shoot in Aperture Priority 90% and Manual when on a tripod or at night. There are usually custom settings that you can use that might be on a M1 or 2 that you can set up the settings that you shoot when you shoot manual. So if you're shooting in Another mode and you want to quickly go to manual you can put on M1 where you put your favorite setting so you can have a quick start.

ISO- Manual or Auto. In Manual you pick what ISO you want. In Auto the camera can decide and you can set limits that the camera can't go past. For me I shoot in Auto most of the time but I have a range between 100-1200 ISO.  You can change the range anytime you want and get your camera set so it shoots the best for your camera.

Focus- Focus is a big one do you want to single focus on one spot or mutable spots.  Do you let the camera pick or do you pick. Do you do continuous focusing? What about back button focusing where you focus with a button on the back of your camera . Lots of decisions to make to make it easer for you to shoot the way you shoot and what you shoot.  I shoot continuous most of the time and back button all of the time. If I need to pick a point I can turn on my touch screen and pick one or can use my joy stick on the back of the camera to pick.

White Balance.  Do you choose or do you let the camera choose?  If you shoot in RAW you can change later if you don't like it.  Do you custom white balance which is done mainly for portraits to make sure you get the skin the right tone. Depending on what and how you shoot this could be different for each person.  I shoot in Auto and Raw so I can make changes in post 99 percent of the time if I'm taking a portrait I'll use a gray card or a color checker passport so in post I can dial in the correct white balance.

Card slots? If you have two card slots how are you going to use them. Will they be used to make duplicates on separate cards or is one card set to be a overflow incase one fills up?  Or do you shoot RAW + JPEG Raw on one card and JPEG on the other.  Thats what I shoot it gives me a backup but doesn't take as much space then I can shoot in a special mode say Black and White and my JPEGS will be black and white but my RAW will have the full color.

Customizable Menus .  If you have customizable menus you can put the things that you change the most in this special tab and you can get to them quickly.  I have a function button on the back of my camera that brings up 8 things that I can choose from the menu for quick reference. I also have a tab in the menus for Favorites where I can put important stuff.  Like Format so I don't have to search for it I know its the first item in my Favorites tab.

As you can see there are many things that you can do to customize your camera to you.  When you get your camera customized to you the camera is easier to use and you can concentrate more on photography not settings on your camera.  I'm always customizing mine trying to make it easier to use and I'm always finding new and interesting things about my camera that I didn't know. I have another Sony camera body but it's quite different and all the buttons are not the same.  But I try to make it as close to this camera so its familiar when I use it and don't have to relearn it. You've spent a lot of hard earned money on your camera make it work for you and customize it to you.  Until Next week Get outside and Shoot.

Hey Everyone! I hope you had a great week.  This week I want to talk to you about Street Photography and what it means to me. Now I shoot many kinks of photography but mainly Landscape/Travel. But I do love Street photography. Especially in a locale that I haven't been before. I love walking the streets and seeing what I can capture.  There are many forms of street photography.  I think there is portraiture , architect, casual, fine art, and many more. It can be a shoot from the hip to get the shot or right in your face to get the shot.  There are many different styles and ways of doing street Bartender waiting for Customer Boston photography.  The equipment used can be just an iPhone to one body and one lens.  It doesn't matter what type of camera equipment you use its the capture that is important. I have been reading a book. Yes a book!  The book is titled "Street Photography Assignments 75 reasons to hit the streets and learn" by Valerie Jardin.  It gives you assignments to do to grow your Street photography skills. The author only uses one lens and body for all of her work and her work is amazing!  So I have been trying to use some of the techniques that I've found in her book. To me Street photography is about exploring and documenting.  When I was growing up I remember looking at News Papers and Magazines with Man Waiting for T Boston Black and White photo's in them and you could see the story in the photographs no mater what the subject was.  If it was a riot or if it was poverty or a sporting event.  To me that is what street photography is like. I'm not out to get a story or watch a sporting event I'm there to document and capture beauty and action and how life was in the moment and time I pushed the shutter button.  I am not the in your face kind of shooter when doing street photography I'm more of casual and lets just see what I can see and using the techniques that I'm learning maybe start to tell the story like those photo's I used to see.  Here are just a few of the techniques I try to use.

- Reflections .  I love me a refection.  I love to find a puddle of water in front of a cool scene and use it to my advantage. Or a window  or even a mirror of a parked car or building.   DD Girl Reflections seem to open up the scene and zoom into the subject all at the same time.  This may be my favorite technique and I'm always looking for one.

-Selective Focusing and Framing.  I love to use a frame when I can find one.  A window , a fence anything that can be used to Isolate the subject and bring it out in a creative way. I have used the arm rest of park benches to do this .  Almost anything you can use you  just have to be creative.

-Silhouettes and Sunburst. Shooting into the sun or bright light to give the silhouette of the subject is a very cool shot.  Making a sunburst at the same time is even cooler. To make the sunburst you have to use a small aperture and catch the sun on the corner of something and you will create the sunburst.  Very Cool.

Struggling Biker Boston -Catching Day Walkers.  I love this technique you find an interesting back drop for you subject to walk through and just wait for people to come your in one place getting great shots.  Good to do while you're resting or taking a break.

-Shadows. Looking for shadows in a big city and make great photos.  You can have people coming from the dark shadow into the light you can have people waling in the light between shadows.

-Using different angles.  Looking up at a subject gives it a bigger than life appearance. Also looking down gives it a smaller appearance. Using all Points of view will give you more interesting photographs. Stairs and Shadows Boston

These are just a few of the techniques that are in the book I mentioned above and as you can see these are basically advice or tips that can be used with all types of photography.  If you haven't done much street photography pick a town or small city to explore. Look at the downtown area it will be the most interesting.  Go with a friend and just explore see what you can see.  There is lots of stuff out there!  If you're like me Street photography will be a fun way to explore different city's.  This month I'll be traveling to Boston with some friends to do just that explore and have a good time with my camera.  So until Next week get out and shoot!

Hi Everyone! Hope you had a great week! This week I want to talk about the modern Photographer and how the role of Photographer has changed. Not too long ago if you wanted Pretty Pictures you called a Photographer to come and take them. You were assured that these photographs were well exposed and looked like the people or places you wanted represented. Pretty Pictures. If you lived in a small town like I did as a teenager (back in the 70's ) with the population of only 5000 there were only a few people that had SLR cameras and knew how to take Pretty Pictures with them.  So photography wise you were a Big Fish in a small town. And it was that way for decades before and after when I was a teenager. But then digital came about.  Smart Point and Shoot cameras and then smart phones, iPads, camera's everywhere in your computer even in your car when you back up. And they can all take Pretty Pictures and even video.  Everyone reading this has a smart phone in their possession that can take Pretty Pictures and do what it took hours of work to do for a Photographer in my day in seconds.  A perfectly exposed Light House Stairs photograph can be taken by anyone by pulling a smart phone out of their back pocket and "Click" boom there it is. Smart phones have come to the point where they can be used for professional work. For quick snapshots for the local paper, to real-estate Photography. The smart phone and point and shoots have changed the meaning of Photographer as we used to know it. So why do we as Photographer's keep buying big fancy camera's and lenses? We can take "Pretty Pictures" with our cell phones? Because there is more to Photography than just taking Pretty Pictures!

Goldsboro Fire House One reason is the joy of the experience of taking a photograph. If you take a long road trip its not really just the destination its the journey. To me photography is like that. I love the process of photography. Making a composition then deciding what aperture to put the camera at. What about shutter speed on moving subjects. Do I need a tripod for a longer exposure? I love this process even more than the final result. Its all the stops you make along the way (the journey) of taking the photograph. The act of not letting the algorithm of a smart phone decide for me what all of the settings should be and what the photograph should look like.

Another reason is taking photographs that aren't Pretty Pictures. Using your camera to take abstract art or light that you can't even see like infra The MetroCommuters waiting for the Metro in Washington DC. red photography. Super long exposures of scenes that remove all of the people because they were walking by. Blurry photographs to show an emotion of a scene. These are all things that you can't do with your smart phone.

As you can see Photography is more than the end result. It is much more than how many likes you can get. Its more than the pretty sunset or sunrise or that beautiful waterfall. Its about experiencing the people and the places you go and how you got there or met them. Photography to me is a way to get out into the world and experience new things. Bringing a camera has gotten me out of the house and let me see things through a new Dice window. It has been a my Passport to the world.  It has led me to new friends and experiences that a smart phone would never do. It has changed me from a "living to work" mentality to "working to shoot or working to live" way of life. Photography, especially in recent years has shown me new places and things that I would have never got to do or see through my lens if I didn't have the fancy camera. 

Oops, I've gotten on a tangent again and started talking about me again. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you just want Pretty Pictures use your smart phone.  You will get a perfectly exposed photograph. But if you want to live the life of a Photographer don't take Pretty Pictures and get yourself one of those fancy camera's and start the journey of a lifetime of photography. Photography is one of the hobbies that you can do your whole life.  They can wheel you Wine glass Splash outside while your at the rest home while you're clutching your camera and you can look up and take photos of the clouds. Being a Photographer is a life long journey.  So until next week get outside and shoot!