Working with the Resources You Have

Walk this way. © Brenda Tharp

OK, not to rub in the whole Summit experience, but it truly was a great weekend! On Monday, the instructors had our summit, to review the site, the courses, etc. and make improvements to keep BetterPhoto.com™ growing and improving! Finished with our meetings on Monday, many of decided to go into Seattle on Tuesday morning for a photo outing. Now imagine 10 or 12 pro photographers all going to the same spot, just for fun! We worked our way up to the Experience Music Project, the same one that Kerry wrote about yesterday. What a fantastic building to photograph from the outside! There were abstracts, geometric compositions and more to work with. But I wanted to do something a little different, so I started asking fellow instructors to become part of my photographs. That's our own Robin Nichols walking past the cool structure of yellow vertical panels. And the shadow in the reflective wall? That's our own Neil Silverman! We were the only people around initially, so it made sense to use the resources I had at hand, to add a human figure and therefore human interest to the photographs I was making.

I didn't have a tripod with me, since originally there wasn't going to be time for serious photography on this trip; but I used the image stabilization settings on my Canon lenses, and also braced my body against poles, walls - anything I could to get as steady as possible for these pictures. I wanted maximum depth of field and that meant sometimes my shutter speed was down to about 1/30. It's hard to hand hold at those shutter speeds, but to help ensure I got a sharp image, I put the camera on continuous frame shooting, and took three or four images at one shutter-press. This technique really works! The ones in the middle are the sharpest, as the button pressing or button-releasing can cause camera movement. But once held down, the camera will be more steady. Try it the next time you find a need for a slower shutter speed than you can hand hold - and see the results for yourself!

Shapes in Steel © Brenda Tharp.

The great thing in this morning outing was that we were all willing to help each other out without feeling like we were missing a shot of our own. There was no feeling of being competitive, but one of sharing. We shared not only the place, but pointed out neat photo possibilities to each other. And many of us photographed Robin when he agreed to walk into that particular scene for me. Did I care? No, because I knew that ultimately we all had individual moments of that situation, and individual compositions. It was a very synergistic, supportive and fun walk-about that we had that morning. The only problem was not having enough time to capture it all before having to leave Seattle. But I plan to go back. There's many more great pictures waiting there for me!

Reflecting © Brenda Tharp.

Comments

[Joe]

Makes me want to go back!

[Lucy Durfee]

Thanks for sharing your images from the "Experience Music Project". I'll have to try your continuous frame shooting technique. Would it lockup the mirror during the burst? I have a remote shutter release for my camera, but it doesn't have mirror lockup and at around 1/30 and 1/15 my images aren't as sharp.
The evening after the summit I went to the Space Needle for sunset and then shot around the Music Project when it was dark. The night shots I got are pretty cool. However, like you, I didn't have much time. I'm looking forward to visiting Seattle again soon. Thanks again for all your inspiration. I enjoyed meeting you at the summit.