I’m not a newcomer to photography. From my first Polaroid One Step to my Kodak Disc to my first 35mm Pentax K-1000 to digital point and shoots to now my Nikon D80 DSLR I’ve used a lot of different cameras. My dad was an amateur photographer and took some great pictures too–I don’t have any of them here with me, but maybe I can get some soon–and I learned a lot from him. I think he would really love the new digital world (he had his own dark room at one time), thinking about it I wonder what kind of pictures he would take. However, I didn’t get the chance to learn everything about photography from him. I was just doing vacation shots and such when he passed away.
So while not a newbie photographer by any means, I am doing something new now–taking my photography seriously and trying to learn as much as I can on how to get better and better at it.
The Magic of Cropping
Recently I’ve been reading a few photography blogs and trying to learn a thing or three. The first thing I picked up was learning how to crop the pictures I’ve taken to make them really stand out. I got the tips and ideas from the Digital Photography School blog from a recent post on, of course, how to improve pictures with cropping. Taking these tips, here are some of the results (not nearly as stunning as the examples in the post).
First here is the uncropped original picture:
And here is the same image cropped to a 5×7 image:
Okay the differences between those are pretty subtle, but this is a better example:
vs.
I wanted to highlight the cool architecture better, cropping did the trick here.
It’s the glass baby–50mm prime f/1.8 lens
Of course photographers will tell you that it isn’t the camera but the “glass” (aka lens) that makes all the difference in your pictures. I read, and was inspired by, this article on Josh Hallett and his photography (which I love) from mediabullseye. The one thing that the article made me really crave was a 50mm prime lens. Since Josh said that they were pretty affordable (around $100, which is really affordable for a lens) I thought I’d shop around for one. This past weekend I bought one and just like the woman at Kerrisdale Cameras said, I’m addicted to it already. Why? Well this post I was sent via Twitter says it all:
I suppose my favorite thing about prime lenses is the fact that you have to use your head. Composition becomes a thinking game. You have to move your feet to get that shot you had in mind, so you really start to evaluate what’s important in the scene. Fast primes also make you think a little harder about your f-number. The DOF can be extremely shallow; sometimes too shallow to produce an effective shot. Not only that, but on bright sunny days, you actually can’t use the lens wide open without an ND filter because you’ll let in too much light and max out your shutter speed. From: 7 Reasons To Love Prime Lenses
Here are some of my favourites from my first few times playing with the lens. I’m still learning it so they aren’t as great as I’d like yet. Its ability to pull in light is just mind blowing and the clarity speaks for itself. Like Brian Auer said in the article above, you have to think when using this lens. That is something that makes this even more fun.
I keep saying I’m going to go on a photowalk with this lens, but still haven’t made it. Maybe Tuesday…
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