Like many photographers I am self taught.  I read everything I can get my hands on, subscribe to other photographers' blogs and different photography sites.  I have books on photography, both technical and artistic.  Technical stuff like what lenses are good for what type of photography and how to use and understand lighting; artistic stuff, like posing and great wedding photography shots and the work of other great photographers.  But when I started out there were a few things that I did that I think really helped me and I am passing those on to you.

!.  Know your camera.  How can a photographer not know how their camera operates?  Well... by not being bothered with reading the manual- preferring instead to ask someone who did read their manual.  Granted, this may be a pet peeve of mine but it happens more frequently than you would expect.  First of all - it is inconsiderate as far as I am concerned when this is the most basic element of photography and  every photographer should know what their camera does and how to make it do it. If you don't know how to use your camera and won't spend the time getting to know all the buttons and dials please give it to someone who will.

2.  Understand aperture and how it is used for certain effects.  Want to create great bokeh (that blurred background or globe effect of lights in the background) - how does aperture help to do that.?  Or if shooting at night and you want to make lights look like star bursts - at what setting should you have your aperture?  Say you want a really sharp photo- does your lens have a "sweet spot" that when the aperture is at this setting yields really crisp photos?  While understanding shutter speed is important- it is not as fine a science as aperture in my book.  And understanding aperture will also help you to understand how to adjust your shutter speed to yield the results you want to create.

3.  Take the camera out of auto or program mode and start shooting in manual.  Now you don't have to start manual right away, although it is a lot like jumping into a fresh water lake; it may be a bit uncomfortable when you first jump in but you will warm up to it the longer you stay in it  until it feels very natural  You can start out by reviewing how your camera chooses the aperture and shutter speed in auto or program mode under different conditions so you can use those settings as a jumping of point in creating the effect you want in your photos.  In the automatic mode, the camera is reading the information in front of it for lighting and what you are focused on and making determinations as to whether the object is static or moving and how much lighting you need, then selecting what it perceives as the appropriate aperture or shutter speed for that situation.  Reviewing this information will help you understand what settings you should start with when choosing aperture and shutter speed under different conditions; you can then apply what you learn in the other modes of shooting as you become less dependent on the automatic setting of your camera.  Start with Aperture and Shutter Speed settings.  Say you want to create bokeh in a photo - you would choose the Aperture setting  and select your aperture width  letting the camera chose the shutter speed to complement your aperture selection.  Say, however, you want to freeze movement in an action shot; you would select your shutter speed to freeze the movement and the camera would select the aperture that is needed for the available lighting.  Once you are comfortable with these two shooting modes and have learned what settings yield what results in the automatic or program mode  and under what conditions, it is time to move on to the Manual mode, where you select both the shutter and the aperture, as the next step in your photographic evolution.  Controlling both the aperture and the shutter speed allows you complete creative control over your photos based on your artistic expression. For 90% of my work I shoot in manual.  And when I am not shooting in Manual I use Aperture because I want to get a certain bokeh effect and am confident the camera will make the right shutter speed selection, or I am in Shutter mode because I want to freeze an action or have a blurred action effect and I want to camera to read the lighting and select my aperture width for me.

4.  Finally, seek expert advice- whether it is reading or spending time with other photographers and asking questions (and not the one about what button does what thing on your camera - see number 1).  There are tons of books, online articles  and sites and lots and lots of free information, videos etc that are accessible to those that want to improve their photographic skills.  And ask your photographer friends questions, go out on photo walks and shoots with more experienced photographers, watch what they do, ask them questions about how they set up a shot or what were their settings to get a certain effect;  soak up as much knowledge as you can.  Most photographers are very generous and happy to share their knowledge with others interested in the craft.  Join a meet-up group, a photography club and just go out and shoot.  You can get lots of information about groups in your area from Google and there are tons of photo sharing sites online - Facebook, Flickr, Photo Social to name a few, where you can network with other photographers.

The photos I am posting today are examples of using aperture or shutter speed to create an effect in the photo that I would not be able to create using the Automatic or Program mode on my camera.  Tell me what I did.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shooting

Sheryl

Your Links for this week:

I am not a travel photographer.  I don't get to go photograph in the streets of Paris, take sunset shots of the Great Pyramid, or ride the ocean waves searching for shots of hump back whales during their migration.  I have to make do with what is in my house, my neighborhood, in my city, up at the lake house in Michigan or the occasional exotic vacation locale like DC or NY.  That is one of the reasons I do street photography- there is always something new to capture.

Street photography is defined as a type of documentary photography, shooting candid photos of people and other subjects in public places.  It is the capture of the interesting, the unusual, the mundane things that exist in life and that can happen everyday.  It can be very moving, funny, tragic, ironic, even uncomfortable when done right.  Some great examples of street photography can be seen in the works of Henri Cartier Besson, Christopher Agou, Mark Cohen , Brassai, William Klein and Vivan Maier to name a few.

Actually, street photography is how I got seriously started shooting.  When I purchased my first digital camera, I figured the only way to learn photography was by going out and taking pictures.  I didn't have a clue of what I wanted to shoot.  But in my neighborhood we have tons of dog owners, and as I looked around on that first day out with the camera I saw lots of people walking their dogs, enjoying an uncharacteristically warm Chicago spring day.  And so I jumped in, at first by taking shots in the distance and later, after working up a little courage, by stopping people and asking if I could take a picture of them and their dog.  If you know dog owners - and being one I do - anytime anyone likes our dogs well enough to photograph them you are just about guaranteed a shot.  And so at the end of the day, I came home with over a hundred shots of people and their dogs, some candid, some posed, some good some bad -  but it was my first foray into street photography.  

I decided to go out again and be a little more adventurous in my subject matter so the next day I walked around the neighborhood taking shots of things that interested me or that I thought would make an interesting photo.  Construction workers, street vendors, commuters on their way to or from work, the homeless and disenfranchised, children playing in the park - all became fair game as I walked around trying to be unobtrusive in what is really a very voyeuristic style of photography.  Not every photo during those early days was great.  Most weren't.  But there were enough gems in them to let me know that I liked this style of photography.  And it was not until another photographer told me that what I was shooting was street photography did I learn that there was a name for.  I was a street photographer!

Many street photographers' images are black and white.  Black and white photos lend a wonderful air of drama and tension to a photo.  In the early days this was the only choice that street photographers had.  But with the advent of our digital cameras and with software such as Nik's Silver Efex Pro you can change a color photo into a black and white photo with just a few clicks of the mouse.  But do not think that all street photography has to be in black and white.  The color photos of Mark Cohen and Jens Olof Lasthein are wonderful pure slices of life.  And what you do in editing - enhancing the mood with color, contrast, tint and toning can make something quite extraordinary.  I use a lot of the presets in Mac's Aperture as well as Color Efex Pro in post processing and love to add a retro look to a lot of my street shots.  I am not a purist when it comes to editing.  Street photography is about capturing a scene in a documentary style but post processing can effectively be used to enhance your shots without sacrificing its documentary nature.

If you are looking for a way to start shooting- or at a loss for a subject, put on your walking shoes and go out and look around.  I guarantee you there will be things you will find that make great subjects for a photograph.  And if you want to learn more about street photography check out the photographers' work I mentioned previously and a couple of these articles:

That should get you going on your journey.  Now get out there and shoot

Happy November

Welcome to Foto Graphics by Sheryl E Thomas.  This is my first attempt at a blog and while I know very little about the fine art of blogging I do know a little about photography and as I grow and learn and experiment I will share my photographic journey with you.  I think that is the exciting thing about photography:  there is always something you can learn, always another way you can shoot a subject that you have photographed many times before with a different result each time.  You can shoot the same subject at the same time as another photographer  and the photographs will be completely different because you each saw it through the lens differently.  

And for those of you who are photographic aficionados, I will even share some tricks I learn or software that I use to create certain effects in my photos so that you have the chance to try a few new things too.  I am not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination...what you will get here is the result of my trials and errors, successes and failures in this medium.

I have been most recently focused on "scapes"...land and city to be exact.  Living in Chicago I have the most wonderful architecture to photograph that anyone could ask for.  The city is known for its unique buildings and beautiful skyline.  But venturing out into the neighborhoods of Chicago will yield  architectural gems as well.  From the Victorian homes that grace some of the older areas of our city to the Prairie Style architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright to the post modern architecture of Mies Van der Rohe, architects have given Chicago  some of the best, most distinct buildings in the world.  As a visitor to Chicago, or even as a resident of the city, you would do well to take your camera to the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Bucktown and Wicker Park, Hyde Park and Bronzeville to name just a few of Chicago's great neighborhoods; and just outside the city to Oak Park which features several Frank Lloyd Wright homes.  Make sure to see the Rookery and the Monadnock buidlings in downtown Chicago - designed by Louis Sullivan and John Root and early examples of the "modern" architecture of the early 20th century and some of the first "skyscrapers" in the world.

If landscapes are what you seek, a trip down to Chicago's lakefront  will provide you with what you will swear is an ocean...Lake Michigan.  It is our own little coast and a beautiful one at that.  Just outside the city, sand dunes and beach front and tall pines await you as subjects for your photographic eye along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and the Indiana dunes.  Morton Arboretum and The Chicago Botanic Gardens are two places you must put on your shot list.  And the forest preserves in and around Chicago are a nature photographer's dream, playing host to local flora, and fauna if you are lucky enough to come across any of the 4 legged inhabitants.  I could go on and on about places to get fantastic landscape photos but part of the fun of being a photographer is doing the research and finding your own spots for your shoots so I'll just say there is much much more for you to discover.