This may not be my most exciting post but I wanted to get this in before 'they' made me work or something. Just kidding, that's all I ever do and since I don't get a break (really) I am taking these 2 secs to share my non-break with you. I was really inspired yesterday by a post over on Creature Comforts about Cannelle et Vanille, a lovely little interview with a wickedly talented pastry chef and now photographer Aran (she's been shooting for only a year!):
I am currently more obsessed than usual about photography since I got me a fancy 'ol camera from my Fancy as a birthday present. I am a pretty green when it comes to truly being able to take a 'proper 'photo, I mean I can fake it and I Photoshop like nobody's business but to take a gorgeous shot on it's own like the ones above--no can do, BUT I want to! So, I have taken to trying to learn as much as possible (without resorting to reading the manual of course). I check out Flick'r and look at and study styles I love. One thing I learned yesterday was that when you go to Flick'r on some photo's you can actually learn the settings the photographs were taken on to perhaps try to learn and recreate a similar type of photo style.
Confused? Okay, I'll try to explain, here's a screen shot on the page of a photo I loved, it reads the type of camera the photo was taken with, in this case a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (just happens to be my brand, yea!) Below the camera name in blue reads 'More properties', click on that and...
This dialog box will come up loaded with settings! This is great to help you learn to set all your settings manually and possibly re-create a similar photo.
Of course you can always shoot automatic and probably get a very pretty photo, but if you have lost your marbles like me and everything is confusing and all you really want to know is how did they do that? Then this is a good and fun route to take, some people just learn by doing and then there's me I learn by falling on my face a couple times and then hopefully things 'click', if you are the former and not the latter than this might be a good way to go.
You can look up your camera in the search box on flickr and see other photo's taken with your type of camera and go searching for more info from there:
Once you start hanging around Flickr a little bit you might even be able to build up your confidence to send a Flickr mail or two and ask the photographer a couple of questions. One thing I don't know how to do is make someone my Flickr contact, which is lame because ti looks like all the other kids know how to do this and well I am just a little slow I suppose.
For those that don't give a hoot about the above there's always some Flick'r toys here that can help make your photo's fun for the whole family...