So I’m supposed to be practicing guitar for 30 minutes a day, on the kitchen-timer-accomplish-your-goals plan.
My wife walks into my office, looks around, and says: “Hasn’t that music book been on the same page for over a week?”
Um, I can fix that. . .
Learn Your Camera – Read the Manual
This is obvious to me, but it seems few people read manuals for anything.
Do you know what every button on your camera does? What all those menu items are?
I strongly encourage folks to read their manuals, and follow along and practice changing settings on the camera. Don’t worry that you may “screw something up.” More than likely there’s a single menu item to return everything to default settings.
Manufacturers put hours and hours into developing manuals. I occasionally get work editing manuals translated from, say, Japanese to English (I’m a freelance editor with some connections in Japan). I know how thorough and detailed the process is for developing manuals that are accurate, readable, and understandable.
I try to skim my camera manuals every year or two, and always find stuff I’ve forgotten, or have never tried. You might be surprised by features available on your camera that you may have not known existed! I keep the manuals out in a prominent spot in a bookshelf in my office, and delve into them from time to time.
If you find the manufacturer’s manual dry, publishers like RockyNook offer books on how to use, and get the most out of, popular camera models.
Of course digital cameras also come with software, and that software also has a manual. Yes, I’m going to advise reading that manual, too!
But I’m not going to get into the software side now.
Have fun reading!
What? You threw out your manual?
Go to your camera maker’s website and download it (they’re nearly always free to download even if you haven’t registered your camera).
I took a stroll along Burnaby Foreshore Park in South Burnaby over lunch today. I love checking out the pond life, and seeing what’s happening along the river.
Check out my Flickr album here.
Somebody was being naughty today, allowing sediment to flow into Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby.
Vigilant streamkeepers reported the ugly looking and potentially fish-killing pollution to the City of Burnaby. Thanks to the volunteers who keep “eyes on the creek” and immediately notify the City of any problems. And thanks to City staff who responded quickly.
It was obvious which storm pipe the sediment came from, as can be seen in the photos below.
If you were a fish, amphibian, aquatic insect, or any other animal, do you think you’d like to be swimming in that?
Here you can clearly see that the sediment entered the creek through this storm outlet.
Another view. The flow here in the upper portion of the creek on a dry day is so slow that this “slug” of sediment was barely moving. It’ll take a rain to flush it out of the creek.
I was asked to be the event photographer for yesterday’s Edmonds City Fair & Car Show in SE Burnaby. It was a great event, with lots of activities for all ages. While it drizzled intermittently, with a real soaking for the last half hour or so, people had lots of fun, and stuck it out to the end with great spirit.
I focused on people and not so much the vehicles on display. You can view my Flickr album here.
I took a break from the din of the multiple commercial fans drying out the water damage in our townhouse, and headed down to Elgin Heritage Park. It’s one of my favourite places to photograph birds.
I was asked to share some photography tips at an event a few weeks ago for streamkeepers who volunteer in the Lower Mainland area of British Columbia. I thought perhaps I’d share them here on my blog, too, offering a tip every couple of days.
So here goes with tip 1:
Take a class or three. Often camera stores offer free or cheap classes when you purchase a camera. Your community centre likely has introduction to photography courses. Major camera makers like Canon and Nikon offer travelling courses. Take advantage of these.
OK, let me expand upon that. If you’re a newbie, any instruction is valuable. Good photography is a craft, and can be a fine art. Cameras are fine, complex, tools. It takes years to learn, but it’s easy to start down the road with today’s inexpensive auto-everything cameras.
You may not aspire to be an artist, and if you just want to take better photos of family and friends, of activities you participate in, and trips you take, learn your camera and a bit about the principles of photography. It’s worth it!
If you’re experienced, workshops and seminars pitched at higher levels are excellent for stimulating creativity, learning new techniques, and broadening your mind.
What’s my photography learning history?
(I shall now wax exuberant upon my photography education. This may, or may not, be boring for folks. I do hope you’ll follow along, though. . . )
I started out at school in my early teens, learning the rudiments of camera work, processing B&W film, and making prints in a darkroom. I volunteered as a photographer on my high school paper, and at university papers. I read voraciously, subscribing to several photography magazines and buying as many books as I could afford.
As a kid I hung out at the local camera store for hours, bugging the ever-patient staff. They taught me things, let me handle new gear, and gave me great deals, pointing me to great savings on used equipment, and so on.
My first SLR was a Mamiya-Sekor 500DTL. It came with the standard 50mm lens, and eventually I added a 28mm wide-angle and a 135mm telephoto. Flashes, extension tubes, filters, and other accessories were added bit by bit. The Mamiya used the Pentax screw mount, so eventually I picked up a used Pentax body or two, the models which I no longer remember. I still have the 500DTL and 50mm lens though!
Eventually I moved up to pro gear, laying out significant dollars for a Nikon F2, with 24/2.8, 50/1.4, 55/3.5 micro, 105/2.5, 80-200 zoom, etc. The backup body then was a Nikkormat FT2, eventually followed by an N2000 with a Vivitar Series 1 28-105 zoom.
Somewhere in there I also had a few other cameras bought used and cheap.
I took a couple of photography classes at the university level through the Fine Arts department. The instructors taught me patience, lighting, composition, “seeing” and more.
As a teen I earned enough money doing event photography to mostly cover the cost of my equipment.
Unfortunately, much of my B&W work, and other photography in the mid-70s to early 80s was lost in a sewage backup when I was living in a basement suite. Such is life. I now have multiple backups of my digital files, and keep remote backups on hard drives in a safety deposit box at my bank. Read that last sentence again!
There was a fallow period in my late 20s to late 30s when I was pretty much satisfied with point-and-shoots and casual photography, but the digital revolution drew me back and reignited my passion.
It was just so cool to be able to take hundreds and thousands of “free” photos. Well, not free, you had to buy a couple of memory cards and backup hard drives, but compared to Kodachrome (which was lovely) or Fujichrome (which had its own atmosphere), digital was freeing. You could afford to shoot more, experiment more.
I got my first digital camera, a Kodak DC4800, in March 2001. Since then I’ve gone through a succession of pocketable Canon PowerShot Elphs (you can pretty much rely that I’ll have one of these on me all the time).
My first DSLR was a Nikon D300. I got it in August 2008, and I still use the heavy, solid, semi-pro machine. I love that it can work with my ancient manual Nikkor lenses. I’ve added a Nikon D5200 as a second body, and would love to get a D7100 or its replacement some day. Not to mention eventually getting a full-frame DSLR. . .
The good news is that I am making a bit of money from photography again, covering events like I did as a kid. I’m not interested in wedding or commercial photography, but events, documentary, landscapes and nature/wildlife would be great to make $$ at. 🙂
So that’s where I’m coming from.
And that’s where my tips will come from.
Hope you’ll follow along!
I took a bunch of photos today with the new Tamron 150-600mm zoom (225-900mm equivalent on my DX-sensor Nikons).
Here are a few from the Byrne Creek habitat in SE Burnaby:
Butterfly on leaf
A slightly different view
Grasshopper in Byrne Creek habitat in SE Burnaby
And several from Piper Spit at Burnaby Lake in Burnaby:
Goslings at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake
Female wood ducks, Burnaby Lake
I think female wood ducks are so cute!
While male wood ducks are quite spectacular
Duck playing hide and seek among the lillypads
A common whitetail dragonfly?
All of the above shots were with the Tamron 150-600 on a Nikon D5200 camera. ISOs ranged from 400 in bright sunlight to 1,600 in shade to keep shutter speeds high. The lens was mounted on a Manfrotto 679B monopod with a Vanguard SBH-100 ball head.
While heavy, this rig is not unmanageable. I think I would have soon tired if the rig had not been on a monopod. It was useful not only for stabilization while shooting, but also to simply stand and rest!
I’ve typed in these quotations from Nelson Mandela that Google is running as a Google Doodle today. Powerful.
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.
People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.
Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall.
I posted this on my Facebook account several days ago and its gotten a pile of “likes” so thought I’d share it here, too.
Had a wonderful evening last weekend. A BBQ hosted by friends of ours in Vancouver. Lovely old house in an older neighborhood. An evening in a gorgeous, modestly groomed, but more wild, back yard, with many burgeoning fruit trees and raspberry bushes.
We were the youngest couple there, and we’re in our mid-40s to mid-50s.
We’re a “mixed” couple, and so was everyone else. And some were in their 80s and 90s, and enjoying life to the full. Former neighbors, still friends, now living in old folks’ homes but graciously picked up and driven to this communal feast in their former ‘hood..
Awesome.
As the evening eased by, there were smatterings of Korean, Italian, and Japanese in the conversations. Not all understood by all present despite concerted efforts at interpretation.
But everyone was cool with that. We were all happy to be with other convivial folks.
And all were sure to ensure that all were happy.
The food was a wonderful melange of those cultures, and more.
I’m not sure where this post is going, but I have to say that if I make it to 80, I hope I still have caring friends like this bunch of party animals do!
