The Best Way To Learn Photographic Technique

The Best Way To Learn Photographic Technique

by William Lulow

 I recently had a chance to work with a student one-on-one on an actual photoshoot! As an experienced teacher, I’m always looking for ways to describe what can happen on a shoot and how to be ready for any eventuality when you are covering an event or a person with your camera. 

As part of my teaching process, especially with students who have not yet mastered the way a DSLR controls light, the best way to get them to see how the process works is to take them out into the field and let them see for themselves by trying to capture their own images.

I can conduct private lessons or classes in camera technique by giving students “assignments” to complete right on the spot. For example: Make an image of people with a soft background. Or, compose an image that has some empty space on one side.

Here is a student shooting the former assignment:

This can be done “on location” (the street) or in the studio with a model:

Recently, I had the opportunity to teach a student who was actually doing an assignment from someone else. I was able to show her how I would go about it. She even purchased an on-camera bounce flash rig for the occasion. My particular approach to this lesson was as follows:

The first thing is to look at the venue you will be using so that you can determine what kind of light you will need. This particular assignment that the student was shooting took place in a dance studio with plenty of light from several, large windows. This is great, but it can present a few problems. One is that with so much light coming in from outside, people’s faces would sometimes be in shadow unless they were filled in with some artificial light. We were going to try to shoot with available light, but it became clear almost immediately, that we had to use a fill-in light. The student, Sheila, had a couple of lenses from which to choose and a Canon flash that she could mount on her camera. I suggested that she begin by bouncing the light off the ceiling and see what the results were. When we looked at the LCD, exposures were fine, but we determined that the ceiling was a bit too high to bounce the light and get the workable lens aperture (f/stop) that we wanted. So, we went with a reflector card attached to the flash to broaden out the light and give some additional power to the overall output. 

This was the rig we were using. The flash on the camera was enough to fill in the dancer’s faces and also capture enough of the ambiance of the room. 

The great thing about this type of teaching/learning is that the instructor can suggest things right as the student is shooting! There is really no substitute for this kind of learning experience, because the conditions present themselves AS THE STUDENT IS ACTUALLY SHOOTING.  Problems that arise are solved as they happen and the student realizes not just how they are dealt with but why! You don’t always get this from an online video or a workshop situation. 

One of the things that came up was that Sheila wanted to compose a shot vertically instead of horizontally. This would have entailed having the flash mounted on a bracket that would allow for vertical shooting. We did not have such an accessory. So, I suggested we just keep everything horizontal and think about cropping the images in post production. It is most often better to do it this way, especially when covering an event with a lot of movement. Don’t forget, a vertical composition is taller and narrower and may restrict the very movement you are trying to capture. 

Here are a couple of Sheila’s shots from this lesson:

   
You can tell by these images that she got exactly what she was going for here. The dancers’ motion was frozen by the 1/125th of a second shutter speed and the room was lit well enough to shoot at approximately f/5.6. 

This constituted a well thought out and executed assignment.

When students are forced to THINK about what they are shooting and exactly how to go about it, the learning curve is made much simpler.