Louisville Lens Photography opened my eyes to how underused my camera has been. I have a Canon T2i, which is a fancy way of saying that I like to pretend to be a real photographer, and that the camera looks nice. I attended one of their afternoon 2 hour photography classes with my mom, designed to teach photographer hopefuls to use the manual settings of their camera. We met at the Falls of Ohio State Park, learned some impressive words like “f stop” “ISO” and “shutter speed”. The F stop affects how much information your camera can take, the ISO affects the lighting, and the shutter speed is how fast the picture is taken, in a nutshell.
Big tip # 1: Don’t use flash. Just bump your ISO up higher. Flash makes everyone look ugly.
We originally took pictures of the Louisville skyline in direct sunlight; we soon moved to architectural photography under the railroad trestle for darker images. Once I realized all of the settings, I played around with them…a lot. I started taking close up pictures of flowers and plants; I wanted to believe I was a real artist.
Big tip # 2: Get a real close up shot, and lower your F Stop as low as you can. Pretty cool effect.
After about 100 deleted photos, and using up half my battery, I managed to get some really cool shots of a bee on a flower, with the background faded below. Trust me; I never would have gotten that shot if it wasn’t for this class.
Big tip # 3: Don’t lower your shutter speed lower than 125 if you don’t have a tripod. It gets real blurry.
As everyone drove to a darker area, we decided to walk down the path for a little extra exercise. Of course, being as fascinated as I was with my newfound camera talents, we stopped and I took another 100 deleted photos of the spider pictured below. I wasn’t quite happy with it, since it ran off, but I still never would have gotten these shots without tampering with the ISO, f stop and shutter speed.
Big tip # 4: Make someone close their eyes and open them briefly when you’re shining the reflector on them to take a picture. It’ll hurt their eyes less, and relax their face.
At the gazebo further down the path, we learned about focal points, and how that can affect the part of the picture that will be out of focus. We also learned about how to reflect light back on a person when it’s bright outside, using a bright shiny reflector. Or, if you’re cheap like me, a bright shiny piece of tinfoil.
Big tip #5: Stick your neck out like a turtle to avoid the dreaded double chin. It doesn’t show up in pictures.
Overall, the Louisville Lens experience was definitely worth it, and I will probably be going again to the night photography class. They were nice enough to take a picture of me and my mom at the end, which showed their talent for doing portraits, too, for anyone that needs senior or kid pictures.
Big tip #6: Look up Groupons and LivingSocial to find the best deals on class prices with Louisville Lens. It’s definitely worth going.
