Making My Way Through This Darkness

Big learning day last weekend…..

A few weeks ago, my friend and I took a bunch of shots of her daughter in various Tae Kwon Do poses (you may have seen them – Sometimes It Seems So Far Away, September 21, 2009).

We packaged the shots up and took them into the Tae Kwon Do studio where she studies and talked to the instructor about taking shots of all of his students. (I’m so used to soccer, hockey, baseball – where annual photos are just part of “the deal”… I was surprised to learn that there are no photos taken of these kids at any time over the years.)

Anyway, long story short – he was very supportive and we’ll be doing our first set of shots before Christmas.

Because he didn’t seem to have a lot of photos of his instructor team, we thought we’d “warm up” with a photo session with a few of them and get him some shots he could use in his marketing/recruiting efforts. We were ready and pretty excited. Just a couple of minor glitches (like we forgot an extension cord…..) – easy things to fix without looking like complete amateurs!

I think, though, that I went into this shoot a little over-confident. I’ve had quite a bit of luck lately taking photos. To my surprise, I haven’t really had a lot of trouble getting the shots I’ve been picturing in my mind. Where hockey is concerned, I get it – I’ve been doing that for quite a while and really have it down. But even some of the new stuff I’ve been trying came a lot easier than I thought it would. So I guess I thought this would be a bit of a breeze – not really the case. Some shots were way overexposed – some were way underexposed – they weren’t as sharp as I wanted them to be – the composition was off….the list goes on and on…more than I’d like it to!

So here’s what I learned (and that’s what this is all about, right?….):

• I can’t just walk into a shoot and “guess” at what the settings on my camera need to be, particularly when it’s a new environment. I have to use that light meter! I thought I had the exposure just right in a couple of test shots – but I didn’t…. See what I mean?

• I really have to stop pretending I know how to use my flash equipment! Look at this – WAY too much light – hello?….

…and this….uh…where WAS the flash?

• I have to keep my head about me and remember to change my lenses when I need to. Going in, I had plans to use a faster lens for the action shots and I just didn’t. Not sure how that fell apart.

 

• And the worst part is – I saw it all falling apart on the screen on the back of my camera – I knew it wasn’t going well. But things were happening so fast and I lost control of the shoot. I really needed to speak up and take control – to have them stop for a few minutes until I’d re-set and everything was where I needed it to be to get the kinds of shots I was hoping for.

But I didn’t…..

At the end of the day, I learned what NOT to do, so that’s a good thing. I think there’s always a “what NOT to do” moment no matter what it is we’re trying to learn. It’s almost a rite of passage of sorts. As well, after spending a bit of time tweaking and adjusting the photos, I’m OK with the results:

 

Next time, though, I’m going for better quality right off the top and less time editing after the fact. Fingers crossed – we’ll see how it goes!