Diary of a photographer: Entry 13.9.20 Photo in the Park - Pet edition
Hello, hello,
Go brew some coffee, it is coffee break blog time!
Day’s Recap:
On Sunday I held my first photo in the park mini photo shoot event. It was a pet edition. I got to photograph all the cute doggies.
This involved 30 min photo shoots with peoples pets. I hope this will be a recurring series of mini shoots with the hope more people can get high quality photos of themselves, their pets, their children and anything else worth capturing. Without the big time or cost barrier than can stop people from normally doing these things.
We got so lucky with the weather and we met up in Phoenix Park, near the band stand beside the Tea rooms. After the obligatory coffee, I spent the morning shooting photos of the cute dogs that showed up.
Unfortunately COVID scuppered the ability of some people to show up!
Who else is fed up with COVID-19?
But fun was still had and definitely will be a repeat event.
So setting the settings:
So how did I capture the beautiful furry creatures? Well first I had to choose my lens. I went with my 35mm Sigma prime lens. This lens is a fantastic portrait lens with a lovely wide aperture (f/1.4). This is my go lens for portraits and capturing faces.
I also brought my Canon 50mm as my backup portrait lens and then my zoom canon 70-200mm Canon. Since sometimes you just need that zoom feature and extra reach of the longer focal length. But as always, I started on my 35mm and never needed to change.
But as always, I started on my 35mm and never needed to change.
Next I needed to set my settings. So since I was shooting animals I knew I needed control over my shutter speed so I used my Tv (S on Nikon/Sony) mode and started with a fast shutter speed and since it was so bright, I was actually able to go quite fast and maintain good exposure. Which was lucky because the doggies were moving all over the place. I always set my ISO to 100 (the lowest setting) as default and only adjust if needed which this time it was not. Then I let my camera calculate my aperture for each shot as I played around with my shutter speeds.
Easy peasy. If any of these terms confuse you, feel free to ask in comments, check out my instagram account where I post definitions of many of these terms or keep checking back here, as I will in time blog and explain them all.
Composition Consideration:
The final piece of the puzzle then, once settings are set, is composition. Often this is the most challenging part, when shooting animals as they tend not to understand just look a little more up or move this way or that. Oftentimes you have to get into the weirdest positions and work around them. It involves a lot of jumping up and down, lying on the ground and mimicking some sort of spider monster crouch.
I won’t go into much in what I considered as I shot throughout the day, as the next blog, I will be reviewing composition considerations.
Shout out:
Just wanted to shout to Roxy and her hooman Karen, my co-hosts for the day and all round awesome folk. They have an incredible mission to make Dublin more dog friendly including cafes where we get the coffees. How nice would it be to go in to any cafe, drink some coffee and play with everyones dogs. I would highly recommend checking out Roxys page at SmalldogsBigCity over on instagram and support the cafes that are already dog friendly.
Empty Coffee mug time:
My coffee mug needs refilling, which must mean I am done for now.
Happy sipping, and happy shooting,
Sinéy