Learning photography from a six-year-old

I know a lot of folk who could learn a thing or two about photography from my six-year-old granddaughter Fiona.

She has been using my Canon PowerShot S90 since she was two. The kid is confident and I am beginning to understand there is a lot of thinking going on in that young head.

The other day Fiona decided to shoot some pictures of her Shopkins. These are little collectible toys that are all the rage today.

I was amazed when I saw her pictures. They were actually pretty good. Unfortunately, the best shot was a bit out-of-focus. Hey, cut the kid some slack. She is only human and a damn young human at that.

What amazed me most about these shots were the backgrounds and foregrounds. Without prompting, Fiona told me that she spent more time finding the appropriate backgrounds and foregrounds than she did on setting up the Shopkins. I know adults who have never figured out that if it is in the picture it's important. They ignore busy backgrounds regularly and then wonder why their pictures don't have punch.

She also said lighting was important, especially for one shot showing a side-lit Shopkins pair.

She put the Shopkins on the wooden floor and chose a high shooting angle to minimize the sofa in the background. It almost worked. I thought the angle was too high but the lighting was remarkable. I loved the long, dark shadow.

Learn to think when taking pictures and be self-critical. Fiona does both but she needs a little time to mature. After all, she is only six.

Confidence will take you a long way

My six-year-old granddaughter took this picture for me. Thanks, Fiona.

Recently I received an LCBO gift card from a close friend. The LCBO is the government run liquor and beer store chain in Ontario for those who don't know. My friend suggested I take the card and buy three inexpensive but enjoyable wines. It was a good suggestion and I took it.

I wanted to send my friend a picture of me with my purchases but the only person handy to take the picture was my granddaughter who is six. When I told her what I wanted she smiled knowingly: "You have to use me. I'm the only person here." She was right.

Was I concerned? Not really. I've been letting Fiona use my little point and shoot, a Canon PowerShot S90, since she was two. The kid isn't perfect but she has confidence. I knew her confidence might carry the day and it did.

She took a picture, checked it on the monitor and ordered me to take another pose. She took shot after shot until she was satisfied. I don't think I smiled enough for her liking but she knew my poses were not going to get much better.

She also had an opinion on the wines. She feared the one with a "smelly" foot on the label might be a poor choice. Later, I discovered she might be right. Her mother, a wine consultant, agreed it might have been a poor choice: too sweet.

The point of all this is to have confidence when taking pictures. Shoot a lot and don't let anyone or anything dissuade you from taking another picture if you think you should. Keep plugging away and you'll walk away a winner.

Good pictures are rarely taken by the timid and certainly not by timid six-year-olds.

Asking kids to "say cheese" is cheesy

My oldest granddaughter uses her sewing machine and the sound bothers her sister.

My granddaughters have been asked to say "cheese" so often that when they play with a toy camera they ask their dolls to say "cheese." I'd like to scream: "Why!"

Saying cheese doesn't make a subject look like they are smiling. What it does is it stops them doing what they were doing that made you want to take a picture. Take the picture and forget the cheese.

Shooting RAW worth considering under difficult conditions

Love the swirling colours thanks to the slow shutter speed. A  lucky shot.

I've never been a big booster of shooting RAW. As mainly a shooter for a local daily newspaper, JPEG did just fine and it was quicker to work with when getting images into the paper -- or so I believed. This past Monday I had to question my position. I shot my six-year-old granddaughter on stage with the Kidlets of the Original Kids Theatre Company. Working on the RAW images was both fast and exceedingly easy.

I use Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop would not show me a preview of my RAW images. I had to boot up Bridge to see the all important previews. This isn't that big a deal but it is a miner hassle.

RAW image straight from camera.

Now, let me show you the RAW image as it came from the camera.

Now, in defence of my former love of JPEG images. When I was working, I was shooting with a top-of-the-line Canon camera. That was one wonderful camera and it corrected colour in camera using some amazing algorithms.

That said, two photogs at the paper tried shooting RAW. One loved it and found it fast and efficient. The other found shooting RAW slowed him down. News shooters cannot let anything creep into their working methods that eats into the time needed to get their images into the paper.

Today I am shooting with a Fuji FinePix HS10. It is a good camera for the price and I'm happy. That said I've learned to shoot RAW. It clearly offers more latitude when it comes to image enhancement. And, as I use it more and more frequently, I can see how the one photog came to love shooting RAW.

The RAW image enhanced and saved as a JPEG. Results are simply amazing.

Finding the right angle can create a visual surprise

This image takes the advice found in the last post and adds another wrinkle: The importance of camera angle.

The Golden Sword Yucca on our backyard is a striking plant from almost any angle. But one of the most interesting angles is the one from above. I stood on a plastic lawn chair to get to the right height.

I have said this before but it bears repeating: If your knees are never soiled, you are not putting enough variety in the points of view captured in your pictures. Get down low, get up high (as was done to capture this image), spend some time seeking different angles. You will be rewarded.

An excellent news shooter I met through work told me he imagines a large, glass dome over his subject. He moves his camera all over the dome seeking surprising new angles. He discovered at media photo opts he was often off on his own, alone, shooting the event, while the herd of media photographers pushed and shoved each other jockeying to take the same shot.

"Printing" with the goal of making colours pop

Years ago I was taught to expose for the shadows and print for the highlights.The goal was to keep a little detail in both the extreme shadows and the extreme highlights. It was a good rule but it can be broken and with some success. (The rule applied more to black and while photography than colour as the two processes were quite different. Modify the development time for colour film and one risked suffering strange colour shifts and other unwanted results.)

This picture of my wife's chrysanthemums is a good example. The oh-so-dark background makes the bright colours pop and contrasts very positively with the clean whites in the flowers. A little detail would be acceptable, even preferable, but it must be minimized to avoid adding a distraction to the all important blooms.

This image was taken into Photoshop and the contrast carefully increased. Care was taken to hold the detail in the highlights. As a rule, we are far more lenient when it comes to accepting detail-missing shadows that blown-out highlights.

Continuous shooting is for more than action photography

Continuous shooting mode is for more than simply capturing sports action. We don't always have to strive for a peak action moment depicting time halted: a dog frozen in mid-air leaping for a Frisbee, a tobogganer launching from sharp bump in the slope or any of a thousand other exciting moments captured at the peak of the action. No, continuous shooting mode can be used to carve quiet moments out of a hectic activity.

This little girl can be a live wire, a tightly wound little bundle quickly fraying at the seams. Her smiles are grand but fleeting. They stick in one's memory but can be hard to capture with a camera. When she started bouncing, literally bouncing, about the room, I slipped my camera into continuous shooting mode and began firing. I cranked off more than five hundred pictures.

This moment was truly fleeting. She had bounded across the room and stopped quickly by grabbing the iron bed. She brushed her hair back and then with a solid yank on the bed she quickly exited stage right.

The moment is a bit of a lie. Oh, it happened. It had to have happened. I have the picture. But no one watching would have seen this moment. This is a purely photographic moment and a very good one at that.

Does the image show a side of the child with which we are all familiar? I'd say, "Yes." Is it a fair representation of what was happening Sunday? I'd have to confess, "No." And yet, I love this picture.

In the larger scheme of things, this is a very good picture of this little girl. It is both good and accurate. Anyone knowing her would recognize the expression and the gesture. It is a fine picture and I have no qualms about having shot a pile of images per second until I had burned through more than 500 images in order to get it.

I've got a fine shot, a fine family memory picture, and that is all that is important.