Friday, March 12, 2010

On aperture and shutter speed (and a pre-nup shoot)

I was asked by a friend to do a pre-nuptial shoot for her college friend. I excitedly said yes right away. Moments later when it sunk in, I panicked! hehehe.

Last year, when I did my brother's pre-nup shoot, I wasn't that high on the outcome (some pictures came out dark!!!), and I need to do a lot of post processing (in Picasa, I am yet to try my hand on photoshop) to brighten up my day, uhm, the pictures. Although they came out fine, I would have preferred less post processing (read: i am lazy).

As the day draws nearer, that feeling of not being able to deliver pressured me to no end, and that pressure is slowly overtaking the excitement i initially had.

Until I realized my mistakes (or stupidity if you'll allow me hehe)

The problem with "dark" pictures is in the setting!!! I've been on manual focus since day 1 with Zeus but instead of figuring out my problem, I always let frustrations reigned over me when faced with low light scenario, I just patched it by going into Aperture mode or by using the pop-up flash, which in both cases, add more frustrations whenever i see blurs and/or a washed out picture. Maybe I am just too excited to take pictures that I let some important technicalities of photography to the side. Or maybe I am just plain lazy.

Punish me for not putting into heart that a combination of large aperture and a slow shutter speed lets more light in, and if the scene is too bright, doing the opposite (or with the help of a filter) will do the trick. There. Not rocket science, just a simple turn on the dial saved my bleeding brain! Poor me for being one s*@#$%@#@$!

I admit that yours truly is not technically proficient, that whenever I read some photography stuffs, the mere mention of exposure value intimidates me. I should have faced the technical aspect early on. I should shoot more to know my camera more. And I should listen to photographers' experiences to learn more and be better on the craft.

The road is still long for me to be even called a mediocre shooter, more so as a mediocre photographer, but that road can be traversed, and while on that road, I need to absorb all lessons and take each mistake as an opportunity to learn. I expect them to be a lot, just like the buttons on the camera and the menu on the lcd screen. :)

Back on the pre nup shoot, for now, let me just share you this.


more to come, happy weekend... :)

8 comments:

Oman said...

ang ganda ng mga shots. astig.

tina said...

love the shots!

bing said...

i love that pic showing the smile and the hands entwined together. very cool.

zherwin said...

lawstude, salamat salamat. :)

zherwin said...

thanks, tina. :)

zherwin said...

bing, thanks, it looks really cool but it was hard taking that intertwining hands, the sun was really low and i need to be also really low on the ground, but i like it!

atticus said...

okay naman mga kuha mo ah.

ako pag madilim, adjust agad ako ng ISO. mahina sa dilim ang camera ko at built in lang ang flash ko kasi. tiis-tiis lang muna tayo. hehe.

zherwin said...

atticus, minsan kasi kapag ISO ang ina-adjust ko, nagiging grainy. tama, tiis-tiis muna at maximize na lang kung ano'ng meron tayo hehe.

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