Today’s module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course explores movement, so he suggests techniques to freeze or alternatively blur the action of speeding vehicles or to capture traffic trails at night but I’ve headed for Coxley Beck to try some long exposures of flowing water.
For these one- to two-second exposures a tripod was essential and, as with the macro flower shots yesterday, using an app on my iPhone to trigger the camera and set the focus point made things a lot easier than squinting through the viewfinder. It also cut out any chance of camera shake.
After the portrait module I’m back on home turf with ‘Nature’ today in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course.
He suggests getting up at dawn for a dew-fresh close-up of grass blades but yesterday, as the late afternoon sun backlit a patch of our front lawn, I went for his alternative suggestion of adding the ‘dew’ with a fine-rose watering can.
My usual approach to flower photography is to snap away and hope for the best, so it was interesting to try his more considered approach, using a tripod and setting up the shot with a bit of extra care.
Remote Control
This is where the ability to remote control my Olympus DSLR with an iPad proved useful (you can also use a smart phone). It enables you to control aperture, shutter speed, ISO ‘film speed’ and focus without crouching down to look at the subject via the camera’s viewfinder or flip-up screen.
Leaf Veins
The final challenge was to photograph a backlit leaf. My Huion light pad wasn’t bright enough so I sprayed the leaf with water and stuck it to the studio window.
The whole beginner’s course is designed for a digital camera with an general purpose ‘kit lens’. Mine zooms from 14-42mm, which in traditional 35mm cameras that would be 28-84mm: ranging from a wide-angle (28mm) that doesn’t distort perspective too much to a short telephoto (84mm) that is useful for portraits.
When I bought the camera it also came with a dedicated macro lens and a modest telephoto zoom (80mm to 300mm in traditional 35mm terms) so I’m impressed at how well the everyday kit lens has performed as a macro lens on the leaf.
