{"id":574,"date":"2018-10-24T18:20:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T18:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=574"},"modified":"2019-11-21T09:32:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T09:32:10","slug":"our-first-photo-walkabout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=574","title":{"rendered":"Our First Photo Walkabout"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few months ago, I joined a local group of people who wanted to learn more about photography.\u00a0 We’ve been focusing on portrait photography at the moment, and last weekend, we had our first out and about brief.\u00a0 We wanted to capture portrait style pictures of people at our local Saturday market in Wells, Somerset.
\nHere’s the brief that Stuart Baynes (the retired pro photographer who leads the group) set for us all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Brief:<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\n1. Photography, on location, at the Saturday Wells Market.<\/span>
\n2. Photographer to choose to choose Black and White or Colour for final images but not both.
\n3. All cameras to be set to 400 ISO
\n4. Use of Manual, Aperture priority or Shutter priority modes only
\n5. Manual or auto focus
\n6. Any lens can be used
\n7. Subject matter is Portraiture \u2013 whether formal (subject knows) or informal (street photography)
\n8. Each Photographer has 1 hour in the market \u2013 take as much as you like but only up to 3 shots will be submitted at the end for group analysis
\n9. If anyone objects to being photographed \u2013 Stop and walk away
\n10. Meet back at original meeting place for final talk.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Each of you will then upload, up to, 3x final images to the FB group page for group appraisal during the week following.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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We met up before the session for a brief chat.\u00a0 Stuart explained that point 3 should give us a powerful enough ISO, but it stops us twiddling with our camera settings.\u00a0 It also meant we were all using a standard base to help compare the photos we had taken.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He advised that we spend about 15 minutes of our time just getting the camera settings right and trying to create or establish what type of photos we wanted to take.\u00a0 Then, once you’d achieved the look you were happy with, the rest of the time meant you could leave the camera settings as the were and just focus on trying to achieve the brief.\u00a0 I faffed around for a bit, feeling a bit self conscious standing in a busy market with my camera.\u00a0 I found people were a bit wary of me and my camera, wondering what I was up to!\u00a0 After a while, I got up the nerve to wander around and take some photos.\u00a0 As the market got busier it got a bit easier to go unnoticed by the stall holders.
\nAbout half way through, I bumped into Stuart again who asked how I was getting on.\u00a0 It wasn’t majorly successful at that point, as I was reluctant to approach the stall holders (it doesn’t help being a tiny bit shy).\u00a0 However, Stuart has the gift of the gab, and instantly started chatting to a lady who owned an artificial flower stall.\u00a0 He explained we were from a local camera group and just trying to capture portrait photos.\u00a0 He asked if she’d mind if I took some photos of her and her stall.\u00a0 After that, Stuart wandered off and I began chatting to the lady.\u00a0 She was more relaxed in my presence and I started taking pics of the flowers.\u00a0 I said I could send her my photos, as she was planning on setting up a website, so she gave me her email address.\u00a0 Sadly, I’ve not heard back from her, so perhaps the pics weren’t quite up to scratch!
\n\"\"
\nThe hour was nearly up, so I headed back to the fruit and veg stall where I seemed to be having the most luck.\u00a0 The light had changed and was creating a beautiful aura around the stall.\u00a0 In just the final few minutes, I captured a few of my favourite images, so it does show not to give up!
\nOur photography group has loaded all our images from Saturday into a shared public folder on Facebook.\u00a0 You can look here if you want to see all our results:
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/media\/set\/?set=oa.281886029101858&type=3<\/a>
\nWe’re meant to be critiquing each others’ photos, but I’m not quite sure where to start.\u00a0 I like some more than others, but I want to say things postivitely, as we’re all learning.\u00a0 Hopefully I’ll get some tips on that too.
\nFinally, we had to whittle down our photos to just 3 to upload onto Facebook.\u00a0 That was a mini window into being an editor.\u00a0 It was tougher than I thought it would be and yet I still somehow managed to choose 3 photos from the same stall, without realising…d’oh.
\nI don’t have any post processing tools like Photoshop or Lightroom.\u00a0 All I currently have access to is Microsoft Photo 2018<\/strong>.\u00a0 It allows me to do basic adjustments like cropping, altering brightness and setting filters.\u00a0 I decided to try 2 filter effects: Zeke and Vanilla.
\nI can’t find an official definition for Zeke<\/strong>, but it essentially gave all my photos a sunshine glow.
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\nThen I tried the Vanilla<\/strong> effect.\u00a0 Regular people like me call it Black and White!
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\nAnd finally, just for comparison purposes, here are my unfiltered photos from the market:
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\nSo, what have I learnt?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n