By Ian Magnuson
Executive Photos Editor
As the photographer of the Prospector, I will be posting photos each Wednesday night and explaining exactly how I captured the photograph for the aspiring photographer.
(Note) I will try to water down the technical aspects, but this blog is directed towards people who have a basic understanding of cameras and how to compose a picture.
‘Sit…Stay’
This photograph was taken with a 50mm f/1.8.
Photo Stats: Shutter speed of 1/100 sec, F-Stop of f/1.8, ISO speed of 640, and no flash.
The Camera: I shot this photo with my Nikon D7000.
The Lens: I chose the 50mm because it can be made to have an incredibly small focus point and have everything else completely blurred out, this called depth of field.
Pre-Shooting: I was messing around with my camera because I had a friend’s SD card in my camera. But when I saw Fidget pose, I knew I had to take a portrait of her.
Light: Light is like one of those formulas in math that you must master early because it is the basis of the next fifteen chapters…
Shooting: When shooting, you want to look for the perfect angle that is both original and tells the full story. You should make sure the subject is completely in the photo.
To get Fidget’s head in focus and the rest of her out of focus, I turned off auto focus, and then bumped down the F-stop to 1.8. Doing this created a very short depth of field and gave a lot of the light that I would have lost if I were to use a lens with an F-stop of 3.5
Post Shooting: I did not really need to do anything in post shooting other than turning the photo to a black and white (this is different than grayscale).
Black and white is under the ‘Image’ tab in Photoshop, and in the option ‘Adjustments’.
In my opinion, choosing black and white creates a better overall photo compared to just grayscaling something.
Now, Sit…Stay…
