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September 2007 THIRD THURSDAY:
Digital Photography
In this day and age of digital
cameras, with all of the fancy
point-and-shoot technology, it's
easy to forget about the art of taking
photos.  Local photo hobbyist
Jonathan Richmond shared his
passion and techniques for
composing great photos, and
experimenting with our camera
settings, at our September THIRD
Jonathan enthuses on the topic
of photo composition.
THURSDAY, held 9.20.2007 at the Iapalucci's home.  Jonathan gave
us an informative and encouraging talk, and shared the following tips
with regard to taking great photo portraits:

  • Have your subject sit up straight (photos of people reclining
    or lying down are rarely flattering!).  Depending on the
    lighting, having your subject lean in slightly towards the
    camera.
  • Focus on the eyes.  The eyes are how we connect with a
    person in person, and the same holds true for portraiture.
  • Ask your subject to wet their lips slightly just before you take
    the photo.
  • Consider your background.  A busy background can be
    distracting.  Choose a relatively neutral background (in terms
    of pattern or texture), but do not have your subject too close
    to the background, to avoid unwanted shadows. Make sure to
    take into account hair and clothing color when selecting your
    background: a dark haired person wearing dark clothes will
    blend into a dark background, but will "pop" against a lighter
    one (and vice versa).
  • If photographing small children, give them a distraction.  
    Jonathan recommends a small loop of sticky tape that they
    can play with in their fingers (but won't really show up in the
    photo!)

We also had a chance to play around with some of the settings on our
cameras, and discussed options like changing your f-stop and ISO
settings:
Photo taken at f 3.2
"Night shot" setting, no flash
Special thanks to Katie and Rebecca Deese, who had the (mis) fortune
to be sitting across from me as I tried out all the settings on my
camera!!
Photo taken at f 8.0
Photo taken at ISO 64
Photo taken at ISO 400
"Night shot" setting, plus flash
As we happily snapped away, Jonathan
also pointed out a great feature
available on many digital cameras, the
"double flash" that seemingly eliminates
the dreaded red eye that seems to plague
so much flash photography.  Elie
Erickson was sporting enough to stare
straight at the flash to demonstrate this feature (hope she's not still
seeing spots!)

All in all, it was a great evening, despite the rain that kept a few
people away (and who are we to complain about rain these days??)

Thanks for a great presentation Jonathan!  We're all set to take some
fantastic photos this fall!

All of the above photos were taken with a Kodak EasyShare Z710,
set on Auto with flash unless otherwise indicated.