Posted on by Anne Sandler

Shooting in the dark: Fireworks and light trails

I love it when I learn, and I did learn when we went to shoot fireworks. I had good luck when using my old point and shoot by putting it on a special setting. It did all the thinking. When I tried to shoot fireworks with my D3100 it was a mess. I just didn’t know how to set the camera and I didn’t have a tripod.

Fast forward a year and a half, Shoot Or Go Home Meetup group is going the shoot fireworks–A chance to learn. Our local minor league baseball team, the River Cats, have fireworks after their home games. We used the Tower Bridge to set the stage and waited. During that time, Mary, the group’s organizer, gave us a lesson on how to get the best images.

And then they started. We were all anxiously pressing down the shutter button. The show was short and we did our best. I was happy with what I got. What I was not happy with was my camera’s processing length. With a short show, every second of processing time seemed like minutes.

Afterwards, we went to capture some light trails. Since I’ve done that before, I was able to help two other women succeed. So the student became the teacher!

I do love both teaching and learning.

Posted on by Anne Sandler

A fun time with the peeps: Sacramento’s Tower Bridge at night

Yes, I’m trying to learn the new lingo. That’s one of the reasons I retired. I couldn’t keep up with the “20 and 30 somethings” colloquialisms, and it was time at 69 years! Hanging around with the peeps from Sacramento Photographers, a group on Facebook open to people who like photography, was fun.

I went out to the Tower Bridge with the intent to put my camera on manual, shoot with it on manual and get some light trail shots. I accomplished my task and also did some HDR. I don’t know why I didn’t shoot the HDR shots on manual rather than staying in my comfort zone at aperture priority. There’s always a next time.

Hopefully that next time will be with the Sacramento Photographers. They have one event a month, and the members are eager to share and help. They will also go out and invite the group at the spur of the moment like last nights activity. I’m looking forward to going out with the peeps again.

 

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 2 Comments

Shooting RAW

I was totally embarrassed–but not really. I’ve come to accept that in the Shoot or Go Home photo Meetup group, I’m a novice. But I did think there would be a level playing field when I went to the Lightroom workshop yesterday evening. I was wrong. I was amazed at the level of these photographers. For me, it meant there’s more possibility for my growth.

So what was I embarrassed about? I was the only one in the room shooting JPEG! When I was asked why, I just replied, “I’m afraid to!” But, I did promise to shoot RAW from now on. What was I afraid of? I didn’t know how to process RAW! With Lightroom, it’s easy. I sat through the three hours just amazed at what this program could do in the develop module. It even corrected buildings that were leaning due to the wide-angle lens distortion. Of course I could have also done this in PE9, but never took the time to dig through the manual to learn how. It was easy with Lightroom.

In my last post, I said I was going to try to straighten out the Tower Bridge in Sacramento. I did and I’m posting it tonight along with some other Lightroom vs. PE9 edits. What a program–shooting RAW from now on!!