Practice. Understand Your Camera Before Your Vacation.
The idea for this post came to me just recently. We were having lunch at Fishermen’s Wharf near downtown Victoria, B.C. Great fish and chips and a warm spring day. Lovely. Anyways, we became aware of five people about 20 feet away from us. Four were lined up, posing for a photo to be taken by the fifth. I watched as the designated photographer lined up her smartphone and took a photo. She squinted at the screen and exclaimed that she couldn’t see the photo because of the glare. She re-composed the photo and tried again. This time the others came to see what she had done and gently pointed out that she had cut off their heads and could she try again? Again, they lined up, smiled and waited. This time their friend couldn’t get the camera to work. Turned out, she still had the last photo on the screen but couldn’t see the screen to tell. At this point, I asked if I could take a photo of the whole group of five. I turned on her flash to brighten their faces because the sun was behind them, then two clicks and done. The appreciative photographer stated that she wished she had practiced before she had left home on what sounded like a pretty amazing vacation that they were just beginning together.
Which got me thinking about the importance of just that. Whether you are taking your smartphone as your main camera or if you have something bigger and more sophisticated, doesn’t it make sense to spend some time getting to know how to use it before leaving home?
In a previous post, I talked about pre-trip planning where you work out beforehand the photos you want to bring home from your vacation. If that list includes indoor photos, spend some time learning how your camera works indoors. How does the flash work? How and when would you use flash? Outdoors - how will you photograph people in bright light? (Hint: again, learn to turn on and use that flash) Night photography? Take your camera outside at night and learn how it reacts. While many modern cameras have a “night scene” setting, you still need to learn how it works. If night photography will be an important part of your travel photography, you’ll want to know before you leave if you can hold your camera still enough or will you need some sort of tripod. On my smart phone (Android), the “portrait” mode allows me to photograph people but blur the background for that professional portrait look.
I happen to love night images with a slow shutter setting so that motion shows as flow rather than “freeze-frame”. See below where I used a slow shutter speed to smooth out the motion of the ocean and bring out the colours in the distance. To get these, I need a tripod because the shutter speeds are several seconds long and I can’t possibly hold any camera still enough for a sharp photo. These are not hard to do but they do take a bit of practice.
Most cameras and phones do not come with manuals these days. The ones that do were not written with the novice photographer in mind. It seems that the best way to find out the workings of your camera is to search for “how-to” videos for your particular camera on YouTube. Many are very good and can uncover many of the mysteries of how your camera works.
Most of all though, go take lots of photos with your camera. Read any of the books listed on the resource page. Try different settings and use the camera in different situations before you leave on your vacation. Your vacation destination is not the place to become familiar with your camera and gear!
