Recently I had the pleasure of spending a full day concentrating on improving my camera skills at a Makelight Workshop run by the talented Emily Quinton who writes the Start Up Wife. I have already posted my flower shots from the day and you can see them here.
The beauty of this workshop was that whilst its main purpose was to help the participants take better photos, it was also a day designed specifically for bloggers. Emily covered three main areas relevant to blogging:
- Using social media and taking better photos with an iPhone (or similar),
- Using natural light and camera settings to take better photos with a DSLR,
- Using props to style an image.
As well as lots of teaching and discussion time, Emily built in plenty of opportunities to practice taking our own photos using her personal selection of props.
In these photos you can see some of the ladies working with their cameras and Emily’s props. The whole studio was full of vignettes like these.
Whilst not taken from the best angle, the two pictures above show how you can use props to create different backgrounds even if you are always shooting in the same spot. Emily explained how she uses wrapping paper, white art boards, painted boards and pieces of wood to create different backdrops for her daily flower photos. Although they are all shot in the same place using the best light available in her home, it appears that she is shooting in lots of different locations.
Emily uses a variety of styled props to create her pictures – all within a very distinct pastel colour range. On Saturday she provided us with a selection of wrapping papers, materials, china cups, buttons, chocolate eggs, cards, paper pom poms and, of course, fresh flowers.
It is surprising how much you can make of a few small flowers with the addition of some appealing props.
After lunch we moved on to the mechanics of taking photographs on a DSLR. Although I am getting much better I have only been using my camera (a Canon EOS 500D) since May last year, so I still have a long way to go before I will feel completely confident with the settings. I was relieved to find that Emily tends to use Aperture Priority (Av) as her favoured camera setting. I can use manual, but find I get better shots in Av. Emily also spoke about the advantages of shooting in good natural light.
What I realised I had not been doing was really manipulating my f-stops. I found that by keeping my f-stops right down (2.6 in the photo above) I could get a much more focused shot with a nice blurred background. The photo above was just a practice shot I took of a bottle on the table whilst Emily was talking about camera settings. I was pleased with clarity of the bottle and the very blurred background.
Many of you will have heard of the expression depth of field in photography. A photo with a blurry background such as my photo of the bottle is said to have a shallow depth of field as you cannot see the details beyond the object that is in focus.
As all cameras are different Emily had to work hard to get everyone practicing on the same settings.
Emily also discussed focus and how important it is to consider your point of focus every time you take a picture. In the photo above you can see that I have chosen the focus point to be the cups and straws – everything else is slightly and intentionally blurred.
In this photo I have focused on the foreground, so some of the hydrangea petals and the cards are sharp with the background details blurred.
If you want to take a photo with all the shot in focus you need to capture a deeper depth of field using different settings.
Finally Beth, another blogger who writes Beth At The Summer House, had baked this beautiful cake for us all to enjoy at the end of the day. This is a shot full of props – wrapping paper, a wooden crate and a vintage cake stand. I was particularly pleased with the focus on the individual berries and this is probably my favourite shot of the day.
At the end of the day I came away with greater confidence in my ability to manipulate my camera settings, inspiration to use Instagram and Pinterest more and lots of ideas of things I could use to add interest to my photographs. I was also inspired to start to make better use of my iPhone camera.
So thank you to Emily and all the other lovely blogging ladies who helped to make it such a fun and interesting day. I am hoping to attend a Makelight higher level workshop in the autumn.
Insert your profile info here, by going to Users -> Your Profile -> Biographical Info. Profile image (avatar) comes from gravatar.com. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam faucibus ornare lectus nec cursus.
That sounds like a fantastic day – I love the photo of the cake and the one with hydrangea petals 🙂
Thank you Nina – it was a very useful and fun day!
Julie, you had a great session so did I reading your experience.My first liking is for hyderangea (lovely colour) and then the tempting cake ~is really a treat to my eyes. And by the way did that cake good as it is photographed? Just a joke!
Thank you Sajina – the cake tasted every bit as good as it looked!
Thanks for sharing your fun day. Especially useful for the vase on Monday meme as I don’t have a large collection of vases and light indoors is limited (Italian house are designed to keep strong light out!) so ideas for fifferent backgrounds and props is brilliant. I always enjoy your images and now look forward to seeing even more.
Thank you Christina – I can imagine that a house designed to keep light out would be a photographic challenge. I am sure that it is a lovely house though (everything Italian sounds lovely) and your outside light must be very beautiful – I would shoot the vase outdoors as much as possible.
Thank you for sharing your day with Emily. you have given me a glimpse into her world through visiting the link to her fascinating log. I am an artist but not a photographer and this has opened up the potential of really getting to grips with my camera. It is heartening to read that it is about exploring the potential of the camera or iphone we have and not necessarily having all the expensive complicated gizmos!
Thank you Pam – I was amazed at the pictures Emily was able to achieve on her iPhone. It is worth following her on Instagram if you are interested in her work – she posts there a few times a day and all the photos are taken on her iPhone.
What an interesting day. I would love to improve my photography skills. At least digital photography has made it possible to take lots of photos in order to get a decent shot. But blogs like yours with really good photos, make me long to learn more and do better.
Thank you Chloris – I would highly recommend a day course if you want to improve your photography. There are also some good online or distance learning courses, although in the first instance I think having a teacher you can talk too is the best option. This time last year I only took pictures on my iPad, so a few courses and a lot of practice have made a big difference to what I am able to do. The only problem is that the more you know, the more critical you become of your results and the more you realise you still have to learn.
You have a natural talent with props + flowers!I look forward to seeing more as You explore new ways with props!
Thank you Robbie – I am really looking forward to having a garden full of flowers again to play with!
Great tips Julie. This sounds like a fun workshop. I always enjoy your photography and it seems you already were taking advantage of good light in setting up your images.
Thank you Susie – you are right that I do always think about the light when I am taking a picture. What I learnt on the course was how to get more light into my camera, so that a shot can look well lit even if the quality of the natural light is not perfect.
How fun! I would love to take a class like that 🙂
Thank you Tasha – I am sure you would have enjoyed it!
I’m not sure how I missed this post Julie. I will be back for a another read tomorrow when brain is more alert. Thanks for sharing what looks like some most useful information.
Hi I came across your blog because I have just been watching an episode of how to take stunning pictures from a DVD that I borrowed from my local library. The episode was about Wedding photography featuring Emily Quinton. She makes it look so easy and even though I have shot a wedding for family and a friend taking the next step and doing it full time for strangers is still a little daunting.
Welcome Dean & thank you for leaving a comment. I knew that Emily had been involved with a TV show but did not realise it was still available – I would really like to see it so thank you for mentioning that. Although wedding photography must be very challenging you should take the plunge if that is where your heart lies. Once you have a bit more experience I am sure you would feel better about working for strangers.