Candid Photography is taking photographs without the subject knowing they are being photographed. I know that sounds fairly creepy, but I chose this as a lesson for a few reasons. As a beginning photographer, candid photography is much easier that portrait photography, where you not only have to worry about the camera but posing a model can be a challenge. Candid photography is much more laid back, and your models can be family, friends, or complete strangers. The second reason is, a
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Ryan Falk at Mountain View Power Plant |
a candid shot make a much more realistic relaxed model. Something happens when you line somebody up for a photo like a firing squad and say smile. The smile almost always looks forced. The photo at left was taken about thirty feet away, and my camera was hidden, even though he looks as if he was posing for the shot. Check out the next five shots. Each one is a candid photo, and in each one the person in the photo looks natural and relaxed. These are all photos of people just being themselves, having a good time
Now see what happens when someone knows the camera is pointed at them. All I had to do was
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IBEW 477 picnic |
call attention to myself and ask for them to pose and this is what everybody who was born to this world is programmed to do, automatically. The body gets stiff, the smile is forced and a snapshot is born. POOF! I'm not suggesting they're hideous, but I wouldn't call it art, and not very fun to look at. If you had a candid picture of yourself having a ball in Hawaii, it would remind you of that moment of fun. When you have a picture of you on the beach, yes it reminds you of Hawaii, but not a moment of fun. It was a moment when the fun stopped and you took a moment to stand their while someone shot you.
So here is your Assignment. Take your camera to the beach, concert, fair, carnival, water park, and take an hour or two, to just take candid photos of people or family doing stuff, and I swear they will be the best photos you've ever shot. What you will need: A camera with a focal length 70mm or greater. The longer the lens the more candid the
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IBEW Picnic |
the shot will be. Try and fill the frame with the person you're photographing to avoid "Negative Space" unless what's around the person is important to the shot. Then give the background and the person equal space. Not evershot has to have the person(s) dead center, sometimes placing the person to the left or right gives the shot more interest.
Now let's talk about aperture. Aperture controls "Depth-of-Field" or DoF. DoF is the a distance from any lens where an image will be in focus (sharp). Anything before or after will be out of focus (blurry). All lenses have only one point they can focus on. As the subject moves away from the camera so to does the lens. You can see this when the camera focuses, the lens moves in an out of the lens barrel. A lens that only focuses in one spot is not very useful if you can get someones nose sharp, but their face is out of focus, so the aperture helps in deepening the area that will be in focus. The smaller the aperture gets, the more will be in focus. Also the distance a subject is from the camera lens effects what the area of focus will be. The closer the subject is to
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IBEW Picnic |
the lens, the less DoF there will be, and the opposite is true the farther away they are the more will be in focus and the greater the DoF will be. Consequently, a wide angle lens has more DoF because it pushes the subject away from the camera optically, and a telephoto lens pulls the image closer optically, so it has less DoF. Also it might be good to know that because of distortion, the smaller the focal length become, the more weight it looks like the person has and the opposite is true for telephoto lenses, so that is why most portrait lenses are 100mm to 150mm in length. Try taking the same photo with different apertures to see what effect is has on the shot.
Three things draw the eye to a subject: Lighting focus and color, so if you want people to notice one person in a crowd of many, Make sure you have one or more of these things. If you look at the person in the crowd below, most of the colors are muted, mostly I'm assuming, because it's a group of business persons, but notice how your eye immediately jumps to the one person in focus like a magnet. This shot was accomplished by the
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One person in focus |
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Colored Pegs |
In the case of the colored pegs below, the eye moves to the peg that is in focus and the rest of the pegs become the background, but look at the next picture. The eye tends to want to shift to the blue peg, proving that color is a stronger attractant than focus in a photography. Finally, the last photo of a child in a crowd of people stands out because she has the majority of the lighting on her.
Have fun with your assignment and post your shots to Facebook at Beginning Digital Photography
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