Photographing a model is not a easy as it looks

Yesterday, I got the chance to photograph a few of models as part of the New Hampshire Flickr Group's Natural Light Workshop at Stark Park in Manchester. Wow, it's not an easy task capturing a person at just the right moment as they give the perfect pose.

A couple of things that I learned from yesterday's gathering: making eye contact with the model makes a huge difference and custom white balances can really give an image that perfect color right in the camera.

As we were snapping away, fellow photog Karl mentioned he finally got the statement about making eye contact with the subject and the photographer/camera. Up until that point, I hadn't really though about it, but I realized as I was taking pictures, the ones I like the best came when the model was looking directly at the lens. It makes the picture click, pardon the pun.

As for the custom white balance, I thank our organizer Tim for the suggestion to switch the camera from Auto White Balance (AWB) and use one of the other preset balances. His first suggestion was to try the “cloudy” setting, since we were shooting under a tree on a sunlit day. The results were staggering:

Using AWB:

Using "Cloudy" WB:

While I liked my first few shots on AWB, I was amazed at the warmer color that came from switching white balance modes. The rest of the day was spent shooting in either the “Cloudy” or “Shade” presets on my Canon Rebel XT. It's definitely something I'll use going forward when shooting different subjects, be it people or nature.

Photography is just a hobby for me. Something to take the mind away from the everyday grind of work and life. It was nice yesterday to get out and learn some new tricks, hang out with fellow photographers and take some photos. My set from yesterday's shoot can be found on here.

Thanks to Katie, Krista and Laura for helping us out yesterday. They were funny and patient while the group of us learned new techniques, talked shop and had a fun time in the park.