Archive for May, 2010

DDPMG: Outdoor Portrait 101 Shots

This weekend I took a Photography 101: Basic Outdoor Portrait Class at the Downtown Plano Dart Station. The class was taught by Darryl Briggs, organizer of the Dallas Digital Photography Meetup Group.

It was the first time, I’d been able to attend a photo meetup. The class was made up of pros and enthusiasts, so it was cool to see some of the gear the pros were carrying around. After about an hour class, we started taking photos of a local area model. The weather was nice, but we had a slight overcast, so I really didn’t get to practice taking outdoor portraits in direct sunlight. It was good that we were able to practice right after the class, because the information was still fresh in our heads.

I used my Nikkor 50mm 1.8 and the Nikkor 55-200mm for the photos below. I shot in RAW which came in handy because the original version second photo was extremely overblown. I tried a couple of things to save it and came out with the high contrast black and white.

Overall, I have to say I’m pleased with the results. It gives me a little confidence to go out and find more people (other than my kids) to photograph. As time permits, I’ll definitely be going to other meetups and will post the photos here.

Nice Day for Basketball

It was really nice outdoors yesterday, so I decided to take the boys to the park after school. My oldest son is showing some interest in playing basketball and I wanted to give him a little practice time. Whenever I see either one of them interested in something sports or arts related, I try to find ways to slowly expose them to more of it.

While he was shooting, I decided to get some shots of my own.