Respect Your Peers (Fellow photographers)

I have recently been seeing this a lot in social media, so I wanted to make a short video of it.

D5100 First Day Review

So, yesterday, after what felt like decades of waiting (even though it was actually less than a week), I finally got my new(-ish) Nikon D5100 in the mail that I ordered from B & H Photo Video. My first impression of the camera was that it was fairly similar to the Nikon D3300 that I was accustomed to shooting with, despite the obvious differences. Many of the functions seemed to be the same, and I had no trouble at all understanding how to operate the D5100 right after I pulled it out of the box.

In the video here, you can see my first thoughts on the D5100 after pulling it out of the box. Then, later last night, after I charged the battery and messed with the camera a little bit, I recorded the video below.

And then, below the video here, you can see some of the photos I've taken with the camera over the last twenty-four hours or so (not quite twenty four.). 

I have enjoyed the camera so far, and haven't really found any big problems with it, but I'll update with a new article possibly in the next few days to tell you about my further experiences with the camera.

Portraiture Advice From A Beginner

Portraiture From a Beginner

Mr. Smith, Greater Johnstown Senior High School Principle

To a young photographer with little to no experience, portraiture can be a very daunting experience to try.

A portrait is any photograph where your subject is a person, although normally, a portrait is more of a posed photo instead of the more candid ones.

This photo here is of my niece, Aria, when we went for a hike one day in the woods near her aunt's house.

The reason portraiture is a little scary to most new photographers is because it can seem so formal, like something that only professionals can really do, but in reality, that's not true. Every time you lift you camera and take a picture of another person, you are taking a portrait.

My brother, Melvin, and his daughter, Arial. 

To take a portrait, you don't necessarily have to bring your subject into a studio and spend twenty minutes getting a perfect pose out of them. Just try to capture their personality in your photos. That's really the ultimate goal of any portrait photographer, to just capture the personality of their subject and tell a story about the person with a photo.

When you're taking a photo of someone, do your best to make them feel comfortable. If they're nervous about being in front of the camera, you won't capture an authentic vision of who they are, because everyone acts different whenever they're in front of a camera. 

Make your subject forget that the camera is there. Make them think you're just a normal person-one of their friends even, and that's how you get the most genuine depiction of who a person truly is. 

Photos