This photo is OK I think. I like the descrete pools of light at the tables (although the white on the table foreground is a little blown out) and the gossamer view through the curtain. I’ll give it a six out of ten.
No…..I’ll give it a solid seven.

…

While I am not much more than a beginner photographer¹, I thought I might share my process for capturing these pictures of people.
In case you are interested.
Note: This covers some basic photographic technical stuff.

I am currently experimenting with having my settings pre-selected and locked in so all I need do is lift the camera to my eye and take the photo. No faffing around drawing attention to myself.

I have also been experimenting with shooting from the hip. Taking photos without even looking through the viewfinder.

The photos I have been posting during this black-and-white challenge have been mostly taken in manual (M) mode, although I shoot in Aperture Priority a fair bit².

These are my settings:

• Shutter speed is locked in at 1/250 sec³.
• Aperture (f-stop) is locked in at 9–10
• I manually focus on something at a distance I will be expecting to capture my subject… and then leave it be. Because the f-stop is high (which means a small aperture) it gives me a wider zone of sharp focus. For example, if I have set my focus on something 4 metres away, it will still be sharp(ish) anywhere between 3–5 metres.

I covered the absolute best explanation of aperture and f-stops here.

• That’s it. I let the camera adjust the ISO on the fly.

Once set up all I have to do is walk around with the camera and snap a picture when something interesting presents itself in my zone of focus.

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1. but as Shunryu Suzuki said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”  ↩︎
2. I am still figuring this all out ↩︎
3. this shutter speed will freeze most motion, eliminating the blur and fuzzy ↩︎

This photo is part of my self-imposed greyscale photographic challenge. Here are the rules.