Family Get Together
It has been about a week since my last posting – I have not fallen off the face of the Earth! We took an extended weekend to attend a wedding out of town. Of course, I took my camera with me. Now I have a whole slew of images that will make it on the blog soon. Today, though, I want to go back to a family get together to describe a looser, or a freer way of shooting to get a different style of images.
This late afternoon was very warm outside. What better way to cool off, than to play with some water guns? The ammo is unlimited, and everyone is a friendly target! This was a perfect time to try a specific technique for photographing kids that I have seen a few times but have not tried myself. First thing to consider – my professional camera bodies are weather-sealed at all of the openings. The connection between the lens and the lens mount is covered by a piece of rubber. This will keep the opening sealed for light water exposure. I have photographed with this camera and lens combination in the rain while covering a football game with no problems. I keep a towel handy, and would stop if there is a chance that much more water will be close.
Side Holstering
Knowing that I my camera could stand the water from the guns, I set the camera to a manual exposure so that the settings would not have to change as I fired off frames, and I had the shutter speed set high enough to ensure there would not be blurred photos while running. I had my nephew chase me and shoot at me with his water gun while I ran backwards with my camera pointing towards him. It was easy to get some neat shots of the water coming right towards the camera!
Be prepared to delete a lot of photos when you shoot this way. Lots of times, the composition was not perfect, and sometimes I would miss him completely, but so many of these came out nice. I do not think I could have composed these spontaneous images with my head behind the camera, and directing the scene. Sometimes, you have to just let that control go, and hope for the best. It’s just like having fun – you cannot plan every detail, but you may have better results than you planned!
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