Fotography Friday

…Nothing like getting this in at the last possible moment…

As you may have noticed, I’ve been trying to make time for photography in my life. This hobby has a hard time competing with my love of baking. BUT, luckily this blog brings both of those hobbies together into one. I like to think that my new *in April* Nikon D40 DSLR camera has helped my food photography this year. Or just the fact that I’ve made a conscience effort to learn to take better pictures. I’ve taken a couple classes and added quite a few photography blogs to my Google Reader.

Sometime last summer, I was talking with CB (of I heart Food 4 Thought) about cameras. If I remember correctly, she posted something on her blog about cameras or food pictures… So we talked about DSLRs and food photography. Now that she has a DSLR too (a Sony A200), we were talking about trying to learn how to use these dang things without just reading the manual from cover to cover. We decided to take it in small steps and learn together.

If you recall, Steph and Amy started Photo Week which just encourages anyone to get out there and use your camera more, the idea with Fotography Friday is to actually take an advanced topic (that may or may not be available in a P&S) and dig into when the details of these advanced machines that we have. Basically, we’ll pick a topic the first Friday of the month. Then we’ll both do our own research and play around with the topic. Then we’ll post about it before the next topic is revealed. Feel free to join us on our journey. You can post on any Friday throughout the month, or every Friday during the month. Participate as much or little as you’d like. Like I said, the topics may or may not be suited for your camera, but feel free to join and take any interpretation of the topic you want.

Now that you get the idea, here’s the first topic: 

FLASH
This topic was motivated by the fact that the days are just TOO SHORT to get any food photographs with natural light (Rule #1 for food photography). I have to admit that I do try to save my baking for the weekends so I can get some good pictures in natural lighting… Or sometimes I save a couple cookies until the weekend just to get a good picture of them. Now we all know it is possible to use the flash and not have everything washed out. It’s possible and in the next month I’m determined to understand how to do it with my camera.

One other thing. I’m double dipping on this. I plan to read through my D40 manual through this blogging event so that I can mark another thing off my list before my next birthday!

If you have a topic you’d like to see in Fotography Friday, please email me.
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4 Responses to “Foto Friday – Flash”

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    Stephanie — January 31, 2009 at 7:19 pm

    What a great post! So informative! I have a Nikon D40x but have still not read the entire manual! I will try this this week as many of my pictures are taken at nighttime too.

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    Tricia — January 31, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    This is an awesome installment. I have the D60 and am still learning by playing with it. Excellent tutorial, thanks so much!

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    Stephanie Wagner — February 3, 2009 at 1:11 am

    Great info! Unfortunately my Canon doesn’t have a flash adjustment, but tomorrow I’m going to post about the world’s cheapest diffuser I made for it… can’t wait for the next topic! 🙂

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    Jigginjessica — July 1, 2009 at 12:57 am

    I am clearly almost 7 months late commenting on this post but I just came across it 🙂 I wanted to share a little trick with you. (My photographer friend shared it with me) All you need is your camera and a white paper plate. Just cup the paper plate right in front of the pop up flash (which should be popped up obviously)and take the picture. The paper plate bounces the light up and off the ceiling preventing the horrible washout of items in the front and darkening of items in the back. I also find that setting up a white piece of poster board right behind the object and then using this little bounce trick really helps. Happy picture taking!

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