My favorite spot, Garrapata State Beach, was an easy drive from Carmel, yet far enough that it’s not a congested tourist destination.  In many ways it reminded me of Palos Verdes but with a more aggressive shoreline.

One thing about using a medium format film camera is it teaches you to slow down, to soak in the inherent beauty of place.  I can’t tell you how many times I’m in a beautiful spot and somebody runs up with a camera, takes a quick picture, and runs off.

At every location I visited, I sat down and just stared at the scene in front of me.  After a while I’d set up my tripod and camera to photograph whatever it was I found special about that place.  Slow is good.

I’ve developed some tips from watching how people use their cell phone or point and shoot cameras, and from the sometimes blurry or out-of-focus pictures I see posted around the internet.  There’s nothing terribly complicated, it just takes a few seconds of patience.

If you follow these tips you’ll see the percentage of ‘keepers’ go up!

Scenario: you’re out to dinner with a few friends and want to take a picture of them.  Here’s what you do.

1. Have your camera turned on in advance.
2. Have the lens set at the zoom level you desire – again, in advance.
3. Aim your camera at the group and press your finger down halfway on the shutter button.  You’ll see the camera’s auto-focus begin to work.
4. After the camera has locked focus, start your one-two-three countdown with your friends.  Don’t take your finger off the botton.
5. On ‘three’, press the button down the rest of the way.
6. Pat yourself on the back for taking a great, sharp, in-focus picture!

This works in most situations.  Make sure the camera is turned on, focused, and ready to fire before the decisive moment!

This image is a great sunset picture, but the subjects are too dark.

Simple solution: put the sun over your shoulder.  Have your subjects’ faces be in sunlight.  Make sure they’re not looking directly into the sun, though.  You don’t want them squinting.  Angle them slightly away from the sun.

This image was made just 30 feet or so away from the image above.  It’s a completely different picture.  Since they are the subjects, they need to be well lit.  If they aren’t well lit the image loses nearly all its impact.

Slightly advanced solution: if you really want that sunset picture then your subjects’ faces will be in shadow.  Turn on your flash.  The camera will compensate by adding more light on your subject faces.  This is called fill flash.

Advanced solution: As a matter of preference I’m not a big fan of using fill flash.  I’d rather manually dial in additional exposure into your camera.  This will give proper exposure to your subjects face, but will probably over-expose the background.  Use this option when the background isn’t all that important.  You can find this function on your camera with a button that has +/- on it.  Each scene is different.  As a starting point, try giving your camera +1 and continue to adjust as necessary.

In this image, the subjects’ faces are completely in shadow.  Their faces are perfectly exposed – not too light and not too dark.  I set my camera’s exposure to +1 or +1 1/2.  You’ll notice the greenery and ocean in the background are over-exposed.  That’s ok – it works because the subjects are just right.

What works for you?  Leave your comments here.