I did go to the National Geographic Photography Workshop in New Orleans on November 10-13. It was absolutely amazing! Tyrone Turner and Krista Rossow were great as teachers, mentors, or whatever you want to call them. They each took personal time above and beyond what was required to help each of us and ensure that they explained everything we had questions about. Below is a list of tips that I put together from some of the lectures that we had each day that may help all of us a little.
If you check my site under the Places Galleries there is a Gallery for New Orleans, many of my photos are located there.
National Geographic Photography Tips
1. when shooting, take 1 shot and check all the settings for exposure and back of camera. If it looks good, put the camera to your face and don’t take it away. When you look at the back of the camera between shots you go into edit mode an not creative mode.
2. keep looking through the camera always, this allows you to see through it to take the perfect shot.
3. move around a lot, get up, get down, go to the side, etc. You may find a better shot than you initially thought by doing this.
4. When taking people pics, if you talk to them then shoot keep shooting. Don’t just stop. Eventually they will start ignoring you and go back to what they were doing and this is when you get the best pics.
5. People are not scary, you can approach them and talk to them (can you tell I’m from IT for that note? 🙂 )
6. Nat Geo photographers will send in up to 60,000 images when only 20 are needed. Out of 100 images the editors say that there should be 10 good pics and 2-3 amazing ones.
7. zoom with your feet, not your lens.
I think I have really learned a lot about taking images of people and even just altering my f-stop even more. If you ever have a chance to attend one I would suggest you do, it was an experience I will always remember and something that I would like to do again. This is a link to all of Photography Workshops that National Geographic offers. They are all different places and lengths of times, find something that works for you.