Camera Samurai

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Today I took some folks to Union Station in Washington, DC to do some photography. These were students from a photography class I taught a few months ago and had expressed interest in doing such things. Apparently I did something right if the group wanted to hang out with me after the class was over.

The architecture at Union Station is pretty incredible, the building having been built in 1907 and incorporating some pretty incredible neoclassical elements such as arches, columns, statues and even some paintings of nymphs and satyrs and other things that don’t naturally live in DC. Cool stuff!

In a few weeks we will be doing a tour of Georgetown at night as well as a series of the monuments at night. Nighttime photography can be a blast if you have a good tripod and a good idea of what kinds of pictures you are trying to make. Photographing Georgetown at night will present a different set of constraints than going to the monuments, which are huge sedentary pieces of marble and likely deserted after dusk.

Georgetown is pretty well packed with people from about ten in the morning until the clubs and restaurants close late at night. That means tight quarters sometimes and shooting with available light. It also means interacting with people and coming out from behind the lens to explain to people why you are photographing them. That can be lots of fun but at night it can get a little ugly as well, given the circumstances and how much folks have had to drink. At any rate, it will be an interesting time.

Want to come on down and get some practice with night photography? Let me know and we will get you in on it!

If you are in the DC area and would like to participate in a Camera Samurai photo tour, please email me and let me know what strikes your fancy.

Technorati Tags: Union Station, Washington, DC, photography, architecture, Georgetown, monuments, Camera Samurai, photo tour

Sometimes when I am shooting and either want to be discreet or else just want to get a different viewpoint, I will not look through the viewfinder and will hold the camera at a particular angle, fire the shutter release and see what I get. This is a great tactic for getting an interesting angle that would be either nearly impossible or else very awkward to get by looking through the viewfinder.

It also is good for the times you do not want people to know you are photographing them, thus minimizing camera anxiety. For example, my friend Phramaha Nattapong, shown here, is used to getting tense when someone whips out a camera and wants to pose. Shooting from down low did two things. First, it deceived him a little into not thinking he was about to be photographed, so he did not have time to pose. Second, it produced what I think is a great angle.

My friend Andy Carvin is not nervous at all in front of the camera, being a professional new media expert and journalist, but I thought this shot of him was especially good because it captures a moment just as it was, with no preparation or posing. Just a clear, thoughtful look on his face during a DC Media Makers meeting shows a little bit of his character and why he is such a dominant voice in the blogosphere.

This photo of the main shrine at Wat Tesarangsee in Fredericksburg, VA was taken at such an angle that I would have had to be on the floor on my back with the camera upside down to see through the viewfinder. No joke. And yet I got the shot simply by holding the camera at a certain angle and pressing the shutter release. Granted, this was not the first shot I did. This type of shooting is really hit-and-miss. Sometimes you get what you want and other times not so much. Practice is the real key to this type of photography.

Now let’s take a look at the monks and the temple in a more traditional shot. This is head-on, obviously, and not a bad picture, but it isn’t really very interesting either. You can’t tell anything about the people and don’t see anything spectacular about the shrine. Except for all that golden stuff. You can tell I have seen a good number of Thai Buddhist temples in my time.

I recommend giving this technique a try. It even has a name. My friend Steve Garfield calls it the “Carl Weaver Style,” thus immortalizing me in the annals of Flickr history. Try it out and post your results to the Camera Samurai Flickr Group.

Technorati Tags: discreet, viewfinder, interesting angle, photograph, camera anxiety, Phramaha Nattapong, Andy Carvin, DC Media Makers, Wat Tesarangsee, Fredericksburg, VA, photography, monks, temple, Steve Garfield, Carl Weaver Style