How I Took it – New Digital Photography Case Study Series

Over at our Flickr forums I’ve just started a new assignment that I am really excited about.

The basics of the assignment are that you post one of your better photos and then tell us about how you took it. This way we not only get to see some great shots but learn how you took them (hopefully picking up some tips along the way).

Photographers are encouraged to talk about how they took the image, what they did well but also what they’d do differently next time. You can read the full assignment here.

As part of the assignment I’ve said that I’ll post a few of the submissions here on the main site with a link back to your Flickr account. The point of this is not to highlight ‘perfect’ photos but to give us all an insight into each other’s photography – digital photography student to student. Feel free to share your own thoughts on the photos featured as I’m sure the submitters would love your suggestions and tips also.

There are already a few submissions and I thought I’d highlight following one from leight k who is talking about his image Riverside Express. Here’s his photo and what he had to say about it follows:

Unimportant blab…

I recently started to play with the RAW format on my Fujifilm FinePix S9500, just because I could and I wanted to see what the difference was for myself between JPG and RAW. Just last Sunday night, I went into the city to take some photos with my girlfriend. It had bee pretty coudy that weekend/night so I wasn’t really expecting the best of photos to come out of that night.

Technical Info

Anyway, the technical details are below:
Camera: Fujifilm FinePix S9500 (also known in some parts of the world as the S9000)
Exposure: 15 sec
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 6.2mm
ISO Speed: 80

The Gear

My Camera: Fujifilm FinePix S9500
My Computer: 20″ iMac
My Software: Plugin for Photoshop :)
Accessories: Some bendy Tripod

The Location

I captured this image at Kangaroo Point, looking in towards the city. The bridge you see is part of the ‘Riverside Expressway’ that runs from the Golf Coast all the way up into Brisbane, Australia

How I took it

What I did was rest it on the railing with my little 10cm high bendy tripod :) What I do with long exposure shots is put it on a 2 second timer, so that I can press the button and when the camera starts to take the picture, there isn’t any camera wobble because nothing is actually touching the camera (wereas if my finger came off the camera, it would move a little bit :))

What I think

I don’t remember intentionally doing it, but the bridge actually vanishes away into one of the intersections of the ‘rule of thirds’ grid :) If you look closely, you can see the cars headlights go accross the bridge :) If we were in America, the tail lights would show, which could look pretty cool. I also like the ’stary’ lights off the bridge :) I don’t know why I like it so much, maybe it’s just the fact that I took it! I did find that having a small aperture (larger number anyway) makes the image clearer, and you can have a longer shutter that way – which leads to smoother water.

Feel free to add your constructive comments below and submit your own ‘how I did it’ case study to our Flickr Group.