I was chatting with a Pro photographer recently at a party and as is usual when I meet someone who makes their living from photography I pumped him with questions for a good half hour. I did so for two reasons:
- firstly I learn a lot when I do it
- secondly I thought it might be an interesting learning experience for the DPS community. I obtained his permission of course.
The results of his conversation were quite insightful – so over this week I thought I’d share a number of his answers to my questions as a mini-series. I tried to keep things to a beginner to intermediate level.
By the way – this photographer works mainly in portrait photography – but majors in kids with a few weddings. He does mainly on location work (ie very little studio work).
I’ll start off with a pretty quick and simple one.
What mode do you mainly shoot in?
Do you want the ‘I’m a Pro Photographer’ answer or the ‘Real’ answer?
The ‘I’m a Pro’ answer is that I never leave full Manual Mode but the real one is that I generally live largely in Program Mode (P) and Aperture priority Mode (A).
I tend to use Program Mode when I’m doing spontaneous photography. For example if I’m out and about taking candid shots or am photographing kids where they’re running around I ‘cheat’ and switch to ‘P’, choose my ISO and start shooting.
If I have more time and my scene isn’t changing I’ll generally switch to Aperture Priority mode and shoot from there. I use Aperture Priority largely because I’m big on controlling depth of field and find it can make or break a shot.
Read more on the different modes on your digital camera and aperture and shutter priority modes.
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