I'm Doug McKinlay and you're watching AdoramaTV.
I've been a professional photographer for a lot of years now. Sun cover many worldcom
pixels
But in recent years, I've turned my hand to travel photography. Looking for lots of book publishers
magazines and picture agencies. This morning we're gonna look at
a potential great source images. Your local market, and for us it's Columbia Road, flower market
in east London.
Full of great colours, shapes, textures and people.
Lots of comings and goings it's a fantastic place for photographers of all levels,
to improve your skills. AdoramaTV presents Stay Focused with Doug McKinlay
No matter where you are in the world,
markets are a great microcosm of the great society. In that regards photographers,
we want to visually capture
as best we can. Moreover, everything is on display for us,
just waiting for the click a shutter. It's early, and its already buzzing.
But as a photographer, how to make sense in this? What shots do we want? What do we focus on?
An exercise I've always found useful, especially when I was first learning,
is to think the whole thing is a magazine layout. About five to eight pictures finished
which equates to about two to three hundred shot pitches before editing.
It's a way to focus your mind, gives you a sense of purpose on what you're doing,
and I'm pretty sure that in a short space of time, if you follow this method
your images will improve
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Ok it's time to get in the mix, but as you can see behind me it's really busy
in there.
It's nowhere for a tripod, nowhere for a monopod,
and definitely no room for a giant rucksack on your back. So today I pared it down.
I'm carrying one camera body and three lenses, housed in my little low pro side pouch here.
Bodies of 5D Canon 5d Mark II
but really any DSLR will work. Whether it's Canon or Nikon.
I'm using a 50 mil 1.4 lens, a
20 form 1.4 lens and 24-70
short zoom 2.8 lens. With these three lenses
I'm pretty sure I can cover all my bases in here. Sometimes when entering a market it's a
little bit like information overload.
There is so much going on it's very difficult to know where to point the
camera. It happens to me all the time.
But one way of mitigating this problem, is by having a stroll through
without even taking any pictures. Leave the camera hanging from my side, or holding it in my hand.
It's a two-fold scenario. First, it allows me to see
what's out there, if there's any trouble spots, any difficult leading positions?
Second, it allows people to see me with my camera, determined that I'm not really all that
threatening after all.
Remember, this kinda street of reportage photography, cannot happen
unless you engage with people. You've got to lose your inhibitions,
and talk. Engage, engage, engage. Keep in mind
what we're trying to achieve, that is enough images to fulfil
our magazine layout.
The next problem or issue is going to be light. Markets are notorious for
difficult mixed light. For instance here where the stall is, has an awning over it,
it's going to create some problems. Gonna be in shadow so what it means is we're gonna up our ISO,
open our aperture, and slow our shutter down a little bit. I'm gonna talk to this lady here
and get some pictures.
So, diversity id the key to good pictures.
Find different angles, get down low get your detailed pictures:
up close and personal. Look for benches, chairs,
anything to get a different look. So you've been out shooting for a couple of hours,
and you're gonna need. Right now you should have all your images.
Your big holding shot, your details, and your portraits. What's left now is the edits.
Soft edit in the camera, to get rid of all those duck pictures you really don't want to keep.
Hard edit that later in the computer, so by the time you finish
you have a great set of images worthy of any magazine. So until next time,
I'm Doug McKinlay and you're watching AdoramaTV.
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