Day 8: Want a great shot? Just look...up!

All right, so sue me - this is not really a DSLR camera trick, but it is so amazing that I guess I had to really write about it. And the credit for it really goes to one of my friends who saw me struggling with my DSLR, trying to take some amazing pictures. Incidentally, has it ever struck you how rarely someone with a camera tries to take an ordinary shot? It always has to be a special picture, even though you have near infinite options on a digital camera

I like to call it the quest for perfection. Judging by the patient looks of some of my more DSLR-savvy friends, it was more like "pie-eyed idiocy." Finally, one of them could take it no more and said, "You want a great picture? Just look up! What do you see?"

"The underside of a crow" would have been too literal and maybe even irrelevant, so I gave the standard answer, "The sky."

"Exactly! Just get lots of it into your picture. It will give you a great shot seven times out of ten!"

"That easy? But which mode do I use: Program, auto..."

"Keep it simple. Do it on auto. Just get lots of sky in. Preferably without wires. "

"Oho, what ISO? When night falls..." (well, I like dropping acronyms to show that I CAN use them...)

He was unimpressed by my display of punditry. "Stuff that, do it in daytime and if push comes to shove, late in the evening.  NOT IN THE NIGHT! And for God's sake, stop fiddling with those dials. You are making me feel sad for the bloody camera!"

I sulked for a while, and diddled with some buttons for a while, just to show that I was master of my own DSLR (even though I knew next to nothing about it). Then I decided to try it out the advice.

It did not half work.

No matter what the subject - birds or buildings - they ended up looking a lot better just because of that wonderfully blue canvas behind them. Mind you, the wires WERE a pain. See for yourself:

Best of all - this formula would have worked with just about any decent camera. Though, of course, a DSLR would generally give better results because of its better lens quality - all the above shots were taken with my Canon EOS 600D.

All of which proves, that for all the dials and bells and whistles - some aspects of photography can at times be incredibly simple.  Even with a DSLR.

Mind you, I still do not know what THAT button does, and for that matter, the other one, and that little wheely-thingy...but that is a story for another day. And another blog entry!