The majority of professional photography instructors today know their equipment inside out - from camera and lights to computer and software. They have the awards and degrees to prove it.

But a disturbing trend has evolved in the past few years. Some contemporary speakers at conventions and other seminars claim not to be "technical". They apologize that they're not even sure what kind of lens they are using - they use "this one" for portraits and "that one for weddings". They show you how they do their work with a portrait subject or a wedding model, but they don't really teach you how to control your camera and lighting properly. To them, it just works, in theory.

Well, that's great. So, you spend a couple of hours being taught their methods, including a shooting demonstration and then their Photoshop techniques to fix what didn't go right in the camera. They show you how it all works out because the software creates the artistic version and their clients love it. The camera is no longer so important. What's wrong with this picture? Well, for one, they have dedicated more time to becoming software experts rather than good photographers.

I would agree that digital photography has to be a process consisting of the camera (part one) and the software (part two). Unlike a particular film emulsion, which (theoretically) only has one interpretation of the scene, digital sensor information can be interpreted in many ways on its way to becoming a jpeg or a print. But knowing how to use the many software products is only the second half of the equation, and a professional photographer must also know the camera. It's use or abuse directly affects what happens later on the computer, and how much time is spent on "fixes". At best, software should be today's darkroom for preparing a good photograph.

The second disturbing trend of the past few years

is a tendency, especially for newer wedding photographers, to not choose a proper aperture that suits the subject or type of scene. This is not a new phenomenon. Back when most professional weddings were photographed with medium format cameras, it was common to set the aperture on f8, set the automatic flash units on f8, and most photographs would have reasonable, predictable and acceptable depth of field at f8. Photographers who were f-stop aware would occasionally change to f11 or f16 for larger groups, and maybe a few f4 portraits of the bride and groom, just to throw the background out of focus.

In the last few years, however, we have seen many new wedding photographers who believe everything should be shot at wide open aperture, usually f2.8 on the now ubiquitous 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses everyone lugs around. These are excellent creative tools, but there are many scenes that cannot be taken with the depth of field of f2.8. For group portraits it is not cool to have sharp bride and groom's eyes and everyone else slightly out of focus. Some clients may not notice, but not one is going to agree that having members of a group out of focus is acceptable. There is a lot of danger in using f2.8 and f4, especially with telephoto lenses, and wide open should be used only creatively. The vast majority of the wedding documentation should be done at f5 to f6.3 with DSLRs. Yes, this is like the old, boring f8 of the medium format camera, but it lets you concentrate on the moments, rather than the depth of field. Vary depth of field when appropriate, but the baseline should be f5, not f2.8.

Adding to the poor results many photographers get is their uninformed use of the autofocus system. If you are to use very shallow depth of field correctly and predictably, then you must either know how to command the autofocus system points correctly, or focus manually on the point in the image that you want sharp. Lessons on autofocus control are for another story.

Courtesy of Bill hitz

HitzPhotoPro.com