Building your Confidence - People Unaware

What: The main brief of this exercise was to take a number of photographs of people gathered together in an outdoor situation

Where: North Berwick, Outdoors

When: In the afternoon, just after about 1 pm. when the sun was high enough in the sky to provide adequate light

How: Upon arriving I decided to start shooting when we came across a likely situation.

We arrived when there was a break in a sailing competition; this gave me quite a range of subjects as there were a number of spectators as well as competitors.

I was quite comfortable shooting people as a previous part on the Art of Photography course required photographing people at an outdoor event.

I walked along the location and when I spotted something that I thought might make a well composed photograph I took a couple of frames. Since the boats were being brought back onto dry land there was a bit of commotion and several of the racers were under a bit of strain to pull their boats back up the stretch of beach and up the ramp.

I used a longer focal length as I did not want to get in the way of the boats being moved, although I was able to pull back to the minimum focal length of the lens as I moved down and around the competitors.

 We continued on along the beach and I photographed people sitting around the harbour area;

As I was quite comfortable and I was enjoying the sun, I think that this may have helped me try and capture the expressions of people enjoying their day.

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Nikon D80, Exposure Mode Manual, focal length 240.0mm (35mm equivalent 360mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/1000 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80, Exposure Mode Auto, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/4000 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, monopod mounted camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Auto, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/500 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, monopod mounted camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80, Exposure Mode Auto, focal length 280mm (35mm equivalent 420mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/750 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Auto, focal length 145mm (35mm equivalent 217mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/750 second, ISO 250, Manual white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Manual, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/2000 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Manual, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/2000 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Manual, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/3000 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

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Nikon D80,Exposure Mode Manual, focal length 300mm (35mm equivalent 450mm), aperture f5.6, speed 1/350 second, ISO 250, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Hand held camera, 70-300mm lens,

It was a good start, although I did find that using a telephoto lens did make taking photos easier as I could get a bit of distance between myself and the subject.
Using telephoto certainly allowed me to pan around the area and compose quite tightly on the subjects without compromising my own comfort.