Make the most of holiday snap shots

Press, 26 December 1986, Page 10

Make the most of holiday snap shots

By

ROBIN MITCHELL

Squad will fire cameras. Squad ... Cameras, Load! ... At subjects, point! On your marks ... Fire! These days, with autoeverything cameras, you get a result every time, always provided you remember to remove the lens cap or its equivalent. But you won’t necessarily get a photo-grapher-of-the year shot that way. Pressing the shutter-re-lease is actually well down the list of instructions for photo taking. Preceding it are conceiving or seeing; planning; framing and composing, setting the camera. While an auto-everything camera may need little setting, the rest of the items are musts unless for a "candid” shot. Even then, there’s probably preparation you can do. Seeing and conceiving are alternative ways of starting. Conceiving is thinking what photograph might be taken where; seeing is imagining a photograph out of the scene in front of you. Conceiving, may involve you in a lot of props, and people in it will need to be actors; often this will be best, as you have full control over your subject matter; but acting can be a good • deal to expect of an animal

or young child. If you want a picture of Bubs that doesn’t have him detained by an enormous hand or pushchair, bored stiff or tearful and/or looking in the wrong direction, study what he’s doing and “see” a photograph in that. This is all part of preparation, which with luck you’ll have time for before he fishes a crab out from under a rock and screams when it nips his finger, in which case it’s aim and fire. Preparation also includes, planning. This means deciding what shot you’d prefer — against the light with his hair as a halo, perhaps; against the sky or sand or sea; with or without people or boats as background. You may also want to think about how, or if, he should be dressed. Having got this far, framing and composing become not too difficult. The constant advice to beginners is: get in close. If you have a telephoto lens available, try getting in so close that you have only Bub’s face and what he’s looking at. If your camera has controls that need setting, set them. Don’t wait for a pose. Fire! And keep firing till you’re sure you’ve got the shot you want.