Photography Walkabout Tour Part 1 - Downtown Night Tour

Being an avid traveler, it was only natural that I took an interest in photography in order to capture and share the memories of far away lands. For years I was content with the good old fashioned point-and-shoot but after my recent adventure overseas I was heavily inspired to take the next step up to a DSLR camera. Luckily I had a birthday coming up and an amazing wife who knew the perfect gift, my very own Canon EOS Rebel T1i.

Graduating from point-and-shoot to DSLR isn’t the easiest of transitions as suddenly I needed to learn about white-balance, aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and many other features I never considered before. We decided to seek help in the form of a Photography Walkabout Tour. This is a great first-step for NuBe’s jumping into the DSLR world as it’s relatively economical and a great learning experience as they teach you all about how your camera works and things to take into consideration when taking photos.

Our first walking tour would be a night walk around downtown Vancouver. It was raining a little bit which instantly made us concerned about whether we would even be going forward with the tour. Our guide assured us that weather shouldn’t be a deterrent when photographing as it actually has the potential to make shots even more interesting shots so I wrapped a plastic bag around my camera and ventured out. He showed us that puddles, especially at night-time, created opportunities to take reflective photos and play with lighting to make for more creative pictures.

That beginning was just a matter of getting used to our cameras, and what better way to do that then just to take a bunch of pictures at different settings. We started off outside the Vancouver Art Gallery playing with our ISO setting. ISO essentially is how sensitive the camera is to light, the higher the ISO number the more possible it is to shoot in low light situations. This takes getting used to because while you are able to brighten as ISO gets higher it also begins to add grain and noise to the photo.

Next we moved onto an outdoor skating rink where we would start learning about White Balance. This is a bit of a complex concept that involves grasping the concept of light having a range of colours that go from cool to warm. Without breaking out my Physics textbook, the NuBe approach to this is to tweak the White Balance setting until the photo doesn’t look too blue or too orange in your viewfinder. There are a number of auto settings based on the conditions you are in (tungsten, daylight, cloudy, etc) and some manual settings which take a bit of getting used to.

From here our group moved onto a small courtyard near the Vancouver Law Courts where we practiced our creative composition. There was an interesting sculpture that we were challenged to take photos of from all different angles. The advice here was to “shoot the hell out of it”, trying as many different perspectives as possible. It really helped break the habit of taking the shots head on and really getting into some more unique and interesting compositions. It was a very good learning experience.

Our last lesson of the night was learning about Shutter Speed and Aperture which both combine to form exposure of a photo. Exposure is the amount of light (controlled by aperture) that is captured over a specified amount of time (controlled by the shutter speed). Once you have a correct exposure you can make adjustments with the shutter speed and aperture to give effects to a photo. By increasing the shutter speed and decreasing the aperture you are now able to ‘freeze’ fast action shots. Going the other direction of decreasing shutter speed and increasing aperture gives you a deeper depth of field. A small aperture may blur out the background however a high aperture will have everything in focus. For low lighting a long shutter speed can make for some terrific pictures however tripods start to become a very good idea to avoid blur caused by shake. On the other hand, intentional blur of fast moving items can make for a very neat effect.

We ended the night here with plans to pick-up on another walking tour in a few weeks, next time during the day taking a trip through historic and gritty Gastown area!