Photography Link Internship
LINK internships are during a three week period where all the juniors at Animas High School choose a profession that they would like to learn more about and try to find an internship with a professional in that field. I tried multiple times to find an internship with a nature photographer out of town but nature photography has become very difficult to maintain a sustainable living with. Most photographers do senior photos, weddings, or some kind of video/film in order to make enough money to sustain themselves without another job. I searched in New Hampshire, Moab, and Telluride trying to find a nature photographer to intern with but heard "no" multiple times before I just decided to stay in Durango. Finding an internship in general was getting stressful at this point because the start of the three weeks was getting closer. As I was meeting with Janae about my internship, Jess Adams mentioned she knew a local photographer named Matt Payne that would be willing to take me as an intern. I chose to do my internship with Matt because his photos were exactly the style I was looking for and I had given up trying to get out of town for LINK. During the three weeks, I hoped to learn about operating a camera and using the manual settings in order to take good photos. Matt and I agreed that there wasn't much I could do to help his photography operation because he mostly does photography for pleasure and has a different full time job that takes up most of his time.
At the start of this internship, Matt sent me some lectures by a professor at Harvard about exposure settings. After watching them, the next couple weeks were a lot of learning by experimenting. I would go take pictures using what I learned about the three exposure settings and then go home and edit them. Matt and I met once a week where I would show him my progress and ask him any questions I had come up with during our time apart.
At the beginning of the three weeks of LINK internships, I knew nothing about operating a camera and changing settings in order to get a good looking picture, which meant I would shoot on auto most of the time. I soon found out from my mentor that there are only 3 settings of exposure that you need to learn and correctly estimate in order to achieve quality photos. I started playing around with these settings and had quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. My first few pictures came out pitch black because I didn’t know that I needed to change exposure settings due to the scene having dim light.
Exposure Settings
The three settings of exposure are shutter speed, F-Stop, and ISO. Shutter speed is mainly used for capturing moving objects. If you want to freeze a fast moving object in a picture, you need a very fast shutter speed. If you want to show movement in a picture (which usually comes out looking blurred) you would want a slow shutter speed to allow the camera to capture the movement in the scene before snapping the photo. F-stop or aperture is how much light you are allowing to enter your camera. You change this by controlling the diameter of the aperture. For example, when you are shooting in a dark scene, you’d want to open the aperture more to allow more light into your camera. F-stop can also be used to focus on your subject and blur the background to put more emphasis on what you are focused on. ISO (film speed) is also used to allow more light into your camera during the shot. If you are shooting at night, you’d want a high ISO because it would make the scene brighter. One downside of high ISO is noise. The higher you turn up your ISO, the more noise or “grain” is going to be present in your photo. These settings by themselves were difficult to familiarize myself with but putting them together to achieve quality photos was a whole other challenge.
After the first week, I began understanding how each of the three settings played off each other and how when one setting is changed, you usually have to change one or both of the others in order for them to work together. This was a little hard to understand at first which lead to photos similar to the one below.
At the start of this internship, Matt sent me some lectures by a professor at Harvard about exposure settings. After watching them, the next couple weeks were a lot of learning by experimenting. I would go take pictures using what I learned about the three exposure settings and then go home and edit them. Matt and I met once a week where I would show him my progress and ask him any questions I had come up with during our time apart.
At the beginning of the three weeks of LINK internships, I knew nothing about operating a camera and changing settings in order to get a good looking picture, which meant I would shoot on auto most of the time. I soon found out from my mentor that there are only 3 settings of exposure that you need to learn and correctly estimate in order to achieve quality photos. I started playing around with these settings and had quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. My first few pictures came out pitch black because I didn’t know that I needed to change exposure settings due to the scene having dim light.
Exposure Settings
The three settings of exposure are shutter speed, F-Stop, and ISO. Shutter speed is mainly used for capturing moving objects. If you want to freeze a fast moving object in a picture, you need a very fast shutter speed. If you want to show movement in a picture (which usually comes out looking blurred) you would want a slow shutter speed to allow the camera to capture the movement in the scene before snapping the photo. F-stop or aperture is how much light you are allowing to enter your camera. You change this by controlling the diameter of the aperture. For example, when you are shooting in a dark scene, you’d want to open the aperture more to allow more light into your camera. F-stop can also be used to focus on your subject and blur the background to put more emphasis on what you are focused on. ISO (film speed) is also used to allow more light into your camera during the shot. If you are shooting at night, you’d want a high ISO because it would make the scene brighter. One downside of high ISO is noise. The higher you turn up your ISO, the more noise or “grain” is going to be present in your photo. These settings by themselves were difficult to familiarize myself with but putting them together to achieve quality photos was a whole other challenge.
After the first week, I began understanding how each of the three settings played off each other and how when one setting is changed, you usually have to change one or both of the others in order for them to work together. This was a little hard to understand at first which lead to photos similar to the one below.
As I set up for this photo, I changed my ISO and aperture to account for the lighting outside but forgot to make my shutter speed faster since I was capturing a moving object. This resulted in the subject having a lot of motion blur and the scene in general is blurry because I was holding the camera and it wasn’t completely still for the duration of the shot. When I started this internship, it took me a good amount of time to change my exposure settings according to the scene I was capturing. This process has definitely become more natural and takes less thought now that I have experimented with the settings and for the most part, have them under my belt.
For this photo, I wanted to capture a fast moving object without having motion blur. In order to do this, I used a very fast shutter speed, a medium ISO (400) because there was already a lot of light present in the scene from the sun, and a very wide aperture (f/3.5) or in other words, a very low F-stop.
This photo would have been pretty tricky to pull off if I didn’t already have a good grasp of these settings from playing with them the first week. The main thing that allows you to create light paintings like this in a photo is slow shutter speed. In this particular image, I left the shutter open for 25 seconds while three people in the frame spelled out one word each (one tricky thing about writing words is you have to write it backwards so it will be the right way around in the photo). I also brought my ISO up to 1600 to allow more light into the camera because it was night time. My aperture was at f/9 which also allowed more light into the camera during the shot.
In this shot, my goal was to make the water look soft and creamy using long shutter speeds. My shutter speed was 5 seconds and my mentor Matt said I even might have left the shutter open for a little too long. I used a very low ISO because it was bright outside and my f-stop was f/22.
In this photo, I wanted the sun to be peeking out from behind the tree to show that the scene was captured mid morning. I brought the ISO down to 100 because my camera was already exposed to a huge amount of light from the direct sunlight. I changed my aperture to f/5.6 and my shutter speed to 1/160 sec because I wanted the camera to be more focused on the bikes and I also wanted the shadows to be bright.
Composition
After learning about exposure, Matt and I talked about composition. He taught me strategies to give emphasis to a subject in a photo and where the human eye naturally goes when someone looks at a photo.
Composition
After learning about exposure, Matt and I talked about composition. He taught me strategies to give emphasis to a subject in a photo and where the human eye naturally goes when someone looks at a photo.
This picture more or less demonstrates how you can use lines present in the nature or architecture you are capturing in order to give emphasis to your subject. In this shot, all of the lines including the railing, ledges, and even light post point to the subject of the photo which leads your eye to him.
This picture is a good example of how your eye goes straight to the brightest part of the photo when you look at it. I wanted the bike to be the main focus of the picture which I could have done if I underexposed the sky more to make it darker. This would hopefully make the bike be the main focus point of the photo and not the bright sky in the background.
This is an example of a photo where there’s not much of a subject or a main focus point. This was one of my first night sky photos and I was focusing more on making sure my exposure settings were correct than putting anything other than the night sky in the frame. This was a mistake because night sky shots without a subject in the foreground or the milky way lose your attention a lot faster because they end up just being a bunch of dots. This picture would have been more interesting if I had a wider lens and could capture the ring of trees that were around me, or if I had angled the camera more towards a specific subject with the night sky in the background. This also taught me about planning for a shot. One thing I could have done to prepare for this shot is found an interesting object for the foreground during the day and then gone back to it after dark.
Blending
When you are in a situation when you want to take a picture of something bright like a sunset but also want to get the foreground in the shot without it being underexposed, you can blend two different pictures together into one using editing software. I learned this from Matt and it helped me create a couple of photos that don’t look half bad. The method of doing this is setting up a tripod and framing your scene, taking one picture with the sky properly exposed, and then taking another with the foreground properly exposed. Then, with editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, you can blend the sunset of the first photo into the sky of the second photo with a properly exposed foreground.
Blending
When you are in a situation when you want to take a picture of something bright like a sunset but also want to get the foreground in the shot without it being underexposed, you can blend two different pictures together into one using editing software. I learned this from Matt and it helped me create a couple of photos that don’t look half bad. The method of doing this is setting up a tripod and framing your scene, taking one picture with the sky properly exposed, and then taking another with the foreground properly exposed. Then, with editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, you can blend the sunset of the first photo into the sky of the second photo with a properly exposed foreground.
This was one of my first blends in this project. Neither photo that I took to create this could stand on its own because in one, the sky is properly exposed but the foreground is very dark, and in the other the sky is very bright (almost totally white) while the foreground is correctly exposed. This is why the blending technique comes in handy. You can see the whole scene the way it naturally looks with your own eyes, but the camera has a lot of trouble exposing everything correctly when there is a huge amount of light directly hitting the camera from the sun. Blending allows you to recreate the scene the way you want it to look. You can also use this technique to blend a brightly lit foreground into a night sky photo to add contrast and diversity to the shot.
Below is a slideshow of all the pictures I edited from the 3 weeks of LINK Internships
Below is a slideshow of all the pictures I edited from the 3 weeks of LINK Internships
One thing that I think was most useful coming into LINK was my mindset and passion for photography. I think being excited about what I was doing and really wanting to work on my project helped me get out and take photos every day and also sit for long periods of time to edit them. Having passion for the subject allowed me to easily motivate myself and focus on my work. Another skill that was very helpful coming into this internship was problem solving. As I mentioned before, I knew nothing about operating a camera besides how to point and shoot prior to this internship. I quickly learned that in addition to learning what each exposure setting does, you also have to take factors of the scene you're shooting into account. Specifically, there was one day I was at the skate park and I was trying to capture my friend doing tricks, but the sun kept going behind clouds periodically every five minutes or so. This made it extremely hard for me to continually adjust my exposure settings to work with the light outside. In this case, I was still fairly new to all the settings so instead of trying to change them and keep up with the sun's light, I brought my subject into the shadows at the corner of the park where the light stayed somewhat the same no matter where the sun was. This allowed me to change my settings once and keep them that was while I shot the subject.
One skill that I developed through this internship is learning by experimenting. Operating a camera on manual was something that was entirely new to me and was a looming challenge at the start of the three weeks. I was never with Matt while I was shooting which meant I was pretty much all on my own when it came to roadblocks or difficulties that I came across in the field. I overcame this challenge by experimenting a lot with different lights and I also experimented with each individual exposure setting at a time to get a feel for what they each did. One example of this is when I was skating with my friend on the second day of the internship. The very first shot in this post is one of the first pictures I took of him. I knew I needed to change something when I saw this picture on my camera's display so I sat down in front of an obstacle and asked my friend to continue doing the same trick on it as I changed different settings one at a time. This allowed me to start getting the settings under my belt and I began taking multiple shots of the same scene while tweaking the exposure settings each time at every chance I got for the rest of the internship. Another thing that I learned helps me retain information is taking notes. I had to watch two Harvard lectures on exposure that were each 2 hours long before I did any shooting with my camera. I didn't take notes on the first one, but then realized that they really help me when I wrote some main ideas down while watching the second lecture. After that, I wrote summaries of the exposure settings and made a small diagram of what they each do in a small notebook so I would be able to carry and review it when I went out on shoots.
I think Matt would be a good mentor for students in the future that want time on their own to experiment and learn, but also want professional guidance when they run into a problem or are having trouble. I think it was great to learn this with Matt because if I tried to do it by myself, I don't think I could have found answers to my specific questions or problems on the internet which is so great about having a pro to consult with. He also taught me about quick tricks he has to edit photos and the process that he uses in almost every photo which was very helpful and a lot faster than if I had tried to learn on my own.
This internship had prepared me for college and my career because it showed me what working on my own time feels like without having to go to school for 8 hours a day. It allowed me to get a feel for planning and time management by myself without anyone telling me I needed to do anything except finish a project at the end of 3 weeks. I think my internship resembled college in a big way except I will probably have more classes in the mix than just one.
Overall, during this internship I learned a lot about operating a camera, editing photos and photography techniques in general. I really appreciate Matt Payne for being my mentor and taking his own time to teach me what he knows. I plan to use what I’ve learned these past three weeks to continue taking pictures and I hope to refine my style and technique with more practice!
One skill that I developed through this internship is learning by experimenting. Operating a camera on manual was something that was entirely new to me and was a looming challenge at the start of the three weeks. I was never with Matt while I was shooting which meant I was pretty much all on my own when it came to roadblocks or difficulties that I came across in the field. I overcame this challenge by experimenting a lot with different lights and I also experimented with each individual exposure setting at a time to get a feel for what they each did. One example of this is when I was skating with my friend on the second day of the internship. The very first shot in this post is one of the first pictures I took of him. I knew I needed to change something when I saw this picture on my camera's display so I sat down in front of an obstacle and asked my friend to continue doing the same trick on it as I changed different settings one at a time. This allowed me to start getting the settings under my belt and I began taking multiple shots of the same scene while tweaking the exposure settings each time at every chance I got for the rest of the internship. Another thing that I learned helps me retain information is taking notes. I had to watch two Harvard lectures on exposure that were each 2 hours long before I did any shooting with my camera. I didn't take notes on the first one, but then realized that they really help me when I wrote some main ideas down while watching the second lecture. After that, I wrote summaries of the exposure settings and made a small diagram of what they each do in a small notebook so I would be able to carry and review it when I went out on shoots.
I think Matt would be a good mentor for students in the future that want time on their own to experiment and learn, but also want professional guidance when they run into a problem or are having trouble. I think it was great to learn this with Matt because if I tried to do it by myself, I don't think I could have found answers to my specific questions or problems on the internet which is so great about having a pro to consult with. He also taught me about quick tricks he has to edit photos and the process that he uses in almost every photo which was very helpful and a lot faster than if I had tried to learn on my own.
This internship had prepared me for college and my career because it showed me what working on my own time feels like without having to go to school for 8 hours a day. It allowed me to get a feel for planning and time management by myself without anyone telling me I needed to do anything except finish a project at the end of 3 weeks. I think my internship resembled college in a big way except I will probably have more classes in the mix than just one.
Overall, during this internship I learned a lot about operating a camera, editing photos and photography techniques in general. I really appreciate Matt Payne for being my mentor and taking his own time to teach me what he knows. I plan to use what I’ve learned these past three weeks to continue taking pictures and I hope to refine my style and technique with more practice!