Gnomedex 8.0 Day 1 - Photo Tips in 15 Minutes with Kris Krug | Helping Small Business help themselves

Gnomedex 8.0 Day 1 - Photo Tips in 15 Minutes with Kris Krug

August 27, 2008 :: Steve Fisher

Kris Krug or KK as he is know on Twitter started out the speakers line up after the Ignite Portland presentations with a 15 minute presentation on how to take great pictures. I think every conference should start like this because this Gnomedex came out being one of the best photographed (I mean quality, not quantity) tech events I have ever seen.

For those of you who don’t know Kris, he is a fashion and editorial photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and founder of photography studio Static Photography.

He is an author, having co-written BitTorrent for Dummies with Susannah Gardner, and a technologist. He was also the president of Bryght (a Drupal development company) and founder of early web community spark-online.com. Now he is president of Raincity Studios who acquired bryght some months ago. Raincity studios is the A-Z supplier of web services from planning to development to implementation to hosting.

Krug is the organizer and founder of PhotoCamp, a photography unconference with BarCamp origins, and has organized 5 of them including Northern Voice 2006, BarCamp Shanghai, Barcamp Vancouver, Northern Voice 2007 and Northern Voice 2008.

Krug is a well known contributor to the Flickr photo sharing community website. His photographs have appeared in JPG Magazine, ION Magazine, Business Week, Wired Magazine, and others. He has published interviews with technology personalities in Digital Web Magazine, and he has covered events as diverse as SXSW, the 2006 Winter Olympics, and the Consumer Electronics Show. He has been a regular guest on The Lab with Leo, a talk show devoted to technology and its effects on the G4Tech channel talking about topics like Facebook apps to the growing Chinese market. As a speaker, he has been invited to a number of media and technology events, such as SXSW.

He just got back from Beijing and taking photos at the Olympics. His big piece of advice that was non-technical was to find a theme of your pictures (faces, reflections) to find a style that people will recognize your work. Plus, and most of all, take photos every day if you want to get good.

Here is a great summary of his tips for everyone with any kind of camera:

Tips:
1. Light in someone’s eyes (that little twinkle in person’s eye)
2. Evaluate the light
- Sun? Shade? Incandescent. Halogen?
- Look around - highlights, shadows, spotlights
- Put your subject in good light

- Work with Whatcha Got
3. Shoot in Low Light/Available Light
- Sometimes don’t use flash
- Increase your ISO (ASA)
- Increase your aperture (F-stop) make it lower 1.2, 1.4, 2.8
- Decrease your shutter speed
- Focus manually if autofocus fails you
- Tinker with manual setting/metering
- Brace on things (tripod, gear bag)
4. Reflections are Yummy!
- Puddles
- Glass
- etc.
5. Pick a theme
- ex: Gnomedex Wall of Love
- Poloroids
- Portraits
- Black & White/Sepia/Over-exposed
- Laptop Stickers/Geeks & Gear
- Funny Faces
6. Learn your camera
- Isolate the variables - depth of field, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc.
- Tinker, tweek, shoot lots, share your photos, get feedback, change it up
- Share your gear - find someone you can test out lenses, flashes, etc. with
- SET THE WHITE BALANCE!!!