In the quest to hone my skills, I took my camera out to the town square in LaGrange, GA to take pictures of the fountain. It was an afternoon of trial and error. If I learned to hunt like I learn to be a photographer, I'd have used many rounds of bullets today.
Things I've learned:
1. When it comes to exposure time, there's a huge difference between a 1/25 of a second to 1/250 of a second. Some mathematicians would say its, like, 10x the difference. The obvious lesson here is that the faster the shutter, the more your picture will look frozen in time. To achieve the smooth stream look, you've got to slow it down just a bit.
2. When your shutter is open longer and letting in more light, you have to reign in that light and funnel it through a smaller aperture (which in opposite camera world means a higher F-number.) Otherwise, your pictures will be as white as snow, which I learned through my first 5 or 20 pictures.
I achieved my goal of getting that smooth water stream look. What I need now is to really narrow down what exposure and F number works best to get more color in my shots. My shots still seamed a bit light and white washed. Perhaps I need a filter of some kind, but that almost feels like cheating. Below are some decent shots with both 'black and white' and 'technicolor'. At the very bottom is an example of fast shutter speed just to show the difference
Exposure: 1/25 sec Aperture: f/18 Focal Length: 35mm ISO Speed: 200
The two pictures below show the difference in shutter speed. Notice the faster shutter on the left seemed to capture a clearer, choppier stream than the picture on the right with the slower exposure time.
Left: Exposure: 1/100 sec Aperture: f/22 Focal Length: 35mm ISO Speed: 200
Right: Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: f/22 Focal Length: 35mm ISO Speed: 200
