Great photographs with your point and shoot camera part 2...

The techniques used to get great photographs from taking snapshots with your point and shoot camera in this blog are a bit more detailed than in part 1. However, once you have it figured out picture taking will be fun and interesting. This image was also taken at the Miami Biltmore on the night of my girlfriend's birthday. It was just after sunset when there was much color in the sky but everything else was turned dark.


I set the camera to the auto exposure mode with a setting of plus 1. The flash was turned on and set to minus 1. This way the flash fills in the subject without being too over-powering. With these settings the photograph is almost ready to be snapped but one more thing has to be taken into account. The sky will be washed out if the camera automatically exposes for the foreground. In order to expose for the sky I tilt the camera upward so that mostly sky is in the frame and press and hold halfway on the shutter release. This causes the camera to lock in an automatic exposure for the sky and then I lower the camera to the composition that I want and take the picture. The camera exposes for the sky and the flash fills in the details in the foreground.


For any questions on this technique feel free to email me at tom@tomclarkphoto.com.