NLP Blog #4 - Action/Sports Mode and Kid Mode

Initially I was going to use my dog to master the action/sports mode on my digital camera.  Since he prefers to sunbath instead of run around outside recently, I have had to change my subject to my son.  Fortunately he did not have to be prompted to be active, since he is active every waking moment of his life.

What I learned using this mode was that you really needed to anticipate the action you are trying to capture.  My face was glued to my camera pretty much the entire time just trying to get a picture of my son in action and in focus.   By using a sequence of pictures taken while my son was driving his jeep you can tell the movement of the jeep by the position the background is in reference to him.

Initially I was moving with him while I took the first couple of action shots, but I could not really tell they were action photos when I looked at them on the computer.  I researched best practices of action pictures and they a few references mentioned staying in one spot and taking a series of pictures in a row.  I apologize in advance for the transition of the photos, I tried to find the best program to use to have the slides transition quickly to demonstrate the action in the photos.

I also took this photo of my son running with his lawn mower to capture his action.  Trust me when I tell you that I would never be able to get him to stand on one leg ever.  He is always moving!

I also tried to capture one more picture of him running down the driveway with a kite.

I did find that a lot of my action pictures were blurry or at least the image of my son was blurry.  As I mentioned before, I had my face planted to the camera and constantly trying to keep my son in focus.  I read many photography blogs and tutorials that stated that if you wanted to get a good action photo you really needed luck and to be at the right time, right place.

The kid mode on the camera is very similar to the portrait mode except I have seen that the colors are more vivid in the kid mode and the background stays a little blurry to accentuate the main subject.

Below is a list of some references I used to help with mastering these two modes.  I have especially found a lot of information from the Digital Photography School website.  I would highly recommend using this website if you need information on improving your digital photo taking skills.

http://www.cs.duke.edu/~parr/photography/faq.html

http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/photography-fundamentals-articles/photography-kick-start-guide-basic-camera-settings/

http://digital-photography-school.com/digital-camera-modes