My camera lessons with Chiz Dakin

Dec 092009

Spanish Highs Mountain Guides has joined forces with award winning professional landscape photographer and travel writer Chiz Dakin to run outdoor photography courses here in Lanjaron, so when she phoned to say she was coming over to check out some locations, I volunteered to drive her around in return for some lessons with my camera. I have a Nikon D40 and brought a AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED lens to go with it. No idea what all the numbers and letters mean but I guess it means something to someone.

Since having the camera I always had it on the automatic settings and was quite happy with the results but it seemed pointless having a camera like this and not using it properly. My lessons have taught me about aperture settings, shutter speed, how to find the menu and change its settings to my advantage, along with much more but I wont bore you listing them all.

I like to take pictures of wildlife, thats my thing, but still the biggest problem I have is remembering to put the settings back to the most ideal settings for photographing wildlife, after ive been messing about taking photos of anything. More often then not an eagle will come floating on by just above my head, I think fantastic, get the camera, take some photos, realise im on the wrong settings, change the settings, point the camera to the sky where the eagle was, eagle has gone, missed my chance, look at what photos I did take and find blurred, out of focus etc pictures!! Im told this will get easier and quicker as I use the camera more, but im one of those people who likes to run before they can walk and get very frustrated with missed opportunities.

Ive also learnt a bit on landscape and abstract photography, I cant see a good picture, unless its smacking me in the face or there is a professional stood in front of you taking a picture who you can copy and then if I did see it, capturing the picture is a different matter.

Chiz did a great job in teaching me and she made it very simple for me to understand, not because im simple, but theres just no need to complicate things. I thoroughly recommend camera lessons with Chiz to help advance your photography. Bring on those Bee Eaters, next year I shall have great photos of them!!

Below are a few images that I took whilst with Chiz, the last 2 images were taken since my lessons. Don’t forget if you want to see the larger photo, click on the image.