Remember: The camera only sees what's inside the frame.
Secret 2 -- Learn to “see” with the camera
When you look at a scene, develop the habit looking at it through the camera. Use the camera as a lens, through which you observe the world. When you look at a scene with your eyes, you see all sorts of things on the periphery of your vision. The camera does not see any of this. The camera only sees what is within the frame.
When you practice seeing the world through the camera, you soon develop a sense of framing, composition and balance. Learning to see with the camera is the first step toward shooting truly compelling images.
What you need for this exercise:
Camcorder with a fully charged battery
Blank media
Camcorder operating manual (optional)
Find a visually interesting spot within a 5-minute walk from your home. Look for a spot where you can see movement—traffic, people walking, waves crashing on a shore, clouds moving across the sky—anything.
Sit down, and turn on the camera. Look at the scene through the LCD. Move the camera, and play with the zoom until you find an interesting scene.
Record the scene. Hold the camera on the scene for at least 1 minute. The first thing you will notice is how hard it is to let the camera record for even a single minute. We are all conditioned to quick cuts and jumps on television and in the movies, and there is a constant temptation to move the camera to something else. Watch the scene in the camcorder viewfinder or LCD as you record it. Don’t look up!
Repeat five times, with five different scenes.
Transfer the resulting footage to your video editing program and carefully examine the footage.
Assemble a two or 3-minute movie from the most visually interesting elements of the footage.
Save your movie to a DVD or CD. Write the date, time, and the name of the movie on the DVD or CD.
Post your movie online.
Learn to shoot intuitively
Closely connected to learning to “see” with the camera is the ability to shoot intuitively and spontaneously.
Some of the world’s greatest photographs happened only because the photographer had the ability to shoot intuitively and quickly.
What you need for this exercise:
Camcorder with a fully charged battery
Blank media
Take your camcorder, and go for a walk. Don’t make a big deal of it; just go somewhere close by, maybe somewhere that you see every day. As you walk, look at your environment. When you see something that interests you—for no reason other than it interests you—stop and record it, no matter how little sense it makes. Shoot at least 30 seconds of footage each time you turn on the camera.
Continue until you have 5 to 7 minutes of footage.
Transfer the footage to your video editing program.
Assemble a 1-3 minute movie from the most interesting shots.
