4-H members swarm the park for photography workshop
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[4-H members swarmed Harrisburg Township Park, cameras in hand, during a photography workshop Tuesday.
Nothing was safe from the shutters - students captured everything from ponds, cypress trees, shoes, peeling picnic table paint, water, ducks and each other during the outing.
Leading the outing was Adrienne Rider, a full-time mom and member of the Professional Photographers of America. Rider said photographers should work on three fundamentals - learn your camera, be creative with your photos and be aware of lighting.
For example, different settings on digital cameras can be useful in different situations. For close-up photos, for instance, the "flower" mode on the selector may work best.
In any case, "Practice is the number one thing to get better with anything," Rider said.
Thinking about photos in new and creative ways is key to getting beyond boring.
"My favorite kind of pictures are the pictures that tell a story," Rider said.
She suggested looking for the right moment for photos, like when students throw their caps at a graduation.
The 4-Hers seemed to catch on to the creative approach fast.
"Get a real smile rather than a pasted-on one," Taylor Boone said.
Adults and kids both are fond of taking photos of small children. When Rider takes photos of small kids, she gets down on their level and follows them around. Those sorts of photos generally turned out better than posed, "look at the camera" photos, she said.
Lighting is an overlooked part of good photography. Rider suggested trying some photos in the evening when the sun is not as harsh, or in the early morning when the sun is rising and there is a mist around everything.
"In the fall, it's even prettier," Rider said.
She also suggested photographers share their photos with others through Internet sites like Facebook, Flickr or Smugmug. Sites like Smugmug are also good storage sites, Rider said. Storing photos and making sure they are backed up online or on CD is essential with digital photos - nobody wants to lose prized photos when a computer's hard drive goes out.
The kids had different approaches and different preferences in taking photos. Many said they like to take photos of other people. Callie Oxford said she is a people-person when it comes to photography. Some, however, voiced a taste for landscape photos or more artsy photography.
"I like to take pictures of objects, like crazy-looking trees," Boone said.
Boone said she sometimes arranges different items to produce interesting or colorful photos.
Several of the kids took good photos at the park. Jeffrey Frailey took a good landscape photo of the cypress trees around one of the ponds by looking straight up until he saw the angle and composition he wanted. Frailey also got some good photos of a duck in the water. Noah Lambert took an abstract photo of several kids' hands around a water fountain.
Some of the kids modeled for others - Rider brought some painted chairs she uses for photos of kids. Kayla Heath and Rachel Durham took turns posing in the chairs for other kids to take photos, which allowed the students to try different angles and lighting ideas.
4-Hers have been asking for a photography workshop for some time, University of Illinois Extension Adviser Nancy Lambert said.