Originally Posted by AndyR
Ok, so lets get back to talking about camera operations again.
The point I'd like to make with these images (which have been posted ad-nauseam on every thread about upskirts on this forum) is that it's not imperative to be an expert photographer, or to know every last detail of your camera to get a good image. It's always better if you DO understand photographic basics (like the exposure triangle, for example - Google this if you are interested), and do understand the most fundamental camera settings. But if you can follow a few settings "recipes", and remember when to use each one, then it will drastically improve your results without too much study at all.
For a few years, waaaaay back around the turn of the century, Jay and I spent a number of very enjoyable weekends over the course of a couple years at a big "drinking festival" (which unfortunately turned in to a family friendly event a few years later - it is absolutely N.O.T. possible to have a family friendly drinking festival. Just. Not. Possible.). My tactic here was to take a lot of pictures of everything. As far as I could tell, there was no event photographer, and this was long before the proliferation of digital cameras, let alone cell phones with cameras. By doing this, I became a common sight, a fixture, which made it super easy to slip in some candids here and there, including upskirts. If you search the big photo sharing sites for "nightclub upskirt", you'll see I'm by no means the only person to ever use this type of tactic, although it is a certainty I was one of the very first to do it using a DSLR (DSLRs had only existed for less than a year at the time).
The problem with this tactic is that sometimes you might see some great candid moment / upskirt you really want to get a shot of, but meanwhile someone from the general crowd / audience takes that exact moment to stop you to discuss photography, just generally greet you, or to ask you to take a picture of his / her group of friends. Jay and I had a contingency plan for such occasions. If one of us was a distance away from the other and a "situation" arose, the signal to meet up was to look pointedly in the other guy's direction while adjusting your baseball cap.
So this particular day, I'd just spotted from a distance what at first almost appeared to be bare vagina, but with a tiny sliver of something white embedded in it. As I approached the target area, to my utter dismay, a group of well built ladies accosted me, to drunkenly say "Hi", and ask about photography. I don't think I every adjusted my baseball cap as long or as vigorously while staring in Jay's direction as I did that day. Fortunately, he noticed, and showed up quickly. I then had to get him to notice our subject (who we call The Patriot, due to her American Flag thong), but without saying anything that would alert the party girls as to what he was going to do next. He finally noticed what needed to be photographed, and I just handed him the camera, which I'd already dialed up the proper settings on. The rest, as they say, is history.
In those days, Jay was a total neophyte at photography, meanwhile I'd been studying hard and practicing for about 5 years by the time this particular August afternoon rolled around. Before I met him, he'd been using some kind of off-brand film camera which allowed you to the change the lens, but just had single fully automatic setting with absolutely no manual over-ride of anything (I hesitate to call it a SLR, but I suppose it was). It took passable photos on a bright sunny day, but that's about it. Obviously a camera such as that had never given him an incentive to learn more. So on the fine afternoon that we found The Patriot, when I handed him the camera, I simply said "It's already set up, just shoot. Don't change anything, don't bump any dials, and don't go past 250mm. GO!!!".
He took a total of 75 shots. Discounting the 6 photos where somebody accidentally walked through the shot leaves 69. Of those 69, 54 are in solid, sharp focus with decent exposure. About 7 have a bit of motion blur, and in additional 8, it's unclear exactly what went wrong, other than to say that those early DSLRs had utterly pathetic auto-focus, and pretty weak exposure metering (we'll blame those 8 losses solidly on Canon).
So by simply following a "recipie", Jay shot an epic 55 frame series that still sees frequent internet circulation a decade and a half later. If he can, you can too...
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