When to just set it on Program and let the camera work for you

Sorry I have been MIA lately. My father passed away August 27, 2011 from cancer. I had to take a leave of absence from school with no penalties.  My father served in the ARMY from 1967 to 1969. He was in Vietnam at the age of 18 – 19. He was in the fourth infantry division and also was a tanker. I knew his wish was to have a full military service.

When we got to the Houston National VA Cemetery I was surrounded by family that I haven’t seen since I was a little girl. My father left when I was three and had been in and out of my life since. He was there for major events like graduation from high school and my wedding, but I never received calls on birthdays or holidays. He had a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome which affected his entire life after the war. When 10:00 am approached we all got into our cars and had a funeral procession to where they would hold his service. It seemed to take forever and fly by at the same time. I kept looking at the casket in a little bit of shock that my father was in there. I was waiting for him to open it up and climb out and say, “Gotcha”. Of course that never happened. While listening to the minister talk about my father I would have brief flash backs of fishing with my dad, remembering the day he left, remembering him walk me down the aisle and all of the funny stories he would tell me as a child. I was in no condition to shoot pictures this day so this left my husband to do this daunting task for me. I typically could tell him about where to set the camera manually, but today I was just not in the right frame of mind. So, I set it to P or Program and let him do his thing. 

This made me think about other times I do use P or Program to snap some pictures.  If I am doing an actual paid shot I always shoot in Manual. However, I usually keep my camera sitting out on my table set to P. Why, because I have a toddler that refuses to sit still for a second. So putting my camera to P allows me to capture those brief moments without fiddling with the settings. If I took the time to do that, I would have lost that moment.  At my father’s funeral, I wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t want to risk losing the shot because my mind wasn’t focused. So, set it to P and make sure I can capture the day. Of course setting the camera to an automated setting will not turn out as well as manual, but I can fix some of those things in PS later. For instance, the images were way too cool so I just warmed them up with the Florabella actions. I also used the sharpen and defog action from Florabella. Other than that, I increased the blacks and lifted the midtones in a few pictures. I typically don’t use color fill on b/w pictures but there was one I thought made a statement that I posted below. 

Basically, if you are ever in the position where setting your camera to manual will cause you to lose your shot, just set it to P and roll with it.  There are a lot of photographers that won’t agree with this, but I got my shot and you be the judge of how they came out.

I want to add that my hubby is in no way a professional photographer. I am very happy with the pictures he took of this day for me. Thank you Pumpkin xoxo.