Chapter Two

CAMERA SETTINGS & LENSES

How to Get the Right Settings for the Job

You don’t know how close I was to naming this chapter simply “Camera,” an homage to the song “Camera” by DJ Drama (unless you’re really old, and in that case, we can pretend it was a tribute to the song “Camera” by Crosby, Stills & Nash, which I can only assume is a law firm of some sort). Anyway, this would have been in keeping with my tradition of sometimes naming my chapters after movie titles, TV shows, or songs. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised to see how many songs were named “Camera” out there. I could have gone with one by Drake or R.E.M., and there is even a song by a band whose name is “Camera,” and the title of their album (I am not making this up) is This Is Camera. If I had gone with that one, you’d have turned to this chapter, seen “This Is Camera,” and thought, “Oh, this is a children’s book,” and then you wouldn’t have purchased the book at all, and then where would we be? So, I played it safe and went with Camera Settings, but while I was browsing, I did click on the audio preview for “Camera” by DJ Drama, before I realized there was an Explicit Lyrics warning icon beside the song. I have to give DJ Drama credit—that warning was not wasted. Four words in and I was on my way to the store to buy a bar of soap because it got explicit fast. But then I looked at the popularity ranking of the song and you can’t argue with the results—people really like it, and apparently, were not at all dissuaded by the warning. This got me to thinking, maybe I need to come up with my own type of warning. Maybe my book should contain an Explicit Limerick warning, so I could write naughty rhyming poems. I could start one like this: “There once was a man from China . . .” and then you can pretty much fill in the rest.