Monument Cove and Otter Cliffs in Maine’s Acadia National Park. The curve of the shoreline in this photo adds a peaceful line that leads the viewer’s eye to the cliffs.
Lines, real and implied are an important component in any photo’s composition. Lines can be straight (horizontal, vertical, or at an oblique angle,) or curved. All lines work to divide your image into distinct parts, so you need to study your compositions carefully to see how these divisions work. Do they cut an image in half, creating a static feel, or do they divide the image into unequal parts which can provide an asymmetrical balance and more dynamic feel?
In general, horizontal lines are relatively calm. Vertical lines possess more energy, and diagonal or oblique lines are the most energetic of all. Lines also take the viewer on a journey through your photographs, as they provide a natural path for the viewer’s eye to follow while looking at your photo. Diagonal lines in particular, move your viewer along at a quick pace. Curved lines also give this sense of motion to a photo, but in a more peaceful, gentle way than a straight diagonal line.
Dawn over the Atlantic Ocean at Wallis Sands State Park in Rye, New Hampshire. I repositioned my camera for this photo so that the lines in the rock were at an oblique angle to give the photo more energy.
Whenever I’m composing a photo, I’m constantly repositioning my camera to take advantage of curved lines, and to change vertical or horizontal lines to oblique angled lines. The only exception to this is that I generally try to keep my horizon line or the vertical lines of trees, plants, and buildings straight (although purposely angling these lines can add more energy to a photo, and I’ll often choose that energy over a straight horizon line in an adventure photo.)
Waterfall at Castle in the Clouds in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. The relatively vertical flow of this photo has less of a sense of motion than the version below.
Waterfall at Castle in the Clouds in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. By recomposing this photo so that the water flows from top right to bottom left, gives the image a greater sense of motion and energy.
A man hikes over a footbridge near the Presumpscot River in Portland, Maine.The implied line (at an oblique angle) between the sun and the hiker adds to the sense of energy and movement in this photo.
Photos also have implied lines that you need to pay attention to. In many photos you will have a main subject as well as a secondary subject and if there is an oblique line between the two, the photo will have more energy than if that implied line is horizontal or vertical. Sometimes, all it takes is repositioning the camera by one or two feet to change this implied line and improve the image.
A woman kayaking in New Castle, New Hampshire.
In the above photo, the kayaker is the main subject, with the lighthouse serving as a strong secondary subject. The implied line between the two is slightly oblique. It’s a nice photo, but I think it could be better with a little more separation between the kayaker and the light.
Canoeing in Lily Bay at sunrise, Moosehead Lake, Maine.
In this paddling shot, the canoe and sun are the two subjects, and the implied oblique line between the two adds some needed energy to a photo that has a peaceful feeling due the horizontal lines formed by the horizon and the canoe.
Any questions? Please post them in the comments section below.
Cheers! -Jerry
Find out more about Jerry at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
One of the hardest things for many photographers to develop is a sense of creativity. You might be the most technologically proficient person with your gear and know how to edit photos better than the best Photoshop gurus out there but what about making interesting pictures?
Creativity, according to John Cleese is not a talent, but rather a quality that can be learned by the biggest imbecile… fortunately for me. So while you might have the technical know how, where do you rate on the creative scale?
Check out this video by the very talented and humorous John Cleese. Many of you may know him from Monty Python fame, but what you may not know about him, is that he is a highly educated, imaginative, and persuasive writer and educator. Maybe this video will help you to unlock your own creative abilities and also allow you a little laugh or two. Its a little over 30 minutes long, but full of useful info regardless if you’re a photographer, an artist, an engineer or a teacher!
I find the one of the big reasons photographers do not want to shoot in RAW mode is that they fear spending too much time on the computer. One of the great things about Adobe Lightroom is that it gives you several ways to be very efficient in managing your digital photo archive. One part of Lightroom that all photographers should master is the develop module. While most shooters love the ability to easily make tone and color corrections to their images in this module, the ability to create develop presets and to apply changes to many images at once make “developing” in Lightroom one of the biggest time savers that digital photographers have in their arsenals. And in my opinion, the less time I spend on the computer, the better.
There are basically three ways to apply develop settings to multiple images: the Previous/Synch button, presets, and camera raw defaults. I’ll describe each feature in detail in this post.
The first option lets you synchronize settings between one image and one or more others, and is very straightforward. It works like this. First, make your develop changes to an image. If you have a second image that can use the same settings, highlight that second image, then click on the Previous button (located at the bottom of the develop panel on the right.) This basically pastes the develop settings from your most recently edited image to the highlighted image. (You can do the same thing by using the Copy and Paste buttons on the bottom left of the screen.)
The previous button works great if you need to just apply all the changes from the previous image to one additional image. If however, you want to apply these changes to several images or apply only a subset of the develop changes, you’ll want to use the Sync option. To do this, highlight the “master” image that has the develop settings you like, then select the additional images that need these settings (using shift-click or ctrl-click to make your image selections.) As you can see in the screen shot, one of these selected images is “more selected” than the others, which is denoted by having a brighter “slide mount” outline. This is your master image, with the develop settings you are copying. Once you have selected multiple images, the Previous button changes to the Sync button. Click on that button to bring up the pop-up window seen in the below screen shot. Now you can choose to synchronize all of the develop settings from your master image or just a subset of those settings. This is a great way to quickly make white balance, tone, and other changes to a series of images from one photo shoot.
Lightroom lets you choose which develop settings to synchronize from one image to another.
Creating develop presets is similar to synchronizing settings.
If you find yourself making similar changes to certain types of images over and over again, then using develop presets can be another great time-saver. I use presets for things like black and white conversions and noise reduction for high ISO images. I also find that for nature landscape images, I often like to use a strong tone curve and bump up the vibrance of the image, so I have created a preset that will apply a strong tone curve and increase the vibrance slider to 25 with just one click. Creating a preset couldn’t be easier. First, make your commonly used develop changes to an image. Then click on the + sign on the presets panel (on the left side of the screen.) This brings up a pop-up window that is similar to the Sync pop-up. On this pop-up, you give your preset a meaningful name, then check off the settings you want to include in the preset (the settings are taken from the currently highlighted image.) This new preset will be available any time you open Lightroom from now on, and to use it all you need to do is highlight an image and click on the preset name.
Setting Lightroom develop defaults for your camera.
Lastly, if you find yourself making changes to almost every image you bring into Lightroom, you should change your camera raw defaults. I find that for the outdoor shooting I do, I like to start with a few settings that are different than the defaults that ship with Lightroom (specifically, these are the contrast, clarity, vibrance, and saturation sliders.) Like with creating a preset, first make changes to an image using the settings you want as a default, but don’t make any other changes. Hold down the alt (option) key and you will see that the reset button (on the bottom right) changes to a Set Default button. Click on that button, then click on “Update to Current Settings” in the resulting pop-up. As you can see in the screen shot, this will set new defaults only for the camera model that the raw image was shot with, so you can set different defaults for different cameras. You can also restore to the Adobe defaults at any time from this same pop-up window.
In my case, any time I import a raw file from my Canon5D MarkII, these new default settings are immediately applied to that image. As you can see from the next screen shot, you can also make default settings unique for specific cameras by serial number and for different ISO’s. To do this, go to Lightroom Preferences, click on the presets tab and click on the appropriate check boxes.
Setting default develop options in the Lightroom preferences panel.
If you’re looking for an in-depth Lightroom class, check out my Lightroom in a Day NANPA Road Show seminar on April 14th in Rye, New Hampshire.
Find out more about Jerry at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what steps I’ve taken over the last 11 years to become the world’s most reknowned landscape and adventure photographer. Clearly, I’ve also been daydreaming quite a bit. Seriously though, here are a five things I’ve done that have contributed to making me a better photographer.
1) Be Studious
I’ve looked at a whole bunch of photos. Thousands of them. And I don’t just look at them. I study them. I pick them apart and try to figure out what makes one photo stupendous while another one just sucks. How many times have you seen a photo of Half Dome, Delicate Arch or the Tetons from Snake River Overlook? Of all the images you’ve seen from these iconic locations which ones stand out and why? Was it the light or some nuance of the composition? Next time you’re sitting at home with nothing to do, scoot on down to the local bookstore. Grab a few coffee table photo books by your favorite photographers, sink into one of their comfy chairs and analyze a few of your favorite photos. Do this often enough and you’ll soon find yourself making the same analyses as you compose images in the field.
2) Photograph Often
Spend as much time as you can in the field. In 2000, just over a year after getting serious about photography, I had the opportunity to spend 5 weeks on the road. In that time I learned several valuable lessons, one of which was what that mysterious “depth of field preview” button actually does when you press it. I used my camera daily and by the end of the trip I knew where every control was and what it did, and I could operate the camera intuitively. There’s no substitute for knowing your camera inside and out.
This was in the pre-digital days, i.e. film, and I lost the photo album from that trip to an ex. But I remember looking at the photos from beginning to end and being blown away by the difference in the quality of images from the beginning of the trip to the end. Photographing something every day for 5 weeks had a profound impact on my creativity. Of course I realize we can’t all jet off on a 5 week road trip. But I believe that if you make a concerted effort to get out as often as possible, you will see improvement in your photography.
3) Mix It Up
After moving from Arizona to Colorado in 2002 I made the conscious decision to focus less time on photographing the grand landscape and more time on intimate scenes. Most people, even non-photographers, can see the beauty in autumnal aspens below a snow capped peak. Hell, even snapshots of a scene like that are likely to induce “oohs” and “aahs” from casual viewers. I wanted to be able to walk into the aspen forest and walk out with a successful image of those beautiful trees, with no mountain in sight.
My first few hundred efforts at intimate landscape photography weren’t so good. Actually, they sucked. But, I took those slides (still in the film days here), put them on a light table and studied them a la my first point. Doing this, and forcing myself to look at the world around me with a narrower focus, helped me develop a more refined eye for composition. I eventually got to the point where I was creating some pretty nice intimate landscapes. In doing so, I found that my grand landscapes also improved as I spent more time crafting cohesive compositions. The key is to really focus your attention on an aspect of photography that is entirely new to you. If you’re a macro photographer, try grand landscapes. If your wide angle lens has never actually been detached from your camera put on a telephoto and practice seeing the natural world through it. Just mix it up a little bit.
Raindrops on False Hellebore, by Bret Edge.
4) Don’t Fear the Critique
I’ve touched on this one before but it fits with this topic as one of the pivotal moments in my photography career came after a paid critique session. Bear with me as this story is a little long.
While living in Arizona I took a trip to Flagstaff with the ex who stole (and probably burned) the aforementioned photo album. It was fall, the San Francisco Peaks were dusted in snow and the aspen leaves were bright yellow. I had just switched from print to slide film. I shot a few rolls and dropped them off at the lab which, if memory serves me, was actually named “The Lab”. The next day I headed over on my lunch break to pick up the slides.
I tore open each box and laid the slides out on the light tables that had fancy loupes attached to the counter by a wire to prevent thievery. While viewing them another photographer came in to pick up his film. He told the lab tech his name and I immediately recognized him as a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways. I was standing next to greatness! He must have seen me gawking at him instead of my slides and made a comment about the images I was ignoring on the light table. We had a short conversation, I asked him what he thought of my images and he offered a couple short critiques. He said he’d be happy to offer more in depth critiques for $50 an hour. I bit and we set up a time and place to meet. Don’t ask me who it was because I can’t remember, but I think his first name was David (no, not Muench).
This guy looked at slide after slide and gave me invaluable feedback on each one. It was an eye opener as I’d never actually had someone look at my images with a critical eye. I also learned that there are about 50 different ways to say “this sucks” in a very pleasant and constructive manner. At any rate, his critiques were solid and really helped me define what it was about an image that worked or didn’t work.
These days you can still get your work reviewed and critiqued in person, but you can also do so online in critique forums. Keep an open mind and seek critiques often. Your photography is guaranteed to improve.
5) Never Stop Learning
Anyone who believes they have reached the apex of their photography career/hobby/obsession is a sad, sad person as far as I’m concerned. No matter how much you know there is always something you don’t know.
I don’t know squat about artificial light, I can’t understand how to operate a tilt/shift lens to save my life and there are still things about Photoshop that positively mystify me. I don’t do my own printing because the whole color management/profiling/sharpening for print/selecting the right paper thing scares the BeJesus out of me. I could spend all day writing about the plethora of things I don’t know about photography but that isn’t constructive.
Read books, attend workshops, watch video tutorials, follow blogs, join photography forums and subscribe to photo magazines. Identify a technique or an aspect of photography that confuses you and vow to master it. Push yourself to learn in whatever ways are available to you. The more you expand your knowledge base the more tools you’ll have at your imaging disposal to make dynamic photographs.
There is no true roadmap to better photography but these five tips should get you pointed in the right direction. Enjoy the ride!
What has helped you become a better photographer? Share your ideas in the comments section!
If you’re looking to take a photo tour in the red rock region of Utah, check out Bret’s trips in the Moab area: http://www.moabphotoworkshops.com.
Rocks and surf at dawn, Wallis Sands State Park, Rye, New Hampshire. F16, 30 seconds. (Jerry Monkman)
If you live in the northern U.S., you are probably experiencing a low snow winter this year. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I live, we haven’t had any appreciable snow since before Halloween! The gray and brown hues of a snowless landscape can definitely make it hard for a landscape photographer to be inspired enough to get out there and shoot. I feel fortunate that I chose his winter to start a new project I call 0630, where I go out every morning and make a picture at 6:30 (you can read more about the project in this post I made over at the Outdoor Photographer website.) The project has forced me to get out and shoot, when I normally would have stayed in bed, and it’s really getting my creative juices flowing and giving me good practice on techniques I don’t always use on a regular basis. For most of the last 6 weeks, I’ve been shooting primarily 30-45 minutes before sunrise, so here are some tips on what to do when it’s winter, it’s dark, and there’s no snow.
Find some light, any light! On clear mornings, I head to the coast, where I can use the pre-sunrise glow and colors to my advantage. Since I like to use low ISOs like 100 or 200, and small apertures like F16, that means I’m often shooting very slow shutter speeds, anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. A sturdy tripod is a must, and I really recommend using a cable release or the self-timer on the camera. Since most cameras have a maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds, you’ll need to put the camera in bulb mode for anything longer and then use a cable release to hold the shutter open the appropriate amount of time. What’s the appropriate amount of time? Let’s say the camera’s meter is telling you that F11 and 30 seconds is too dark of an exposure. Increase your aperture until the meter reads a proper exposure. In this example, assume that it now says F5.6, 30 seconds. This equates to F8 at 1 minute, F11 at 2 minutes, or F16 at 4 minutes. Put the camera in bulb mode, dial in F11, then trip the shutter with the cable release, locking it in the on position and keep the shutter open for 2 minutes. If you have an intervalometer (a fancy cable release), you can set it to automatically hold the shutter open for 2 minutes. If you include a dark foreground like in the above photo, you will probably also need to use a graduated split neutral density filter to hold down the exposure in the sky and avoid blown out highlights.
Pre-dawn surf, Rye Harbor State Park, New Hampshire. F16, 2 minutes. (Jerry Monkman)
On cloudy days, finding light is obviously even harder. I’m finding it’s still fun to make long exposures on the coast like the above shot, but there’s a lot less color. Though it’s not part of my normal subject matter, city scenes here in Portsmouth have proven to be a good thing to shoot when I need to find a little light on dark mornings. For many of these urban scenes like the below image of the Memorial Bridge in the fog, I’m finding High Dymanic Range (HDR) software to be a huge help. For this image, I locked my camera into the tripod and shot three exposures at F16, 2-stops apart: 4 seconds, 15 seconds, and 30 seconds. The combination of the three exposures captured detail in both the dark recesses behind the buildings and in the bright lights. I used Nik HDR Efex Pro to combine the three shots into one.
The Memorial Bridge in the fog, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. HDR. (Jerry and Marcy Monkman)
Trees silhouetted against the morning sky at Odiorne Point State Park in Rye, New Hampshire. F11, 3.2 seconds. (Jerry and Marcy Monkman)
Another technique I like to use when a “normal” shot might not work because of mediocre light or so-so subject matter is to purposefully blur the photo to create an abstract composition. For the above shot of trees against a pre-dawn sky, I used a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds and moved the camera up while the shutter was open. This is a really fun technique because you never know exactly what you’re going to get. In addition to moving the camera up and down, you can try moving it horizontally or diagonally as well.
Captain Tobias Lear’s 1781 tombsone in the Point of Graves Burying Ground in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. F4, 15 seconds (Jerry and Marcy Monkman)
Of course, you can always add your own light with flash, or as I did in the above photo, with a flashlight. “Light painting” with a flashlight is as easy as waving the flashlight across your subject during the exposure. For this shot, I just used a basic maglight that I bought at the local hardware store, and painted the tombstones during a 15 second exposure. I love the skull and crossbones, by the way.
I am enjoying shooting at this time quite a bit. Most days, I’m done shooting before the sun even comes up so I can go about my normal daily routine. I was actually startled to see the sun come on Saturday when I lingered longer than usual, and I have been so accustomed to shooting in the dark, that I wasn’t sure what to do with all that light!
The forecast is calling for a little snow tonight, but hopefully this post has given you some ideas of what to do on those dark, snow-free, winter days.
With the snow coming in (here in the Northeast U.S. anyway), it seems like a good time to review some winter photography tips.
1) Stay powered. Cold temperatures reduce the length of time your camera’s batteries will function. Always bring a spare or two, and use power-sapping features like auto focus, live view, and LCD playback sparingly.
2) Stay dry. Keep snow away from your camera and lenses as much as possible. While dry, fluffy snow isn’t as bad as rain on your equipment, you should still blow or wipe it from your gear whenever necessary. Also, never bring a camera and lenses directly into a warm environment after it has been out in the cold. Pack them in your camera bag or plastic bags before heading inside and let them warm up to room temperature before taking them out. Otherwise, moisture will condense on the glass and metal surfaces, potentially damaging your gear.
3) Expose for your highlights – the snow. A snowy landscape will often throw off a camera’s meter, sometimes to the point of underexposing your photo as much as two stops. When shooting in winter, take a test shot and check your histogram. You should have pixels stretching almost to the right side of the graph in order to ensure properly exposed snow. If you don’t, add light to your exposures by using a slower shutter speed. However, if your histogram spikes on the right side (you’ll probably have the blinkies too), then your photo is overexposed and you need to use a faster shutter speed.
4) When the snow is falling, try a variety of shutter speeds. A shutter speed of 1/250 second or faster will stop the motion of falling snow – if that’s the look you want. For a streaky snow, use a shutter speed between 1/125 and 1/30 second, but slower than that and the snow may blur completely away and look more like fog than snow.
5) Get out in the good light. Just like during other times of year, shooting during the “Golden Hour” around sunrise and sunset will result in more opportunities for photos with interesting shadows and textures, warmer tones, and more colorful skies.
Dawn in winter in New Hampshire
For those of you looking for some winter photo instruction, I’ll be leading a 3-day winter photography workshop in the White Mountains at the AMC Highland Center, Feb 10 -12, 2012.
Let me know if you have any winter photo questions, or tips of your own.
Until next time…
-Jerry
Find out more about Jerry at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
If you were to talk to many of my workshop attendees and they will tell you there are a few things I really espouse throughout the workshop, hopefully not to the point that its information overload. One of these techniques is DEPTH of FIELD. Some of of my attendees did not know what depth of field is, let alone how to achieve it. Some didn’t understand it and others thought it too complicated and therefore have never mastered the techniques. Well, it’s not complicated at all, once you understand it, and perhaps this essay will help explain it to you in as easy terms possible. I will state that Depth of Field is essential in every form of photography and must be understood and applied.
So, what exactly is depth of field? Simply, it is the amount of detail, within the image that is in focus. You, the photographer must decide on how much depth of field (DOF) is desired. Do you want the entire image in focus? Do you want the background out of focus ( often referred to as blown out—-I don’t really like that term as “blown out” might refer to overexposed, not out of focus).
Once you make the decision on how much of the image you want in focus, you must understand the technique that must be used to achieve your goals.
Decisions on setting to attain Depth of field are:
The F-Stop (see below) chosen to make the image
The focal length of the lens
Subject size (the depth of field decreases as you decrease the lens/subject distance
How far away is the subject?
LENS OPTIONS
Choosing a lens will have a dramatic effect on your depth of field. Lenses below the 60mm range are capable of attaining a large depth of field. (wide angle lenses) The DOF affect attained with lenses above 60mm will be less and when combining a 160mm+ lens on a DSLR, perfect Depth of field is virtually impossible. This is a principle of physics.
This old barn was photographed at F16 using a 80-200mm lens at 140mm. Notice the inability to make the background perfectly sharp
After reading this article, when in the field, try attaining a sharp image front to back with a 200mm lens on a DSLR. You will quickly see that it is impossible, due to the way the plane of the lens lies on the camera. It’s nothing you did wrong as long as the majority of the image is in focus. I’ll discuss options to attain DOF when using long lenses later.
CHOOSING APERTURE
I’ll try making this as simple as possible, but you need to understand exactly what aperture is, in order to be successful attaining proper Depth of field.
The aperture setting refers to the hole that the light passes through when the shutter opens, similar to the iris in our eyes. You can change this setting in camera. These settings are referred to as F stops. F-stop is the focal length divided by the diameter of the lens. F stops are typically written as F/4 etc.. meaning focal-length over 4 or focal-length divided by four.
Each F stop one lets in 1/2 as much light as the previous one. The progression of F-stops, 1 – 1.4 – 2 – 2.8 – 4 – 5.6 – 8 – 11 – 16 – 22 – 32, are powers of the square root of 2.
In the field, you decide on how you want your image to appear. Do you want the image to be sharp front to back or do you want a sharp subject and less sharp background. If you make the decision to make the background less sharp, to accentuate the subject, what level of “unsharpened” do you want the background to be? (This is why we need to think when we photograph… slow down and calculate what you are trying to attain in each image).
Think about this…Not all great landscape images are shot at F22 !
Aperture setting dictates what shutter speed you have. F8 at a 125th sec is exactly the same exposure as… F at 11/ 60th … or … F5.6 at 250th sec… however the aperture (F stop settings) determine the depth of field.
Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Oregon Coast aperture=F16
Same as on Left aperture= F 5.6
F 16
F 5.6
Which do you like?.. It’s really up to you!
Considerations:
1) On a windy day, shooting at F16 or F22 can you attain a shutter speed high enough to freeze the blowing grasses?
2) If a scene is too dark and you need a large Depth of field (F22) meter open enough to focus, then adjust the shutter speed for the aperture you want.
The rule of thumb is, the larger the F stop (F16), the smaller the aperture, and the more Depth of field you have. Conversely, the smaller the F stop (F4), the larger the aperture, and the less depth of field. Yes, there are counterintuitive to our thinking but you’ll get used to how these setting work pretty quickly.
SETTING THE DEPTH OF FIELD
USE YOUR DOF BUTTON !!
I strongly recommend that nature photographers use only two modes to make photographs on their camera. These are the manual mode or aperture priority mode
I strongly recommend that if you do not have a camera with a depth of field preview button, look to upgrade to one that does. This button is invaluable… What it does is that it stops the lens down to the shooting aperture and shows you, through the viewfinder how the depth of field will appear in the photograph. Without this button , when looking through your lens you’re looking at the widest aperture the lens will provide, not the depth of field that the aperture setting you’ve chosen will represent.
Note:—if your camera is set in the AUTO FOCUS mode——your camera will negate all your hard work setting the DOF manually. A while ago, I was conducting a workshop and a participant asked why when he focus correctly, and uses his Depthof Field Button (DOF) to check his DOF and his images still turn out blurry. Well he had his camera set to auto focus, and when he pressed down on the shutter release the lens went into auto focus mode, thus canceling out all the work he did manually to create the image he wanted.
Here is an easy technique to make images sharp from front to back, (remember this is a discussion when using lenses under 60mm!)
“OK, AT F16 my viewfinder is so dark when the DOF button is pressed that I can’ t see the image, let alone the adjust of the depth of field”
At small apertures like F11, F16 the viewfinder does becomes too dark while depressing the DOF preview button.
Here how to make it work!
Set your aperture to F8 or to a setting you can see the image through the viewfinder while depressing the DOF Preview button.
Focus just above the 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the frame on a subject closest to you, and then fine tune the focus, looking into the image itself, checking the background for depth of field.
If this area is in focus, you have a great chance of the entire image being in focus when resetting the aperture to F16, or even F22
Having done that accurately, I the reset my aperture to F16 or higher and make the photograph
Some cameras have a zoom capability in playback. Zoom in, using the LCD on the back of the camera on the background to check for sharpness.
To make a photograph using a subject that is sharp with an unsharp background you must
300mm lens at F8
1) Use your depth of field preview button to focus on the subject
2) Set your aperture where you want it to attain the desired background, probably less than n F8
To me this technique is a bit easier than having the entire image in sharp focus. I love photographing wildflowers with a long lens (300mm) to really make the flower the subject stand out, and make the background unfocused.( the longer the focal length lens, the more you can really make the background blurred out.).
OTHER HELP FULL HINTS to ATTAIN PROPER DOF
this image was made up of 7 images combined using Helicon Focus
1) There is a program available called Helicon Focus. Helicon Focus is a program that creates one completely focused image from several partially focused images by combining the images (you can use an unlimited amount of images) into one focused image. The program is designed for macro photography, micro photography and hyper focal landscape photography to cope with the shallow depth-of-field problem. Helicon Focus also aligns images as objects often change their size and position from shot to shot. This function is especially important for macro photography but works quite well in certain conditions in landscape photography as well. I am very impressed on how easy the software is to use. The software can be downloaded right off the web site www.heliconsoft.com.
It’s been my experience that you really need to know in advance, in the field if you will be shooting using the HF program. Not all images will lend themselves for Helicon Focus. Any movement at all will ruin the otherwise great results. This is a good tool to use when using longer focal length lenses, however all lenses qualify if the criteria of: 1) light not changing and 2) the subject matter is not moving is met.
2) Not too long ago, lens manufacturers used to include depth of field guide marks on their lenses… but not any more. If you would like a handy little replacement for these marks, something that will let you can download Depth of Field calculators and determine the settings and effects of different focal lengths and aperture settings via the web and smart phone’s. I do not use these.(I’ll explain later)
3) I’ve seen folks with a depth of field calculator. I don‘t know who makes it but it’s a wheel that after you put in your aperture & shutter speeds, it will tell you how many feet out you need to focus. Again unnecessary.
Why do I think # 2 & 3 are unnecessary? Probably sometimes when the light is constant and you do have the time to figure these applications out they might be useful. Consider these 2 factors; 1) are you capable of gauging exactly how far, say 23 feet is from your camera? I don’t think I can. I may be at 24 or 22 feet or even further away from the target. 2) More importantly, during sunrise, sunset, the light is changing, you don’t have time to be there holding your smart phone, changing the aperture with the light, seeing out a reading that you probably can’t be accurate on anyway. You’ll miss the shot, or get it wrong. Try the method of focusing 1/3rd up from the bottom, it will work very accurately, once you get used to it.
4) Look into shooting large format cameras. These cameras, because of how their lenses work in relationship to the camera, and some other factors, will attain a large amount of depth of field using longer focal lengths.
Understanding and using these techniques are primary in your ability to make images the way you desire. Like anything else it takes practice and understanding of the concepts.
F22
F 5.6
Read more about Jack on his website here, and learn about his workshops here.
Purple Finch on the branch of a Spruce Tree – Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 500mm F4L IS, Canon 1.4x & 2.0x Extender II, @1400mm – Gitzo 3541XLS with Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal Head
Sitting in my living room, I suddenly heard an extremely enjoyable and melodious tone from outside. Hearing it repeated a few times over about 15 minutes was finally enough to lift my sorry carcass off of the couch and out onto the back patio. I discovered a male Purple Finch (he of the melodious tunes) along with a female partner going about the process of building a nest in the Spruce Tree just outside of the back door of my home.
I ran to get my tripod (a Gitzo 3541XLS with a Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal head attached) and set it up with my Canon 500mm F4L IS lens attached along with the 1.4x Extender II that is pretty much welded to the lens. I say welded because if you do much wildlife photography at all you know that there is rarely such a thing as too big of a lens.
I took some shots of the joyful little singer but discovered that (and as is often the case with the little song birds) that he just wasn’t filling the view finder the way I wanted. And with that 1.4x teleconverter attached to the 500mm lens I was already shooting at the maximum minimum aperture for my 5D Mark II, F5.6; assuming I wanted to use autofocus. I have a 2.0x teleconverter too and thought briefly about just throwing that on and making the best of things with manual focus.
However, I recalled an experiment I did a couple of years ago with my 500mm lens paired with BOTH the 1.4x and 2.0x teleconverters (also known as stacking teleconverters) which yielded a 1400mm focal length at F11 as the largest aperture. I was able to achieve really good results shooting with enough light and stopping down about 2/3 of a stop from F11.
I set up the combination on the tripod. The main trick when you use a setup like this is focusing. And, if you’re going to need to focus on some sort of moving object, forget about it, it’s just too touch. But with a subject like this, who upon returning to the tree that his female partner is building a nest in (she does all the work; he just accompanies her on her travels lest her attentions wander to a rival) would happily choose a branch and perch on it whilst singing his little heart out. This would allow me the time required to manually focus on him.
Purple Finch singing from the branch of a Spruce Tree – Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 500mm F4L IS, Canon 1.4x & 2.0x Extender II, @1400mm – Gitzo 3541XLS with Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal Head
But still, another problem. I don’t know about you, but my 45 year old eyes have a lot of trouble looking through the viewfinder and finding critical sharpness. It can look sharp in the viewfinder but that often leads to disappointment in the cruel light from my monitor while developing the images. So I used a trick I’ve used for my snowflake photography. I temporarily switched to “Live View” and then zoomed in a couple of times on the Finch’s head. That way I could dial in critical sharpness, switch back to regular shooting mode and then make my shots until the little feller decided to move.
You’ll notice that I switched back to regular shooting mode instead of staying in Live View mode. Why? It’s all about the long-lens shooting technique that I use. This technique requires that in addition to draping my free hand over the lens to dampen down vibrations, I also jam my eye up against the viewfinder to help use even more of my body mass to help stabilize the lens. If you’re interested in the technique, you can read about it in a couple of previous blog entries in part 1 and part 2 of Making Sharper Images.
So, if you’ve got one of the good primes in your arsenal of lenses (and I’d say most of the prime lenses from any of the major camera manufacturers qualify) and you’ve got yourself a pair of teleconverters, don’t hesitate to give the combination a try and see what you can achieve. I’m willing to bet you’ll be a bit surprised by the sort of quality pictures that can be achieved with the right subject, proper gear to support the equipment along with the technique I talked about previously. And yes, you’ll probably have to employ the three “p”‘s of photography; practice, practice, practice!
Purple Finch singing from the branch of a Spruce Tree – Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 500mm F4L IS, Canon 1.4x & 2.0x Extender II, @1400mm – Gitzo 3541XLS with Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal Head
Sometime you want to take pictures without your feet on the ground. Here are some tips for keeping your gear safe while shooting from a kayak. In this video, New Hampshire based conservation photographer Jerry Monkman explains how to keep your camera gear safe while shooting from a kayak.
Check out Jerry's fall Cape Cod workshop here: Eco Photography
Hi, everybody. This is Jerry Monkman from Ecophotography.com. I’m often asked how I keep my gear safe while paddling. So today, I’m going to give a few tips on how to shoot from a kayak.
First off, obviously our main goal here is not to get our camera immersed in water. Everything we do is to keep our gear safe, and the first thing you need to do to do that is to know your own limits as far as paddling. If you’re not good at keeping a boat upright, don’t take your camera out when you’re in a boat. If you can’t handle big waves out in the ocean, don’t take your camera out when you’re in the boat.
Otherwise, if you’ve got those skills, there are some things you can do to minimize the water getting on your camera. One thing I do is use this really cool camera vest called a cotton carrier, which holds the camera snug against my body so I’m not banging it with my paddle and water is not dripping down my paddle onto the camera.
It’s really a pretty neat little gizmo. It’s got this Velcro strap to hold the camera snug, and then you just twist and turn and get your camera out and you’re shooting.
When I’m shooting, I’m shooting for shutter speeds of 1/250th, 1/500th of a second, a little faster shutter speeds. If I need to use a faster ISO, ISO 200, 400, something like that, I’ll do that. There’s a lot of movement when you’re in a boat, obviously, so you need to use that faster shutter speed so you don’t get camera blur.
Before I had a cotton carrier, I would just cinch my camera strap up so the camera was up here, a little more snug, not down here where it was more likely to get some water on it.
That’s pretty simple kind of stuff, but that is the basics of what you need to do when you’re shooting.
Now, if you’re in really extreme conditions but need your camera out to shoot, you’re going to probably want an underwater housing. If you can’t afford a real expensive one, do what I do. I’m kind of cheap, so I’ve got this U-A Marine housing. It’s still a few hundred dollars and it doesn’t give you access to all your camera controls, but if you use auto-focus and auto-exposure, you can shoot all day long with your camera in here safely. If the waves are crashing over you, you don’t have to worry about your camera getting ruined. This is a good investment if you’re going to be shooting in that kind of stuff.
Also, you can store your camera and other gear in a dry bag, either in your cockpit so it’s easily accessible if there’s room, or in the hatch where you’ll need to, obviously, stop the boat for a moment to get out and get your gear.
Let’s see, what else. Lastly, I always have pockets in my PFDs so I can get at extra camera gear easily, such as a memory card holder. These Geppie holders are great because they’re waterproof and they float. If your memory cards fall in the ocean, you can just paddle over and pick them up.
I also keep a lens cloth in here somewhere. There we go. Inevitably, you are going to get a few drops on your lens and your camera, and you’ll want something to wipe those off. I keep that handy in here. I’ll also sometimes throw in a polarizer. It’s where I store my lens caps, things like that.
It’s good to get a PFD with pockets.
All right, those are my photo tips for the day. Get out there, have fun in your boat, be safe, and enjoy your photo adventure.
Until last year I had never enjoyed the thrill of making my own photographic prints. When I needed a print, I’d send off a file (or slide) to whatever lab I was using at the time and they’d ship the print directly to me or my client. With only a few exceptions my image viewing experience consisted of staring at a photo on a computer monitor.
Then, I bought an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer and everything changed. If that sounds like a dramatic statement – it is. It’s also quite true. I started making my own prints. Whenever I wanted. On whatever paper I wanted. It didn’t take long and I was addicted to the smell of fresh ink on photographic paper as a new print rolled off the printer, landing ever so gently in the catch tray. Is there a difference between viewing an image on a computer monitor and holding an actual print, that you made, in your hands? You’d better believe it.
As an artist I like to have complete control over my work from start to finish. While it is true that you maintain a degree of control when you do all the post-processing on your photos before sending them off to a lab, you’re really not closing the loop. The ultimate control comes when you conclude the image making process by crafting your own print. Today’s inkjet printers are capable of producing professional quality archival prints that rival and, in my opinion, exceed those made using more traditional methods like Cibachromes. They’re sharper, more detailed, just as colorful and can be made using a diversity of papers.
While difficult to quantify, there is a certain pleasure and satisfaction in handling an honest to God hand-crafted print. It is a tactile experience. You feel the weight of the paper, the texture. Unseen details emerge. Perhaps you feel pride in the knowledge that the print you are holding was born of your own creativity, and that without your vision and skills it would cease to exist. I get none of this from viewing an image on a computer monitor.
I’ve also noticed that people react differently when viewing my photographs in print. On the computer (or iPad), they quickly flick through the images. When I hand over my portfolio book I’ve noticed that they linger on each image. They don’t madly flip from one page to the next. Do people, even non-photographers, appreciate a fine art print more than they do an image on a screen? It would seem so.
What is your experience with pixels vs. prints?
Learn more about Bret, view his images, scout his workshops and read his blog here.
Five Ways to Improve Your Images
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012Autumn Palette, Utah, by Bret Edge.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what steps I’ve taken over the last 11 years to become the world’s most reknowned landscape and adventure photographer. Clearly, I’ve also been daydreaming quite a bit. Seriously though, here are a five things I’ve done that have contributed to making me a better photographer.
1) Be Studious
I’ve looked at a whole bunch of photos. Thousands of them. And I don’t just look at them. I study them. I pick them apart and try to figure out what makes one photo stupendous while another one just sucks. How many times have you seen a photo of Half Dome, Delicate Arch or the Tetons from Snake River Overlook? Of all the images you’ve seen from these iconic locations which ones stand out and why? Was it the light or some nuance of the composition? Next time you’re sitting at home with nothing to do, scoot on down to the local bookstore. Grab a few coffee table photo books by your favorite photographers, sink into one of their comfy chairs and analyze a few of your favorite photos. Do this often enough and you’ll soon find yourself making the same analyses as you compose images in the field.
2) Photograph Often
Spend as much time as you can in the field. In 2000, just over a year after getting serious about photography, I had the opportunity to spend 5 weeks on the road. In that time I learned several valuable lessons, one of which was what that mysterious “depth of field preview” button actually does when you press it. I used my camera daily and by the end of the trip I knew where every control was and what it did, and I could operate the camera intuitively. There’s no substitute for knowing your camera inside and out.
This was in the pre-digital days, i.e. film, and I lost the photo album from that trip to an ex. But I remember looking at the photos from beginning to end and being blown away by the difference in the quality of images from the beginning of the trip to the end. Photographing something every day for 5 weeks had a profound impact on my creativity. Of course I realize we can’t all jet off on a 5 week road trip. But I believe that if you make a concerted effort to get out as often as possible, you will see improvement in your photography.
3) Mix It Up
After moving from Arizona to Colorado in 2002 I made the conscious decision to focus less time on photographing the grand landscape and more time on intimate scenes. Most people, even non-photographers, can see the beauty in autumnal aspens below a snow capped peak. Hell, even snapshots of a scene like that are likely to induce “oohs” and “aahs” from casual viewers. I wanted to be able to walk into the aspen forest and walk out with a successful image of those beautiful trees, with no mountain in sight.
My first few hundred efforts at intimate landscape photography weren’t so good. Actually, they sucked. But, I took those slides (still in the film days here), put them on a light table and studied them a la my first point. Doing this, and forcing myself to look at the world around me with a narrower focus, helped me develop a more refined eye for composition. I eventually got to the point where I was creating some pretty nice intimate landscapes. In doing so, I found that my grand landscapes also improved as I spent more time crafting cohesive compositions. The key is to really focus your attention on an aspect of photography that is entirely new to you. If you’re a macro photographer, try grand landscapes. If your wide angle lens has never actually been detached from your camera put on a telephoto and practice seeing the natural world through it. Just mix it up a little bit.
Raindrops on False Hellebore, by Bret Edge.
4) Don’t Fear the Critique
I’ve touched on this one before but it fits with this topic as one of the pivotal moments in my photography career came after a paid critique session. Bear with me as this story is a little long.
While living in Arizona I took a trip to Flagstaff with the ex who stole (and probably burned) the aforementioned photo album. It was fall, the San Francisco Peaks were dusted in snow and the aspen leaves were bright yellow. I had just switched from print to slide film. I shot a few rolls and dropped them off at the lab which, if memory serves me, was actually named “The Lab”. The next day I headed over on my lunch break to pick up the slides.
I tore open each box and laid the slides out on the light tables that had fancy loupes attached to the counter by a wire to prevent thievery. While viewing them another photographer came in to pick up his film. He told the lab tech his name and I immediately recognized him as a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways. I was standing next to greatness! He must have seen me gawking at him instead of my slides and made a comment about the images I was ignoring on the light table. We had a short conversation, I asked him what he thought of my images and he offered a couple short critiques. He said he’d be happy to offer more in depth critiques for $50 an hour. I bit and we set up a time and place to meet. Don’t ask me who it was because I can’t remember, but I think his first name was David (no, not Muench).
This guy looked at slide after slide and gave me invaluable feedback on each one. It was an eye opener as I’d never actually had someone look at my images with a critical eye. I also learned that there are about 50 different ways to say “this sucks” in a very pleasant and constructive manner. At any rate, his critiques were solid and really helped me define what it was about an image that worked or didn’t work.
These days you can still get your work reviewed and critiqued in person, but you can also do so online in critique forums. Keep an open mind and seek critiques often. Your photography is guaranteed to improve.
5) Never Stop Learning
Anyone who believes they have reached the apex of their photography career/hobby/obsession is a sad, sad person as far as I’m concerned. No matter how much you know there is always something you don’t know.
I don’t know squat about artificial light, I can’t understand how to operate a tilt/shift lens to save my life and there are still things about Photoshop that positively mystify me. I don’t do my own printing because the whole color management/profiling/sharpening for print/selecting the right paper thing scares the BeJesus out of me. I could spend all day writing about the plethora of things I don’t know about photography but that isn’t constructive.
Read books, attend workshops, watch video tutorials, follow blogs, join photography forums and subscribe to photo magazines. Identify a technique or an aspect of photography that confuses you and vow to master it. Push yourself to learn in whatever ways are available to you. The more you expand your knowledge base the more tools you’ll have at your imaging disposal to make dynamic photographs.
There is no true roadmap to better photography but these five tips should get you pointed in the right direction. Enjoy the ride!
What has helped you become a better photographer? Share your ideas in the comments section!
If you’re looking to take a photo tour in the red rock region of Utah, check out Bret’s trips in the Moab area: http://www.moabphotoworkshops.com.
Tags: Bret Edge, Creativity, how-to, Nature Photography, Photo Tips, photography
Posted in Commentary, Creativity, Landscape, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »