Category: Photography

How to Create Stronger Photos by Working the Subject
One way to create better compositions, and thus stronger images, is to do something called working the subject. Generally speaking, there are two ways to approach taking photos. Let’s take a look at both, and how you can learn to work the subject to improve your photography.

The first is to take as many photos as you can, in the hope that some of them turn out well. This is called machine-gunning, or spray and pray. It’s easier to do with digital cameras than it ever was with film cameras, as you are no longer limited by the number of frames on a roll of film.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons often cited as a benefit of using film cameras. Knowing that every time you press the shutter button it adds to the cost of the shoot (processing plus film) is a good incentive to be more intentional and think carefully before you take a photo.

The second way is to take plenty of photos, but in a way that is more purposeful. The idea is to think about what you are doing and spend your time exploring the possibilities and potential of the subject. This is called working the subject.

Try new photography techniques

The dividing line between the two methods is sometimes a thin one. An example of this may be when you are trying a new technique, such as panning. Panning is a bit of a hit and miss technique. If you’ve chosen a good subject you should create some interesting photos, but you’re also going to get a lot of misses along the way.

The difference in this situation is that the photographer who is working the subject looks at the photos they have taken already, evaluates what works and what doesn’t, and adjusts their techniques and camera settings accordingly.

Another way of looking at it is that they are using the earlier photos as stepping stones to get to the more interesting images. A photographer who is machine-gunning, on the other hand, doesn’t think a lot about what they are doing and relies on serendipity rather than their own skill.

This is where the instant feedback of digital cameras is a useful tool for learning and improving.

Panning in Spain

Let me illustrate the point with some photos I made in Spain. I stood in the sea at sunset and panned with my camera as the waves came by. I took a lot of photos, and these are some of my favorites.

These images were created by working the subject. Doing so helped me figure out where to stand, what angle to use, how slowly to pan the camera, and the best shutter speed to use.

Photographing an old car

Working the subject doesn’t necessarily mean that you take lots of photos. Let me give you an example.

I bought a Fuji X-Pro 1 camera a couple of years ago and took it out one evening at dusk with the intention of shooting at high ISO in low light to see how it performed (the answer – very well). As I was walking around my local neighborhood I noticed an interesting car parked on the street. Intrigued (and wondering how a Lada ended up in New Zealand) I took this photo.

It’s nothing special, but I knew there was a better picture there. I kept looking and realized that what had really caught my eye was the way the light from the street lamp reflected off the roof of the car. So, I moved in closer and created the following images. They all contain the reflection of the street lamp and just part of the car rather than all of it.

Then I took another photo of the rear of the car.

Analysis of the shoot

I only made five photos, but I was still working the subject. When I break it down and think about what happened the process went something like this.
1. I saw something interesting and took a photo. That was just my first impression. My gut feeling told me that there was a better photo to be had.
2. I looked closely until I realized that the real subject, the thing that really interested me, was the way the street light was reflected in the car’s paintwork. So, I moved in close and made several photos that showed that.
3. Lastly, I moved away from the car and took another photo, which was okay but not as good as the others. I understood that I had gotten what I wanted and decided to move on to look for another subject.
The last point is crucial because one of the differences between working the subject and machine-gunning is that the photographer who is working the subject knows when to stop.

Working the subject in China

Here’s another set of images taken in Beijing. We were visiting a historic site called Prince Gong’s Mansion, made up of a series of interconnected buildings, courtyards, and gardens.

One of the courtyards contained some Tibetan style prayer wheels. I noticed that as people walked into the courtyard most of them passed by the prayer wheels, turning them as they went. I stood nearby and took some candid portraits of people doing so.

Of course, some of the photos are better than others, and I’m going to show you some of my favorites below. But there were also many times that I looked at the scene through the viewfinder and it wasn’t quite right, so I didn’t press the shutter.

One benefit of this method is that you don’t have as many photos to sort through and edit afterward. But it also shows discipline and an awareness of the subject. A machine-gunning photographer would take photos of everyone, without thinking about it much.

The photographer who is working the subject, and being more purposeful, is thinking about how to make each photo better than the one before. They may also be thinking about how the images are going to work together, or whether they should use a different technique, a different lens, or find a different point of view to add variety to the sequence of photos.

Conclusion

One of the key steps involved in learning to be a better and more creative photographer is knowing when to work the subject rather than machine-gun, and become more purposeful and intentional in your approach to making photos.

Can you think of any other examples of when working the subject can help you to create better images? Please let us know in the comments below.

Mastering Composition

If you’d like to learn more about composition then please check out my ebook Mastering Composition: A Photographer’s Guide to Seeing.

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The post How to Create Stronger Photos by Working the Subject by Andrew S. Gibson appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
November 7, 2016
How to Find Your Photography Niche: You Don’t Have To Master It All

When it comes to photography, there can sometimes be this strange assumption that we are (or should be) experts in all types of photography. Photography is essentially painting with light, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to do newborn photography, astrophotography, weddings, family portraits, landscape photography, and food photography, right? Light is light, whether it’s on a newborn or a spider, right? The simple answer is yes, and no. But, there’s good news, you don’t have to master it all. Let’s talk about how to find your photography niche.

Different strokes for different folks

Much like a chef benefits from learning about cooking as a whole, photographers benefit from learning the fundamentals that apply across all types of photography: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, finding light, capturing movement and emotion, and focus. However, much like chefs often break off into different specialties, photographers also tend to break off into different niches. Some photographers find that they love newborns, but hate weddings (raises hand). Others love landscapes, but don’t enjoy photographing humans ever. Some photographers love to work in a studio, while others prefer to work only outdoors with natural light. Finally, some photographers prefer to shoot in digital, while others prefer film.

Do what you enjoy

Whichever type of photography sparks your passion and fills you with joy? Do that. Whether that’s black and white portraits, lifestyle newborn images, macro photography of spiders, or architecture – do what you love.

Then when it comes to post-processing, if there’s a method that transforms your image the way that you’ve always pictured it in your head, do that. If it’s a hipster vintage wash, do it. If it’s a quick curves adjustment and nothing else, do that too. Heck, if it’s black and white with selective coloring that makes you happy when it comes to post-processing, by all means, do that.

Do it even if it isn’t cool, and no one else is doing it. Whether you consider photography to be a craft or an art, it is most certainly an opportunity to have a creative voice. And as corny as it may sound, your authentic voice, whether expressed in cooking or in photography, is important.

It’s okay not to do it all

Just in case no one has ever told you before, it’s okay not to do it all. If you specialize in food photography and someone calls you up and asks if you’ll consider accepting a wedding booking, it’s okay to say, ‘Thank you so much for thinking of me, but no.” It’s okay to love photographing families and have absolutely zero interest in doing macro photography of insects.

Whether you’re an amateur or a professional, it’s really hard sometimes to admit that a particular area of photography isn’t your preference or your strong suit. No one wants to feel incompetent. On the other hand, there’s no shame in telling someone that you are unable to accept a newborn booking because it isn’t your specialty and consequently you aren’t familiar enough with newborn posing safety to feel comfortable with accepting that job.

Say it with me – I do not have to master it all.

Finding your niche

If you’re reading this article and thinking, “Okay great, so how do I find my niche?’ The answer is simply to try everything you can. Trying different types of photography is very different than feeling compelled to master every type of photography. Giving different genres of photography a try in low stakes (often unpaid) environments allows you to experiment, and to discover what it is that you really love.

It also requires possibly humbling yourself a bit and allowing yourself to be taught by someone else. Even if you’re the best wedding photographer in your state or area, you may not know the first thing about being a wildlife photographer. So if you really want to learn, you have to be ready and willing to be taught.

Benefits of trying things

My personal niche in photography is newborns and families. It’s what really makes me excited, and what I really enjoy most. However, every time that I’ve stepped outside that comfort zone, with the goal of learning about another genre of photography, it’s been worth it.

I’ve not been a master of every genre that I’ve tried, nor have I enjoyed them all, but I’ve learned something valuable in every case. When I buckled down and focused on landscape photography, it gave me an opportunity to review techniques of composition, metering, and shooting with a relatively small aperture in ways that I don’t typically use on a daily basis when it comes to people photography.

When I made an attempt to learn about astrophotography (a genre of photography that had always greatly intimidated me) I had the opportunity to learn more about long exposures, and the technique of shooting with a wide open aperture in a different application than portraits. Are my astrophotography images perfect? Absolutely not! I’m not an astrophotography expert, and probably never will be. I have two kids, so staying up all night to photograph the stars is a special kind of sleep deprivation torture that I have no interest in repeating with any frequency.

Yet, there’s also a certain importance in taking something that you have no idea how to do and learning the steps necessary to make it happen. When all the pieces finally fall into place, and you have an image that sort of resembles the gorgeous astrophotography images that you see in magazines, it’s a pretty amazing feeling. Like creating something out of thin air.

Conclusion

The more types of photography you try, the more you’ll find yourself saying both “Yes!” and “Nope, I don’t need to do that ever again.” You may also find that there are several types of photography that you enjoy, which is fine. When I suggest finding your niche, I’m not suggesting that you choose one photography genre and one post-processing style and stick to those for the rest of your life and career.

Your niche in the photography world should grow, shrink, and evolve over time. Give yourself the freedom to identify the types of photography that you really enjoy, and forget the rest of it. You do not have to master it all.

What’s your photography niche? What types of photography do you love? Are there any types of photography that you hate? Chime in below!

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The post How to Find Your Photography Niche: You Don’t Have To Master It All by Meredith Clark appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 5, 2016
How to Make Beautiful Portraits Using Flash and High-Speed Sync

The scene: Outdoors with full sunlight. The gear: Your camera, lens, and flash. The problem: You find that your flash only works at 1/200th or below so you need to be at f/16 or f/22 to get the shot. Everything is in focus, including all the cars and other distractions in the background. Those dust spots you keep meaning to clean are also perfectly visible. Why won’t it work with a higher shutter speed so you can have a wider aperture? Well, it’s all down to the issue of sync speed, more specifically using flash and high-speed sync.

A typical portrait shot with off-camera flash.

To overpower the sun and stay below the camera’s sync speed, you’re forced to use a narrow aperture. Here I’m at f/20 just to stop the backlight overpowering the hair and the sky from blowing out. The resulting aperture means that everything is pretty much in focus, leaving the background looking cluttered. This shot is for example only, you should generally make a point of choosing clutter-free backgrounds

Sync Speed

Sync Speed is the fastest shutter speed where the camera exposes the whole frame at once. When you fire any shot below this speed, the first shutter curtain opens fully, revealing the entire sensor to light. At the end of the exposure time, the second shutter curtain moves across the frame to finish the capture. Both curtains then reset together (this means you get no light leaking in).

Generally, the sync speed varies between 1/125th and 1/250th, depending on your camera. You’ll find some quoted sync speeds are not indicated correctly. For instance, the Canon 5D series are rated at 1/200th but often show a black band at the bottom of the screen at this speed when it’s used with flash.

When you go above the sync speed, the second curtain starts to move before the first one has completed its journey. As your shutter speed gets shorter and shorter, the gap between these curtains narrows to a tiny slit. Despite this, all parts of the sensor receive light, and a full exposure is made. On a bright day, with a prime lens, you can easily shoot at 1/8000th at f/1.4 and have a perfect exposure. All parts of the frame still receive light, because it’s continuous throughout the exposure.

The Sync Speed Problem

It’s when you introduce flash that you start to have problems. You see, when a flash is fired (usually when the first curtain is opened) all the light from it comes out in a very short space of time (in order of milliseconds). When you go above (faster than) the sync speed, the position of the curtains doesn’t reveal the entire frame at the time the flash fires. The means the shutter curtain blocks part of the flash and prevents it from reaching the sensor. Any ambient light will expose normally, but the flash gets hidden in part of the frame. As your shutter speed gets faster and faster, more and more of the flash is blocked until it’s no longer visible in the shot.

Here’s a set of images taken at 1/3 stop increments with a flash. Shot on the Fuji X-T2, the first is at 1/250th, the native sync speed of the camera. In order (left to right, top to bottom) 1/250th, 1/320th, 1/400th, 1/500th, 1/630th, 1/800th, 1/1000th, and 1/1250th. Even 1/320 is useable if the subject being lit is away from the edge.

Everything in Focus

Normally when you use flash outside in daylight, you end up having everything in focus. Remember the Sunny f/16 Rule? If your subject is in direct sunlight during the day, you can set your aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed will be one over your ISO value. So if your ISO is set to 100, your shutter speed would be 1/100sth (and f/16). As another example, if your ISO is 200, then the shutter speed would be 1/200th. To get a richer sky, you’d really need to be at f/22, making it a tough job for your flash. Because you can’t get faster than 1/250 (sync speed), you have to increase the aperture to expose the shot correctly.

Shooting at f/20, 1/160 to get a richer sky for this band promo shot. It’s quite an old shot, so there were few options for reducing the aperture at the time. Even the hills in the background are in clear focus. The beach isn’t exactly pretty either.

A behind the scenes shot – two flashes on full power.

Softer light

Most speedlights at full power, bare bulb, in close, can give you just enough power to look natural at these settings. Bare flash is not flattering, though it can add character. If you want softer, more flattering, light, you need more power. Most modifiers that give soft light will take two stops of power compared to the bare flash. That’s a lot of power. You could use a more powerful light, like the Godox AD360, the Elinchrom Quadra, or the Profoto B1. Alternatively, you could use a bracket that takes multiple speedlights. Either option allows you to get soft, flattering, light while outdoors.

A higher power option is the Godox AD360. This is coupled with the Godox 120cm Octa for softer light. This is shot at f/2.8, ISO200 and 1/125th. Because it’s after sunset, you can easily get wider apertures. just one of the options you have for the shallow depth of field look.

This solves the soft light issue, but it doesn’t solve your aperture issue. For creamy bokeh (the soft out of focus background look), you need to get our aperture down. If you’re shooting in the early morning or late evening, you can do this easily, but during the day it’s an issue.

The Solution: High-Speed Sync

You’ll need to find a way to get around the issue of sync speed for daytime shooting. Fortunately, there is a solution. It’s not perfect, but it does work. It’s called High-Speed Sync, also known as Focal Plane Sync. High-Speed Sync (HSS) works in a unique way. Instead of firing the flash at the start of the shot, HSS pulses the flash throughout the whole exposure, trying to simulate the effects of a continuous light.

The AD360 set to High-Speed Sync. Usually, there’s a single button hold, or a double button combination to turn HSS on.

It works well, but it comes at the expense of power, and heat. HSS works the flash really hard. After a few shots, the flash may even shut down for cooling. For HSS to work, you need the camera to transmit HSS to flash, and for the flash have HSS built-in. All major brands allow it, though Fuji only just introduced it. Cactus Image makes a trigger called the V6II which allows you to use any HSS flash with any camera. Read my review of the Cactus V6II trigger here.

The Cactus Image V6II allows power and zoom control over a wide range of speedlights, as well as offering High-Speed Sync abilities.

The Look of HSS

You can use HSS to go over the sync speed barrier, so settings like 1/4000th at f/1.4 are achievable with flash. You get the complete control of the light using flash, but with the wide aperture you usually associate with natural light photographs. Yes, please!

Photographers like Dylan Patrick use this technique to create cinematic portraits. By shooting wide shots with shallow depth of field, you really have the option to create images that look like they were stills from the silver screen.

Settings for High-Speed Sync

Let’s look at a typical setup and settings for a shoot using HSS. This shoot happened to be done on an evening, but I really wanted shallow focus. The camera was set to f/1.4 for super shallow depth of field. To get the clouds properly exposed, I had to drop the shutter speed to 1/4000th. To get the flash (an AD360) to work I had to set it to HSS. Using a Cactus V6II trigger, I could easily get my Fuji X-T10 to shoot with HSS.

An evening HSS photo shot at 1/4000th, ISO200, f/1.4. Notice the shallow depth of field in the image.

The BTS, an AD360 with 120cm Octa, shot by my assistant Ola.

If you use Canon, the Cells II trigger provides HSS with the AD360. It would also work speedlights like the v850.

Using HSS on the AD360, I captured this shot at about 3:00 in the afternoon with the sun high in the sky. Shot with an 85mm lens at 1/2000th at f/2.5, ISO100 on a Canon 5DIII. The sun acts as a second light in the shot. Again the background is nicely out of focus.

Another High-Speed Sync portrait example.

1/1000th, f/4, ISO800. An issue with shooting outdoors on overcast days is your shutter speeds can be low enough to cause camera shake. By bumping up the ISO, you can get a faster shutter speed, keeping you safe from camera shake. Using HSS then lets the flash do the work. I’ve shot to keep the flash looking as natural as possible here.

The Alternative

High-Speed Sync isn’t the only way, you’ve got other options. The first has been mentioned. Shoot at the beginning or end of the day. You can get great sky color and you’re not fighting strong sunlight. Of course, if you’re doing any work, even as favors, you often have to work to the subjects schedule rather than your own. So, you may have to shoot at midday to suit them. That leads to the next option.

A shot of the band Drown for The Thin Air magazine. The evening light makes the shot. I needed a higher aperture to get the whole band in focus, so opted not to use HSS here.

Using Neutral Density Filter

If you shoot landscape photography, you will be familiar with Neutral Density (ND) filters. This filter allows you to slow the shutter speed down to get nice silky water. Neutral means that it adds no color, while the density part refers to blocking light. You can get them in a range of values from 1 stop to 16 stops.

For portraits, these allow you to drop the aperture down instead of shutter speed. So a 4 stop ND would take you from f/16 to f/4. The drawback is that as you block light, focusing can become harder. Another potential issue is that not all ND filters are actually neutral. Some tend to have a color cast. I have a Firecrest 10-stop for landscapes, which is neutral, but the older 4-stop I have from the same company is slightly pink.

Without the ND filter applied, the entire scene is in focus. ISO 200, f/16, 1/250th.

With the 4-stop ND filter applied, the background can be rendered out of focus. The flash is still at the same power as the shot above without the filter. The filter does have a color cast, which is hard to remove completely. ISO 200, f/4, 1/250th.

Conclusion

I hope this gives you some options and ideas for how you can make portraits outdoors even when the sun is bright, by using flash and high-speed sync. Please put your questions and comments below, and share your high-speed sync portraits as well.

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The post How to Make Beautiful Portraits Using Flash and High-Speed Sync by Sean McCormack appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 4, 2016
6 Tips for How to Build a Story and Shoot a Photo Project
I’m a strong believer that setting yourself photo projects is the best way to improve your photography skills. Projects give you focus and help you build a cohesive body of work. A photo project can last for years, and set a theme that helps you find new people and subjects to photograph.

Of course, you may be wondering what sort of project you could set yourself that would achieve these aims. A project can be simple, like photographing flowers in your back yard, or it can be more complex, such as travelling to a foreign country and photographing the people you find there.

Getting ideas for a photo project

You’ll find lots of inspiration at websites like Feature Shoot that regularly publish photo projects.

I’m going to give you some advice on tackling a project by giving you some examples from a project that I undertook to photograph artists and craftspeople. I have learned a number of things from this project.

Here are some of the most important:
- Meeting new people and learning about their crafts is interesting. I like meeting and talking to new people and learning about their lives. The brief window I have during the shoot is a chance to connect and talk about art and creativity, as well as the work of the artist or craftsperson. Some of those people have become friends. This project has rewarded me on a personal level as well as on a photographic one.
- It helps me find something interesting to photograph. For example, 18 months ago I spent three days in Raglan, a small town on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Before I went, I contacted two local craftspeople and asked if I could drop by and take some photos. Both said yes – and I made my most interesting photos on the trip during those two shoots.
- The project grows by itself. I send photos to the people I photograph, then ask them if they know of anybody else who may be interested. These personal introductions and recommendations help me find new artists and craftspeople to photograph.
- My portraiture skills have improved. Practice makes perfect, and every shoot means I get a little better at this documentary style of portraiture.
Here’s a portrait I made of artist Chris Meek, one of the artists I photographed in Raglan. We had a great conversation about art, creativity, and life. I’d never have had this experience if I hadn’t embarked on the project.

So, once you’ve decided on a project, how do you make it a success? These ideas will help.

1. Shoot a variety of images

This is important because it adds interest and variety to the photos you get from the shoot. But I’d like to add a proviso, because I think in general there are two ways to approach a project shoot.

Firstly, is to concentrate all your resources on getting one great photo. The second is to create a set of varied photos that collectively give a better interpretation and tell a story.

My suggestion is to combine these two approaches. Aim to create a variety of photos, but give each photo your best effort. In other words, when you see the possibility of an image, give it your full attention and make it as good as you can before you move on to the next.

How do you create variety? Here are two ways:

1. Vary your viewpoint. Get closer to your subject, or farther away. Take photos from below, or from above. Of course, the best viewpoint depends a lot on the subject of your project, the light, and the lenses you are using. But the key is to always be thinking about how you can add variety by moving around and taking photos from different angles.

2. Take scene setting shots and close-ups. You could start with a scene-setting photo that captures everything, then move on and create a variety of photos from closer viewpoints showing details.

This works well for projects like mine, where you can take a photo of the artist or craftsperson at work in their studio, along with a series of tighter images and close-ups that show them at work. In this example, you can also take photos of the product the craftsperson makes as well as photos of the craftsperson themselves.

These two photos show Todd, a flute maker, working in his garage. Both were taken with the same lens, but I got a lot closer to make the second image.

This also applies to more static subjects like landscapes. If you have a landscape related project, you can create variety with photos that show the entire scene, mixed with some that show close-ups of details that you noticed within the scene.

2. Tell a story

It’s often hard to a story with a single image, but it’s much easier with a sequence of photos because you can show different aspects of the same story in each one.

For example, with my photos of craftsmen I like to show images taken at different stages of the creation process. Put together they show how a certain item was made. That’s the story. These three photos show different stages in the creation of an artwork by Chris Meek.

You can also tell a story by paying attention to detail. While taking photos of Eoin, a glass blower, I noticed that his hands gave away a lot about his profession. So I made sure that I took photos like this, that shows the dirt on his hands and the tattoo on his thumb.

3. Find commonalities that link the photos

While photo stories need variety amongst the images to create interest, it is helpful if the photos are also linked in some way. For example, you could process all the photos from a shoot in black and white. Or they could be processed in a similar style, perhaps by using the same Lightroom Develop Preset as the basis for the processing.

Or, if you have a project that involves portraits, you could use light to link the photos. Using the same lighting setup for each portrait is one way to to do that.

These photos of Jasmin, a weaver who makes hats, are linked by the lighting and the processing. Each is lit by natural light coming through a window in her home, and given the same color treatment in Lightroom.

4. Show genuine interest in people

If your project involves people it is important to be genuinely interested in them and what they are doing. Let’s say, for example, you undertake a project taking portraits of surfers. You’ll get the best results if you are genuinely interested in surfing and enjoy talking with surfers.

It’s all about authenticity. If you’re genuinely interested in people, you will have plenty in common and find it easy to talk with them. But, if you’re not, then you won’t make the connection that is essential for good portraiture.

5. Give it time

Give your projects time to evolve and mature. For example, if you have a project photographing your local landscape, giving it time lets you create a series of photos that show the variation created by weather and seasons. Showing the changes that happen over a period of time is also another way of telling a story.

6. Compare and evolve

The reason why projects are such a good learning experience is because they give you the opportunity to compare your current work with your earlier photos. You will see how your ideas and techniques have evolved over time. You’ll also benefit by building a body of work and learning to edit a portfolio by selecting the strong images that work together.

Your turn

Have you undertaken any photography projects? Did they help you become a better photographer? Please share your thoughts and project in the comments below.

The Creative Image

If you found this article interesting then please download my free ebook, The Creative Image for 10 brilliant ideas for creative photography projects you can do.

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The post 6 Tips for How to Build a Story and Shoot a Photo Project by Andrew S. Gibson appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School
November 4, 2016
Tips for Doing Macro Underwater Photography

Look at the photograph below. What an unreal, alien animal! It could be right out of one of the many upcoming Star Wars sequels. You just don’t see creatures like that in your everyday life. It’s a sea slug (to be scientifically precise: Nembrotha Kubayana) which I photographed 20 meters underwater on a reef in the Philippines. The head of the slug is only about a centimeter across, so the image is quite a close-up (macro photograph).

If it doesn’t sound easy to dive 20, 30 or more meters below the ocean’s surface to take a picture of a slug the size of your pinky – it isn’t. But with the right gear, with the proper knowledge and experience using that gear, and with skills to find those small animals you can do it too. So let’s talk about each of these points one at a time.

The Gear

Naturally, you will need an underwater camera. There are a number of great choices these days. Compact cameras have greatly improved in recent years, and you can get a pretty good deal on a camera plus the fitting underwater housing. Many camera manufacturers make acrylic housings for their own compact camera models, which tend to be a lot cheaper than third party models. To have any chance of taking good macro shots, you need a strobe or a video light as well.

Me with my underwater camera setup. Note the diopter (magnifying lens) attached to the front of the lens port. The strobe is relatively close to the port and aimed slightly forward. The closer the subject, the closer the strobe can be to the port. The farther away the subject is, the further the strobe has to be to avoid backscatter.

If you have a lot of money or if you are obsessed with underwater photography (like myself) you can get yourself a DSLR, and put it in an underwater housing. I have been using a Canon 5DII in a Hugyfot (machined aluminum) housing, with two Inon z-240 strobes for several years now. Camera choice is an interesting and complex issue, but I want to concentrate on the gear you need specifically for underwater macro photography.

Macro lens

Another sea slug, from Botany Bay, Australia.

Modern macro lenses are technological miracles. If you are using a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, you can switch lenses. So you need to mount one that is capable of focusing close up, with significant magnifying power. I routinely use the Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens(price it on Amazon or B&H Photo), which can focus at 35 centimeters. That distance is measured from the sensor plane, hence I can place the subject only a few centimeters in front of the housing’s lens port. The sharpness this lens achieves when capturing minute animals is simply amazing. Nikon’s 105mm macro (price it on Amazon or at B&H Photo) is a legendary lens as well, and for cameras with cropped sensors (mirrorless cameras and entry to mid-level SLRs) 60mm macro lenses do a great job.

Other options

A small, but clever piece of gear I have been using with quite some success, is an extension tube. It’s simply a spacer inserted between the macro lens and the camera body. The extension tube eliminates the ability of the lens to focus to infinity (not used in macro photography anyway) and adds another 20% of magnification. The fact that no additional lens elements are introduced is a good thing for image quality.

Diopters (also called close-up filters) are also highly recommended. A diopter is simply a magnifying glass which is placed on the front of the camera’s lens. This is not ideal in terms of the optics, and distortions towards the edges are possible. With diopters, it makes sense to invest in a quality product to minimize such distortions. However, the amount of magnification achieved with a good diopter is absolutely mind-boggling. It can turn your underwater camera setup into a field microscope.

Another goby, very well camouflaged on a soft coral.

You can get both dry diopters which are attached to the actual lens, and wet diopters which are attached to the lens port on the outside of the housing. Wet diopters exist for DSLR and compact camera underwater setups. The convenient thing about the wet ones is that you can take them off underwater, and shoot larger animals again.

Tip: Make sure you store your wet diopter in a safe place when it’s not mounted.

Request: If you see a wet diopter for a 10cm diameter macro port, with a gray plastic mount somewhere on the west coast of Cebu, please return it to me.

How to use your macro gear

I’d like to stress two things when it comes to the proper camera technique for macro underwater photography – camera settings and strobe placement.

Almost all the light for your underwater photographs will come from your artificial light source anyway, so the shutter speed is usually not important. It needs to be equal or slower than the maximum speed your camera can synchronize with the strobes. That kind of information will be in the user manual for your camera since it differs between camera models. Otherwise, a shutter speed as fast as possible is beneficial for sharp images.

A small goby on a piece of hard coral, with the entire image in sharp focus. Canon 5DII, Canon USM 100mm f2.8 lens, at f/22.

Aperture considerations

A small aperture helps to keep the whole scene in your image sharp. Macro lenses naturally have a shallower depth of field due to the distance to subject being much smaller. So to photograph a tiny goby and all of the pretty coral it perches on, with all of it in focus, I use an aperture anywhere from f/22 to f/32 (that’s the smallest my Canon 100mm f2.8 macro can do).

There is also the option of using a wider aperture to achieve a Japanese-style effect in your images. Such a photographic style is indeed popular with Japanese underwater photographers these days. It is somewhat reminiscent of the late medieval Japanese painting style where the artists would just hint at a few twigs to depict a tree. How wide you can go depends on your lens, the distance to the subject and its orientation. The aperture of f/4.2 used in the picture below is as wide open as I can go. Whenever I can, I set my camera to approximately correct values before the dive so that I don’t have to find my way around in the menus while already underwater with a cool fish showing up in photographic range.

Only the face of this stick pipefish from Sydney in Australia is in focus. This Japanese style shot gives the image a dreamy atmosphere. Olympus TG-1, at f/4.2.

Lighting

You will need to use artificial light for most of your macro shots. Light-hungry macro lenses will not make good images with sunlight in many situations on land, and underwater, with so much sunlight absorbed by the water above you, they do even worse. The internal flash of most cameras is not strong enough and it’s in a less-than-ideal position just above the lens.

Avoid back-scatter

The external strobes you use should be mounted on some kind of adjustable or bendable arm. Keep them positioned moderately close to your lens, and a bit behind it. In underwater photography, you are always aiming to avoid back-scatter. Your strobe will light up the suspended particles in the stretch of water between your lens and the sea slug, and this will make your image look as if taken in a snow storm. There is nothing quite as annoying in underwater photography than a well composed, well lit shot, with a lot of back-scatter ruining it. You can take care of back-scatter in post-processing to some degree in some shots, but it’s a pain and better avoided, to begin with. Back-scatter is to underwater photography what blisters are to hiking.

A diver on a shipwreck in the Philippines. These are harsh conditions for underwater photography. I had my strobes turned outwards, and placed away from the camera, but not enough. The illuminated particles (the back-scatter) stand out especially in front of the darker part of the wreck.

When shooting wide-angle underwater, you need to place your strobes far away from your lens and slightly outward-oriented to avoid illuminating any particles in front of the lens’s wide field of view. This minimizes the amount of light reaching the space between your lens and the subject.

Positioning your strobes

In underwater macro photography, the situation is not quite as difficult. Still, the further away you are from the subject (the distance may vary between the subject almost touching the front of the lens port to no more than 30cm) the more you need to move your strobes away from the lens. When I am really close, I try to mimic a ring-flash with my two underwater strobes. In case you haven’t seen one, a ring-flash is a circular light source which is mounted on the front of a macro lens. Such a strobe is often used in land-based macro photography. It provides very even illumination. Putting one of my underwater strobes close to each side of my camera’s lens port gives me a similar type of direct, smooth illumination.

How to find good underwater macro subjects

Photo legend Jim Richardson is quoted as saying that, “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”. Underwater, that’s not quite true. You need to hover in the water in front of more interesting stuff, or at least lay in the sand in front of more interesting stuff, but that doesn’t look quite as stylish. And you should definitely not lay on corals in front of more interesting stuff because you may break them and it will evoke the rightful anger of a lot of other divers!

A flamboyant cuttlefish hunting in the Philippines. This animal is about 5cm long.

Good buoyancy will have other advantages besides not breaking corals (thank you again for not doing that). If you are stable in the water, you will be able to position yourself in a proper position in front of the animal you’d like to shoot. You will also not stir up silt or sand from the bottom, which would then cloud the image you are about to capture and cause the aforementioned dreaded back-scatter.

Whip coral goby, Moalboal, Philippines.

Back-scatter happens, to the best of us, including myself (above).

In the bottom image (before) we see way too much backscatter. I did two things. First I corrected the exposure of the image, cutting off the darkest part. This eliminated some of the unsightly dots. The remaining white dots I removed with the healing brush in my image processing program. The resulting image on top is vastly improved by these two post-processing manipulations.

Don’t spook your subjects

A neutrally buoyant, controlled, and calm approach towards your photo subjects will also reduce the chance of spooking them. There is a lot to be said for good buoyancy when photographing underwater. If you are not quite there yet with your positional control while diving, try photographing less easily spooked animals like slugs and sea urchins, and save the shrimp (very nervous) or the blennies (very fast) for the future once you have improved your buoyancy.

A blenny. Not easy to catch!

Hunting subjects

What you have to figure out next is where to find those psychedelic slugs and the fish straight out of Salvador Dali’s sketchbook. If you are on a diving vacation in some foreign tropical land, just follow your guide, and pay good attention to what he points at. The guys and gals guiding every day, year in and out, in the same location, usually know their reefs really well and are proud to show off the unusual animals on it. It also helps to have a quick chat with your dive guide beforehand and to tell him that you are out to find interesting macro subjects.

If you are diving on your own, things will move a bit slower. You will have to become that expert guide yourself. Study the reef when you are diving and study marine life books and web resources on land to figure out what to look for, where, and when. Certain animals will only be active at night, or at sunset (like the famous mandarin fish shown below). Some crabs will only live on one species of soft coral, and some shrimps will only live on the skin of certain sea cucumbers. If you don’t know where to look for them, it’ll be near impossible to find them. It’s a curious psychological effect that you will find such animals over and over again after you have spotted them once for the first time.

A mandarin fish! So pretty!

Sea slug laying its eggs (these slugs called nudibranchs are hermaphrodites, functioning as males and females at the same time). It was magic moments of animal behavior like these that got me addicted to macro photography underwater.

Conclusion

To become a skilled macro underwater photographer you need patience. Go for a dive, take some shots, come back, look at them, and think about them. Rinse (your camera gear, and yourself) and repeat. Take your time to inspect your work, and to reflect on what you could do differently next time. I recommend that you consider the points above during each and every iteration and the following questions:

Did I bring the right gear? Did I use it properly? Did I do a good job in finding that fascinating new sea slug?

Please put your comments and questions below, and do please share your underwater photos there too. We’d love to see them.

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The post Tips for Doing Macro Underwater Photography by Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 4, 2016
26 Spooky Images for Halloween Week

It’s that time of year again when the ghosts and goblins take over and the timid and meek take shelter and hide. Yes, it’s Halloween this coming week.

Depending on where you live, this may be a holiday the kids enjoy, but we adults can have a little fun too. Spooky images of ghosts in the night, apparitions, scary pumpkins and more. Let’s see what these photographers found spooky and captured for Halloween.

By Krystian Olszanski

By Anne Marthe Widvey

By Rachel.Adams

By Chris JL

By jader56

By micadew

By MattysFlicks

By Stefano Corso

By Moyan Brenn

By Thomas Hawk

By WxMom

By jpellgen

By Darlene Hildebrandt

By Craig

By Kevin Dooley

By JLS Photography – Alaska

By Kris Williams

By Nesster

By Thomas Hawk

By Flood G.

By Neil Howard

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By Andrew Kuznetsov

By Christopher Bligh

By Dan Castleberry

By hjl

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The post 26 Spooky Images for Halloween Week by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 2, 2016
Weekly Photography Challenge – Spooky

This Halloween week we looked at some spooky images by other photographers already. Now it’s your turn in this weekly photography challenge.

By milomingo

Weekly Photography Challenge – Spooky

Halloween conjures up images of ghosts and goblins, witches and warlocks, ghouls and skeletons who come out of the closet. Now is the time to create your scariest, spooky image and post it here for our theme this week. Maybe it’s dramatic lighting that makes your image scary. Or perhaps someone in a costume, make sure to use spooky monster lighting.

By Anant Nath Sharma

By milomingo

By Dun.can

By Jonathan Hollander

Share your images below:

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images on the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

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The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Spooky by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 2, 2016
How to Experiment with Different Editing Styles to Find Your Own

Photography is an art form and like every art form, it goes through its fair share of evolution. Hence, it is only fair that as photographers (artists of this trade), we too go through an evolution process of defining and redefining our artistic flair. This redefinition can take place in many different ways. It can be technical (going from digital to film or vice-versa) or it can be business (changing genres of what you photograph). Another way you can evolve as a photographer is with your editing style. And it is perfectly okay and acceptable to make one or all of these changes in your personal photographic journey.

For a photographer, his or her images are the art form. Experimenting with the images is creatively satisfying.

There comes a point in one’s career when you really take a hard look at what your journey has been. What you have been through to get here and where you are headed. While you may call this a mid-life crisis of some sort, I call it reassessing your strengths, talents, and goals.

A few years ago, while I was searching for what style of photography appealed to me, I was instantly drawn to bright and airy images with lots of light and emotion. This kind of images really inspire me and make me happy. But of late, I have been drawn to more moody contrasty images that are still full of emotion. I don’t consider this a flaw or a failure of my part but instead, choose to look at it as a natural evolution in my journey as an artist.

The same subject shot two different ways. I love them both equally and feel like both represent the message/story I wanted to convey about summer’s favorite produce – blueberries!

If you are at such crossroads, I encourage you to fully explore each of these paths and find a way to integrate it with your existing work. I have found that, if done correctly, your clients (or fans) will also value this evolution process as a sign of internal growth of your talent.

There are a few ways to go about this discovery.

1 – Identify your personal editing style

What style of images are you most drawn to? In other words, when you seek inspiration what sort of images do you gravitate towards? For me, images that are full of emotion and personality really call out my name! That is my first requirement; what story is the photographer trying to communicate.

Then I look for processing – is it dark and moody, or full of light and crisp? I like airy, light images just slightly more than dark and moody ones but they both appeal to me. My personal opinion – I am not inspired by sepia or warmer toned black and white, it’s just my personal preference. If that is what moves and motivates you, you own it and rock that style!

A clean, crisp, bright edit brings out the freshness of the florals against the blue backdrop of the chairs.

2 – Research all other styles that inspire you

There are a few common editing styles that seems to surface over time. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just some that I noticed as I browsed through the internet and Pinterest for inspiration.

Matte Finish

Those images that appear as if a slight hazy filter has been placed consistently over the image.

Matte style typically has blacks which are not sure 100% as if the image was printed on matte paper. (see original image below)

Original image

A slight haze like finish that is predominately seen over the florals (especially comparing to the earlier image).

Desaturated Look

Images where all the colors are very muted. This style seems to be quite popular lately, especially images where the greenery (i.e. trees and brushes) are toned down in the saturation of green tones.

A desaturated look where all the colors are muted from the original vibrancy seen in the first image of this series. The reds are toned down, the greens and blues are also muted (reduced in intensity).

HDR

As Per Wikipedia, HDR or High Dynamic Range is the effect to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than what is typical of standard digital imagery. I have seen this typically with urban night shots but in theory, this effect can be applied to any image.

HDR here almost has the opposite effect of desaturated colors…the greens, reds, and pinks seem to pop in this image.

Monochrome

This quite simply means single color and is most commonly used in black and white images.

3 – Identify artists that do these things well and follow them

There are many artists that excel at one or more of these types of editing styles. Once you have identified the ones you want to experiment with, find those artists and follow their work. You will begin to see a pattern in their shooting and editing style that may provide you with the right amount of motivation to try and achieve a certain look for your own portfolio and images.

4 – Shoot for a particular style and close to your vision

This ties in with the above two points. Once you have identified the type of look you want to achieve, take the time and effort to set up all the parameters needed to achieve it. For example, if I am aiming for a dark and moody look to my image I will look for lighting, textures, and tones that will support that type of imagery. I will not set up the shoot in the brightest part of my house where sunlight fills the room.

This food editorial shot was set up in my basement studio on a dark cloudy day to minimize the amount of light hitting the overall scene. Additionally the dark tones of the bread and the wood board compliment the look, feel, and tone of this image.

5 – Invest in LR presets or PS actions or experiment

There are numerous editing aids out there for almost every style of photography. Just google the kind of look you want to achieve and chances are someone has created a template/preset/action for that effect. Some editing aids are free while others cost money. Depending on your personal preference, you can choose to use these aids or not. My primary editing software is Lightroom and sometimes I will use a free preset just to see if I like that style of editing before I go down the path of additional research and experimentation with my own shooting style.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there are many different ways to look at your creativity and your photography style. There will always be those of us who go through life with the mindset of – Don’t fix what isn’t broken – while others follow the logic of – Change it up, mix it up, rock that boat…fall in the water and you will learn to swim! No matter what camp you belong to, the message I want to leave with you is that do that what makes photography fun, interesting and creatively challenging for you!

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The post How to Experiment with Different Editing Styles to Find Your Own by Karthika Gupta appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 2, 2016
Five Photography Rules You May Want to Ignore

A few years ago when I purchased my first Canon dSLR I took a free 2-hour class on digital photography from a local school. They offered free seminars as a way to market their series of intensive 6-week photography courses. I was new to digital photography at the time, having learned on 35mm film. During the class I scribbled away in the notebook the instructor handed out. I was given several photography rules to follow, but is that the best advice?

My camera-loving orange tabby Carter, shot in low light, requiring a relatively high ISO of 1600 to get a fast enough shutter speed to hand-hold. ISO 1600, 1/125th, f/4 @ 105mm.

The thing about photography is that it’s a series of decisions starting with the brand of gear you choose and it funnels down to your favorite subject, your preferred shooting mode, your shutter speed, aperture and ISO. By applying popular advice to all situations, you eliminate too many of the key creative decision about how your images look. Go ahead and disagree with or ignore rule-of-thumb photography advice. The choices you make allow you to create images that feel right to you – and that’s the real sweet spot.

So let’s look at five supposed photography rules and see if you agree or disagree with them.

1. Set the ISO at 400

One of my instructor’s key points was to set the ISO at 400 and forget it.”

Since I didn’t know anything about digital photography, it like pretty good advice, so I tried it. I also made a lot of blurry images. Set at ISO 400, and limited by a wide open aperture of f/3.5 on my kit lens, I often couldn’t gather enough light for a shutter speed fast enough to prevent motion blur. I flipped back to Auto Shooting Mode (Full Auto or Program) and suddenly my images were sharp again.

I dissected the settings on the Auto Mode shots and – you’ve probably guessed this already – the main difference while in Auto Mode was that the ISO was higher, enabling a faster shutter speed and reducing motion blur.

While this image wouldn’t have made the cut because of the awkward composition, the horse is also a bit blurry because my ISO was too low, allowing my shutter speed to lag. It wasn’t fast enough to freeze the motion of the moving horse. ISO 800, 1/160th, f/5.6, 176mm.

Increasing your digital ISO makes your camera’s sensor more sensitive to light, meaning you can shoot at smaller apertures and/or faster shutter speeds in low light conditions. Like film, increasing your ISO can create a grainier, noisier image. But unlike film, digital cameras have extraordinary ISO capacity. High-end cameras like the Canon 1Dx Mark II have an ISO capability of 51,200 expandable to 409,600! Sticking to ISO 400 is like pretending you’re still shooting film and disregarding all the recent digital technology advances.

Earlier this year I was in Mesa, AZ photographing the Salt River Wild horses at dawn. During blue hour, I started with my ISO too low, my shutter speed lagged, and I shot a whole series of blurry images (see image above). Purely by luck, at ISO 800, only this one didn’t have motion blur.

ISO 800

The next day, I started at ISO 12,800 to keep my shutter high enough to prevent motion blur, gradually decreasing my ISO was the sun grew brighter.

ISO 12,800

ISO 1250

While these images might be noisier than those shot at ISO 400, noise is almost always preferred to motion blur. Digital noise can be managed, while an unintentionally blurry picture can rarely be saved.

Setting your ISO to an unrealistically low value and leaving it there is the sort of advice or rule I’d encourage you to ignore.

2. You never need to shoot faster than 1/500th of a second

There’s a famous teaching photographer (I mentioned him here too) who says that you never need to shoot faster than 1/500th of a second. I ignore his advice too. Here’s why.

Shutter speed 1/500th

This image, shot at 1/500th of a second, shows motion blur in the horse’s legs. Sometimes you may want to intentionally include motion blur in your images because it shows speed in a dynamic way, and in this case, that’s what I wanted. If I wanted no motion blur, I would need to have chosen a faster shutter speed.

Shutter speed 1/640th

This image, shot at 1/640th of a second, is sharper. It has very minimal motion blur in the legs but again, it still shows motion blur.

Shutter speed 1/1000th

If you shoot at 1/1000th and above, you can get crisp, blur-free images of fast-moving objects or animals in motion. In this image, even the water droplets are frozen in time.

Depending on your creative goals, you may want to experiment and shoot from 1/100th, all the way up to 1/8000th of a second. That’s the reason to ignore this rule. Adhering to 1/500th of a second as your maximum shutter speed takes too many of your creative choices away from you.

3. Serious photographers always use tripods

Has your instructor or mentor told you that to be serious about making images, you must always use a tripod? That’s another piece of advice you might want to ignore, unless the type of work you make truly requires a tripod. Night photography, for example, typically requires a tripod because of the longer shutter speeds.

Night photography – with a tripod

Long exposure photography, astrophotography and shooting landscapes at dusk or dawn are all good examples of when to use a tripod in order to make excellent images.

Macro photography often requires a tripod but sometimes doesn’t. This image was made hand-held.

Macro photography – handheld

Street photography never requires a tripod. The most serious street photographers I know use small camera bodies with prime lenses. What makes them serious is that they carry their cameras all the time and are always ready to shoot. For a street photographer, lugging around a tripod actually seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Street photography – handheld

I’m a very serious photographer and I almost never use a tripod. I have two: a Travel Flat Benro tripod and a Gitzo with a Really Right Stuff BH 40 Ball Head. I always have one in the car or in my suitcase, but I rarely use either one anymore.

Does that mean I’m no longer a serious photographer? No, of course not. I travel all over the world to photograph horses and wildlife. I’m very serious about the images I make. The thing is, my images don’t usually require a tripod. Using one is sometimes even counterproductive when photographing fast bursts of action.

When two wild stallions start to fight out in the desert, I begin to shoot while adjusting my body position to look for the best angles for the scene to improve my composition. Sometimes a wild stallion spat can last for mere seconds. If you had to pause to adjust your tripod, you’d likely miss the action.

Wild stallions – hand-held. ISO 250, 1/800th, f/8 @ 98mm

Being a serious photographer isn’t about the gear you choose to use or not use. Being serious is about making images with intention. Your intention might be totally different than the photographer using the tripod. If it is, ignore his advice to use one.

4. Only shoot in Manual Mode

Most of the professional, money-making photographers I know actually shoot in Aperture Priority so I think this rule is more the advice of old-fashioned, learned-on-film photographers. These photographers grew up using Manual Mode since that’s the only option that was available. They didn’t have the choice of Auto, Aperture or Shutter Priority Modes.

So that’s the rub. You do have a choice. You also have stellar gear that is going to make the right exposure choice 90% of the time. Why not learn to use all the modes on your camera?

At a cocktail party for your bestie’s 40th? Use Auto Mode to make sure you get the shot. Shooting fast action? Use Shutter Priority. Shooting in quickly shifting light? Use Manual Mode and set your ISO to Auto. Shooting a portrait? Experiment with Aperture Priority and then give your camera’s Portrait Mode a try.

Self-portrait shot in Portrait Program Mode. 100, 1/100th, f/3.5 @ 50mm

Cameras today have amazing functionality. Anyone telling you to exclusively use Manual Mode may have different photography goals than you do. If your goal is to make sure you make the best images possible, ignore their advice and learn all of your camera’s capabilities backwards and forwards.

5. Only shoot in your lens’s sweet spot

If you’re keeping track, by heeding all of this well-intentioned advice, your camera is in Manual Mode and attached to a tripod. Your ISO is set at 400 and you’re using a maximum shutter speed of 1/500th. There has to be a rule about aperture and focal length too, right? There is.

The sweet spot is a combination of the aperture and focal length where your lens functions at its absolute best. If you’ve read reviews about zoom lenses you may have read something along the lines of; “Wide open at f/5.6 at the maximum focal length of 400mm, the corners get soft and there’s a noticeable loss of sharpness throughout.” Photographers write reviews like that so that you can avoid shooting in the so-called soft end of your lens and gravitate towards its sweet spot.

You can evaluate the sweet spot of your lens by making a series of images of the same subject, in the same lighting conditions, using each aperture at every focal length and comparing the results. (Read: How To Find Your Lens’ Sweet Spot: A Beginner’s Guide to Sharper Images for a full description of how to do this.) That sort of evaluation sounds soul-crushing and unnecessary to me. If you buy a zoom lens, you’re buying it because you need that focal length in your bag. Why run a test on your lens that might make you hesitate to use it at its maximum focal length?

The real sweet spot is making images that feel right to you. ISO 2500, 1/80th, f/4.5 @73mm

Instead how about learning the capabilities of your lens by truly using it? Over time, you may gradually learn that the sweet spot is 100mm at f/8, because every image you shoot at that aperture and focal length is amazing. Rather than avoiding the rest of your lens’ focal length range and aperture combinations, you can shoot a second image using the sweet spot. If there isn’t time to shoot a second image, that’s okay. Just be grateful you had a lens capable of capturing the image at all.

Bottom line

The bottom line is that as you progress in your photography journey, you get to make the decisions. What advice and rules will you follow, and which will you toss out?

Be disagreeable with me! What photography rules have you been taught that you ignore now? Please share your experience in the comments below.

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The post Five Photography Rules You May Want to Ignore by Lara Joy Brynildssen appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 2, 2016
How to Go Beyond the Hero Image and Get Real Storytelling Photos

Good photography is really about telling stories, and that’s where all the lessons of composition, juxtaposition, lines, and focus fall short. Compelling images tell compelling stories, but the hard part is recognizing that story. I’ll tell you a story of how I missed the opportunity to do that, and look at some ways you can add more storytelling into your photography.

A bear story with a moral

I was camped on a low tundra bench above a swift blue river in Alaska’s western Arctic. Our green canoes lay upside down next to the kitchen tent, and the willows along the river were flecked with the first autumn yellow. It was early when I crawled from my tent, stood and stretched. While still reaching skyward I saw another form rise from the tundra a stone’s throw away, a young grizzly giving me a curious look. I dropped my arms and turned just in time to see its sibling offering me a similar stare from a bit farther back. These bears were three-year-olds, spending their first summer away from their mother, ursine-teenagers, and just as troublesome. Unlike the many adult bears we’d encountered on our journey down the river, these two didn’t yet know to give humans a wide berth.

In Katmai National Park at the famous Brooks Falls tourists are inescapable. In this image, I embraced that part of the story.

Safety first

They backed off, after I shooed them with a wave of the arms, though not far enough. I woke my co-guide, and together we herded them away from camp and down onto the gravel bar below. One of the two young bears, rather than wandering off, decided to push my buttons and walked straight over. When off hiking or away from camp, you always give bears the right of way, but in camp, you can’t do that. Bears cannot learn that camps are places to explore.

Standing on the low bench, I knew that I could not let this mischievous youngster enter our camp. I stepped forward as he approached, right to the edge of the cut bank, and started speaking to the bear in a low steady voice. “I can’t let you up here, you have to back off. Back off. Now.” The bear paused in its approach, then stepped forward again. I raised a can of strong pepper spray, and held it up, ready to fire. The bear took another step forward, and then another until he was just eight feet away.

Hard lesson learned

And that’s when I felt a sudden moment of regret. Not for my behavior around this young, dumb bear, (in that, I knew I was doing the right thing) but for the fact that my camera lay in my tent. This beautiful (if troublesome) beast was so close I could count his whiskers. What a photo-op I was missing! But I pushed that aside, and spoke again, “One more step and you are getting it in the face. Don’t do it”, I said. “I’ll give you a count of three, then you are getting sprayed. One. Two…” before I could say three the young bear thought better of his situation, turned and ambled back to the river, swam across with his sibling, and disappeared.

Similar to the story I related above, this bear approached a group of photographers I was a part of on Admiralty Island, Alaska. He came very close, and I regret not taking a moment to show a wider shot with the group of us in the frame.

Think outside the frame – the moral

In retrospect, as I thought about the images I missed, I realized that it wasn’t the frame-filling portraits of the bear that would have been so spectacular about that moment. It was the story that went with it. Facing the bear down with a can of pepper spray, the bear testing us, and his eventual retreat. That’s where the compelling images were, not in the missed photos of the bear, but in the missed story that went with it.

If I had a camera in that moment with the bear, even if I’d been on the sidelines, I know I would have blown it and gone for the wildlife portraits, missing the much more interesting interaction that was taking place.

Here a herd of caribou is seen migrating across the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This image tells a more important story of movement, landscape, and perspective than a more typical portrait of just an animal would.

Learn from the best

Take a look at any issue of National Geographic. Many, even most, of images that are selected are storytelling images, not illustrations. The compositions are atypical, often showing the interaction of people or animals within the scene. Those photographers stepped back from a typical composition and explored their surroundings in a way that most of us, myself included, usually forget to do.

This image of an Adelie Penguin on an iceberg, I made in Antarctica. Getting close to wildlife is easy there, and the following image provides information to see just how easy.

A zodiac pulled right up to an iceberg with Adelie Penguins.

Look around

This is an easy lesson to say, a much harder one to perform in the field because the real story is often easy to miss.

Another example: I was photographing the start of the Yukon Quest sled dog Race in Fairbanks, Alaska, where I live, a few years ago. I’d been concentrating on the passing dogs, the smiling mushers, and been studiously avoiding the crowds of people that surrounded me. At one point a spectator raised a point and shoot in front of my shot, I was irritated, but in that moment I was forced to pause. It clicked, and I realized that the real story was the crowd of mushing fans, out on a cold morning to watch the race. I changed my composition and made an image of the spectator’s camera. That shot is much more telling of the experience than any of my previous photos.

Here, the scene of the dog teams seen through a spectator’s camera is more telling of the experience of the start of the Yukon Quest.

This broad perspective is also an effective way to tell the story, showing the rows of spectators and the buildings of Fairbanks in the background.

Sometimes it’s a sudden realization like mine at the mushing race, but often, you have to put some effort into the real story. You need to break away from the scene you think you should be photographing, pause, and look around. Consider not just the scene, but the experience. What are you, or those around you, feeling, seeing, and doing?

Stay open to your surroundings

While being focused on your subject is vital to creating good images, it’s important not to close yourself off too much. Take the time to look around. Literally step away from your tripod, and turn 360 degrees while paying attention. What else is out there? Have you been missing anything as you’ve been staring through your viewfinder? What happens if you back up and show the surroundings?

While an image of a single bird, in this case, a Least Sandpiper is a nice portrait, it is more of an illustration than a story.

A large flock of shorebirds, when compared to the single-bird portrait, is more telling of the lives of the birds, and their epic migrations.

Think in terms of stories

That real story can be told within a single image, but there are also other strategies. Though an entire article is required to discuss the photo essay (5 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay with a Purpose), I do want to note that you can always think through your story using a series of images. This is also a good way to make the classic images you strive for while simultaneously capturing the storytelling ones as well.

Telling the real story is important not just for the quality of our images, but also for the quality of our experience. These storytelling images may not have the flash and glamor of a bear portrait or a sprinting sled dog, but it will help your viewers know the story, and that really is where the real excitement lies.

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The post How to Go Beyond the Hero Image and Get Real Storytelling Photos by David Shaw appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

November 2, 2016