Find « 360Photography

RSS

Posts Tagged ‘Find’

5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

12 May

In this article, you’ll get five tips to help you find great locations for travel photography.

The issue

The use of cell phones has truly changed the face of photography. All realms have been affected. Travel photography like all other genres has changed. Nowadays the world is so easily accessible through the internet, so many famous sites have been shot over and over again. Google the Eiffel Tower and millions of images will pop up.

person on a quiet beach - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

We stopped to visit the small town in Wales that my parents lived in when they were young, and discovered a beautiful moody beach.

So when traveling how do you find things to shoot? Yes of course still shoot the famous landmarks and sites. You have to shoot them! How could anyone go to London without checking out Big Ben or London Bridge? (Unless of course the clock was covered in scaffolding for maintenance like it was when I visited.)

As always, I’m going to suggest you push yourself past these common sites and look deeper into a location. The question is how do you find great locations for travel photography and how can you plan your trip, so you make the most of these sites?

It’s time to look into a few methods for finding fantastic photographic opportunities when traveling at home or abroad.

1) Travel Books

Portugal travel book - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

A shot from my Instagram feed. I’m always researching my next location, even when sitting in a car waiting for my kids.

Tried and trusted travel books can help you begin your search for interesting places to photograph. While not focused solely on photography, they provide you with the background information and history of different sites.

All of this is, of course, relevant for travel photography. You need to know the ins and outs of visiting a country and all its sites. There’s nothing worse than showing up expecting to be able to shoot a variety of historic buildings only to discover they’re closed on Sundays.

Having a solid knowledge of a country is so important when going to photograph a location. What are the rules for photography? How will people react when you take their photo? Travel guide books can help you in the primary stages of your research.

5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography - Snowdonia valley

Snowdonia is the main tourist location but when we stopped to check out the view we stumbled upon the training grounds for the airforce planes zipped through this valley. It was impressive.

One of my favorite series of digging into a place is the 500 Hidden Secrets Books. I love them for the info and the pointers. They usually contain some small less popular sites and the books are nicely organized. Another favorite that has never steered me wrong is the Lonely Planet Guides. Whatever you prefer, there are tons of books out there that can assist you in your primary travel research.

2) Travel Blogs and Articles

I often find inspiration for travel by reading articles on the internet. Of course, check out the famous websites like the travel lists from Forbes and National Geographic but I also like to dig into some rather interesting blogs. There are lots of people visiting the world, discovering places, and providing inspiration. I like to take a look at what the folks at Drink Tea and Travel have discovered as well as Dan Flying Solo.

5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography - secluded beach

A small out of the way beach we found through a hiking website.

3) Travel sharing websites

A site like Trover can be very inspiring and informative when trying to research a destination. I’m heading to New York and Portugal shortly so this site will feature fairly heavily in my research. It’s very much a social sharing site that allows you to get some first-hand information about specific locations.

But it’s important to plan when going traveling with photography as your focus and being able to get first-hand information is important. Let’s face it; if the author is not a photographer, they have no idea how important it is to visit a site at the right time of day. So, by all means, check out a ton of photo sharing sites before you head to any location.

Harlech Castle - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

A shot of the impressive Unesco Heritage Site, Harlech Castle. You will find this site on the main tourist trail in Wales. It’s still worth a visit, though.

4) Ask Locals

One of the best places I found to shoot was based on information I got from a local. You have to be careful when you ask. Always take the proper safety precautions but they know their home well, and they know the hidden away amazing places.

Case in point, people come to Canada and they often skip Toronto and head straight to Niagara Falls. Their response is often the same. The falls are nice but the rest of the town, it’s kitschy. As a local, I know all about the tourist trap areas around the falls. I often direct people to see the falls but to also visit Toronto too. They are often surprised at what they find in this frequently overlooked city.

So go for it chat up the locals to find out what they know about their home. Just be aware and always use safety precautions when meeting people in person or giving our your personal information or travel plans.

restaurant - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

A shot taken on my phone. We found this amazing restaurant by chatting with a bouncer in Cardiff.

5) When you get there take a calculated risk and follow a whim

Some of the best photographs I’ve ever captured have occurred because I let fate guide my steps. I chose to leave the beaten path and explore. I revelled in the mystery of getting lost.

You will find that these detours almost always pay off. You find out of the way places that provide you with some insight into the wonder of a location. Plus there’s always the excitement of adventure and the road less traveled.

Most of my favourite memories come from these moments when I have no idea where I’m going or what might occur.

Harlech castle black and white - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

A more artistic shot of Harlech Castle.

Summary

There are endless places to discover. Travel photography is both exciting and challenging. Don’t hesitate to discover some amazing things.

Share your favorite methods of finding great photography locations. The more ways we share, the more we discover about this incredible world in which we live. So go ahead post your favorite travel articles, share your stories with locals and let’s make a huge list of resources we can all use for finding those amazing locations we love to capture so much.

waterfall - 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography

Best day ever! On a side trip, we found this waterfall and had a blast wandering around behind it.

The post 5 Ways to Find Great Locations for Travel Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

How to Find and Use Natural Reflectors for Portraits

01 May

Natural light is one of the simplest ways to create beautifully lit portraits, without having too much equipment or worrying about setting up extra gear. However, it limits beautiful light to certain hours of the day and for you to work in the shade. This is where finding and using natural reflectors comes into play.

With natural light reflectors, you can photograph at any time of the day without having to carry any extra gear. It’s really easy to find and use to help give your portraits that extra boost of light.

Here we can see that the natural reflector is the path at the park.

What is a natural reflector?

A natural reflector is using already built-in or found materials to bounce light back onto your subject. This rids you of having to carry more equipment on location.

It also helps immensely when you are photographing your subject during not so great hours of the day, like say, noon. When the light is harsh, it makes for great big natural reflectors to bounce that light back onto your subject.

In this portrait, the subject is in direct sunlight at midday and the pavement helped to bounce light back onto her face.

Natural reflectors can come in many different forms, the most useful are big light-colored walls, the pavement, buildings with silver or light colored walls, white/silver cars in parking lots, mirrors, windows, even your white t-shirt.

They are all found naturally occurring on location and all of them bounce light back onto your subject.

This family is being lit by the sidewalk as a natural reflector, bouncing light back onto their faces.

The bigger your reflector, the more dispersed and diffused (soft) the light will be. Keep this in mind when photographing big groups or families, as you want the light to be evenly spread over all of your subjects’ faces.

How to use a natural light reflector

Natural reflectors are used a lot like real man-made or handheld reflectors. Position your subject in front of the natural reflector, for example, a large white wall.

How to Find and Use Natural Light Reflectors for Portraits

The sidewalk directly in front of this couple is naturally reflecting light back onto their faces. The natural light reflector is large and therefore disperses light evenly on both of them.

Parking garages make for great portrait locations, especially for headshots. Make sure to position your subject behind the edge of where the sun is hitting the pavement and the shadowed area. This will keep the lighting on your subject even while maintaining an even background as well.

Using buildings is also a great way to reflect light on to your subject and compete with the sun, offering a different style of portraits. As light is reflected off a big silver wall, the light reflected creates more drama. Adding to the overall effect of your photographs!

The silver paneling on the building serves as a natural reflector competing with the sun in the background.

If you are out in a field or more of an open space, you can still find natural reflectors. Fields reflect a beautiful golden hue as does the sand on the beach when the sun is brightest.

Natural reflectors can also add a little more drama to your photos if you use them strategically. Placing your subject away from the light can create interesting shadows. Same with reflectors below your subject. Experiment to see which types of natural reflectors work best for you.

Here the light reflected creates a little bit of drama in the portraits of this young man.

Best time for natural light reflectors

The best time to use natural reflectors is anytime the sun is shining bright!

On cloudy days you may get some bright light, but when the sun is out, that is the best time for maximum reflection. It’s a good rule of thumb to go to the portrait location before your session and observe when is the best time and which natural reflectors will be useful.

How to Find and Use Natural Light Reflectors for Portraits - maternity portraits in natural light

Use natural light reflectors in both brightly lit backgrounds or in shaded areas.

To get the most out of a natural reflector, it’s best to photograph your subject between 11 am and 2 pm so that the sun hits these natural reflectors evenly and you can move your subject around to get the best background, angle, and of course, lighting.

Fields are great for naturally reflecting onto your subject’s face during a session.

If you are photographing in a cityscape or urban area with a lot of buildings, the best time is a couple of hours before sunset. The sun will reflect against the windows of buildings and offer the best strength.

Don’t stop photographing though. You’ll want to catch the sunset reflecting in the windows as well after the sun goes down a little.

beach family portrait - How to Find and Use Natural Light Reflectors for Portraits

Using the sand as a natural light reflector is a perfect way to evenly light your subjects at the beach.

Another example of beach photos and using the sand as a natural reflector.

You can also become a natural reflector

Wearing white can bounce some much-needed light off you and back to your subject if you need a bit more light. A simple white t-shirt can do the trick and give you a little boost of light. It especially makes for great catchlights in your subject’s eyes.

Using white can help reflect light. Take precaution when photographing in really bright sunlight as it can sometimes wash out details in the shirts. However, if you use a white shirt, it has the same effect of bouncing light.

White shirts can give your subject a soft dewy look. Just be mindful that you will have to be relatively close to your subject so that enough light can bounce back onto the subject’s face.

In conclusion

portrait of a girl - How to Find and Use Natural Light Reflectors for Portraits

When you’re photographing in natural light, these natural reflectors can help make for interesting, beautifully lit portraits of your subjects. The boost of light can get you out of shaded areas and allow you to shoot at all hours of the day without having to carry additional gear other than your camera.

Have fun and experiment with different types of natural reflectors to add drama to your portraits.

The post How to Find and Use Natural Reflectors for Portraits appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

Video: How to find the best natural light for portraits

18 Apr

How do you find good quality natural light while walking out and about? It’s not always easy, but if you know where to look and what to look for, you can almost always find the perfect light for a portrait. At least that’s what London-based photographer and YouTuber Sean Tucker believes, and he’s created a helpful tutorial for his series ‘Good Light’ that explains what it is you should look for in natural light to make the most of a scene for an impromptu portrait session.

In the six-minute video, Tucker and his friend Sarah hit the streets of London in search for a backdrop for their photo shoot. As tends to be the case with so many street shoots, the pair end up in an alley, where Tucker sets up shop to explain the benefits of this particular scene and why it provides good natural light for the portrait he’s trying to capture.

Tucker hows how the buildings on either side of the alley not only provide good leading lines, but also serve as black flags of sort, helping give depth to the subject by making the natural light more directional. After a few shots, he noticed a problem though: panda eyes. To fix this, Tucker uses a simple white grocery bag his subject had on hand as a reflector. A bit primitive, but as his final image shows, it did the trick.

Photo by Sean Tucker

To wrap up the video, Tucker shows how he went about editing the image in Lightroom CC on his iPad—itself a helpful tutorial for those of us who frequently edit images on-the-go for sharing on social media and beyond.

Watch the full video for yourself up top, and then head on over to Tucker’s YouTube Channel to see more from his popular “Good Light” series. You can also find him on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or read his DPReview Photo Story of the Week.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

19 Jan

Blue hour, especially the one in the evening (yes it happens before sunrise too!), is probably the most popular time of day to take cityscape photography with dazzling city lights illuminated. But exactly when is the prime time of blue hour that could result in you getting the best possible shots?

Singapore - How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

Singapore skyline at blue hour.

Hong Kong - How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

Hong Kong skyline at blue hour.

Blue Hour Photography Requires a Tripod

One note before we get started. Although you could shoot handheld at blue hour by bumping the ISO up, it’s always advisable to use a tripod in order to shoot clean (noise-free) photos with low ISO (e.g. 100). It also comes with an added bonus of letting you do long exposure photography with smoothed-out water, etc.

For your information, sample photos shown in this post are all shot using my trusty Manfrotto MT190CXPRO3 carbon-fibre tripod.

Tripod - How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

Setting a tripod up and getting ready for blue hour.

Finding out Your Local Sunset and Dusk Time

Let’s get down to business. In terms of timeline, SUNSET comes first, followed by DUSK 20+ minutes later. The time between sunset and dusk is called TWILIGHT, and NIGHT falls once dusk is over.

To find out your local sunset and dusk time, simply go to timeanddate.com and search for your city (e.g. sunset and dusk time in Singapore on January 26th, 2018 will be 19:18 and 19:40 respectively). Or alternatively, search Google using “dusk date city” format (e.g. dusk January 24th, 2018 Singapore). Then, Google returns a dusk time even before the first result. Checking a dusk time has become a second nature to me whenever I’m shooting at blue hour, locally as well as traveling abroad on holidays.

Note: Apps like PhotoPills are also really helpful for planning shooting times and figuring out the sunrise, sunset and dusk times daily in any location worldwide.

Timeline - How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

Sunset to dusk in timeline. Towards the end of dusk is the best time to shoot blue hour photos with beautiful bluish hue in the sky.

Aim for Shooting the Last 10 Minutes of Dusk

In this 20 or so minutes between sunset and dusk, the first 10 minutes are still not quite “ripe”, as city buildings are not yet fully lit up, and the sky hasn’t yet taken on the beautiful bluish hue that appears towards the end of dusk. Use this time to decide on your composition, do some test shots, etc.

This Singapore skyline was shot 15 minutes before the end of dusk (six minutes after sunset) at f/13, 1.6 seconds, ISO 100. The stage isn’t quite set yet, as the sky is still bright and not many of the city lights are illuminated.

When there are about 10 minutes left before dusk, more city buildings will be lit, and bluish hue starts to appear in the sky, getting deeper and deeper with every single passing minute. It’s these last 10 minutes of dusk that are undoubtedly the prime time to shoot blue hour photography.

In addition, the limited available light at blue hour allows for your shutter speed to naturally get longer, especially with the use of a small aperture. Shoot in Aperture Priority mode and use a bigger f-stop number such as f/13, which helps create smoothed-out water and rushing clouds effects (provided that you’re shooting with a tripod).

ND filter - How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour

A neutral density (ND) filter is an item that will enrich your blue hour photography experience and images.

Add an ND Filter

To enhance such effects, try shooting with a neutral density (ND) filter attached. ND filters help reduce the light that is coming through the lens, allowing you to use much slower shutter speeds.

For example, with a 3-stop ND filter attached, a base shutter speed of 2-seconds is extended to 15 seconds. For a greater effect, use 6-stop ND filter to extend a base shutter speed of 2-seconds to 128 seconds (just over two minutes), which gives your photo a surreal and dreamy feel that is typically seen in long exposure photography, like Marina Bay (Singapore) photo below.

This Marina Bay photo was shot three minutes before the end of dusk (f/13, 135 seconds, ISO 100). The blue hour sky looks just right – not too light, not too dark, not overly vibrant. Also, an exposure of 135 seconds (with a 6-stop ND filter attached) helped create a silky smooth water effect.

Blue Hour Suddenly Ends after Dusk

Blue hour photography is sometimes mixed up with night photography, which starts once dusk is over. You might be surprised to find out that night falls almost suddenly after dusk. It doesn’t even take 10 minutes for the blue hour sky at dusk to turn into pitch-black night.

Personally, I never shoot after dusk. Photos shot after dusk tend to come out very dark and colors look muddy as there is little bluish hue left in the sky. Your photos will look considerably different if you miss this prime time of blue hour even by a mere few minutes.

This Hong Kong skyline was shot 8 minutes after the end of dusk. The bluish hue in the sky quickly disappeared, and the scene turned into the dark night rather abruptly.

Conclusion

In fact, what we call blue “hour” seems to last only approximately 10 minutes towards the end of dusk (depending on where you are located relative to the equator).

Blue hour photography is quite a time-sensitive genre, as this prime time of blue hour sky ends in the blink of an eye. So, stay focused, otherwise, you could suddenly miss it passing you by under the fast-changing dusk sky. I really wish blue hour could literally last for an hour!

Editor’s note: it does in some parts of the world, at certain times of the year. If you want more blue hour time – travel farther away from the equator! Where I live in Canada blue hour is almost a full hour in the summer, versus 20 minutes where the author lives in Singapore.

The post How to Find the Best Possible Time to Shoot Cityscapes at Blue Hour by Joey J appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

The Google Arts & Culture app can find your fine art doppelganger

16 Jan

Google’s Arts & Culture app was first launched in 2016, offering “virtual access” to some of the most famous art collections in the world, and many stories about arts and culture from around the world. The latest update of the app, however, makes use of Google’s extensive knowledge of machine-learning-based facial recognition, and the front camera of your smartphone, to find your fine art doppelganger… just ’cause.

The new feature lets you record a selfie and receive a list of portrait artworks your self-portrait resembles. While the user interface is extremely simple, Google is using highly sophisticated facial recognition algorithms to compare your facial characteristics to the portraits among the 70,000+ works of art in its Google Art Project database.

To try it out, download and install the app and scroll down to the “is your portrait in a museum?” icon on the front screen. From there, you simply capture an image of your face, and the system will analyze which which work of art you most resemble.

Looking at some of the results on Twitter and other social media, it is fair to say that the feature generally does a pretty decent job in matching selfie subject and piece of art; however, among the examples we have posted below, you’ll also see the occasional slip-up.

Unfortunately, it appears that if you are, like myself, living outside the US, you are currently out of luck as the new feature has not been rolled out globally yet. Hopefully this will happen soon though. If you are based in the US, you can find Google Arts & Culture on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Hey good morning everyone, this Google Arts and Culture app is scary. pic.twitter.com/yt2kSYMWyM

— Ding Dong Daddi (@sixthsentz) January 13, 2018

This is addictive. Google Arts and Culture app will tell you which museum painting looks most like you. Please call me Manuel from now on. pic.twitter.com/8LKG8bRkO2

— David Wade (@davidwade) January 14, 2018

Torn between which one I think is better likeness with the Google Arts and Culture app. pic.twitter.com/uSw8RmOip8

— Felicia Day (@feliciaday) January 13, 2018

Honestly fuuuuuuuck google arts and culture pic.twitter.com/8W4gLO48PJ

— Linz (@LinzElah) January 14, 2018

Just got owned by Google Arts and Culture app. pic.twitter.com/RTQCPQ3AR1

— Adam The Greatest C.P.A. Morris (@aimorris) January 13, 2018

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

SLC-1L-01: One Speedlight Outdoors — Find Shade

15 Dec

There is an inherent tradeoff when using small speedlights outdoors in daylight. They are light, and convenient and cheap. But they don't have a ton of power.

And the aggravating factor is the relationship between a small flash and a bright environment. Which is, in turn, governed by our sync speed. And by this I mean our natural speed limit for flash, absent power-robbing gimmicks like high-speed sync (HSS).

At a sync speed of 1/250th of a second, even at a low ISO, you are probably going to be at f/16 in full sun. That's a small aperture, which means your flash will be working hard to create a full exposure.

Because of that, working in full sun with speedlights usually means we lack the power that we need. Certainly, we don't have enough power to push the flash's light through a softening modifier to look nice.

The solution: Get more power… or find some shade. Read more »
Strobist

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

Adobe unveils Photoshop Elements 2018: Can open closed eyes, find your best photos and more

04 Oct

A before and after of Photoshop Elements’ new Open Closed Eyes featured at work.

While the professional photography market waits with bated breath to see what Adobe has in store for us at AdobeMAX, the company behind Lightroom and Photoshop unveiled something that appeals to a bit broader of an audience today: Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018.

The new, user-friendly versions of Adobe’s photo and video editors come with some really creative and easy-to-use features that the company says are aimed at “memory keepers.” The idea was to create two programs that make finding, enhancing and sharing the precious memories hidden away inside random memory cards, hard drives and (most likely) smartphones almost totally automatic.

Photoshop Elements 2018

Photoshop Elements 2018 tackles the same problem that everyone—Google’s Photos App, Apple Photos, etc.—is trying to tackle: how do you help the typical shutterbug find their best images out of the thousands they take every week on their smartphone, and enhance those images so they look ‘professional’ and worth sharing on social media?

As with everybody else, Adobe is leaning heavily on machine learning and computer vision (different types of ‘AI’) for this trick.

It starts with an easy-to-use Organizer view and something called Auto Curation, which uses computer vision and some nifty algorithms to guess (because it can’t REALLY know, can it?) which of your images are the best. So if you have a group of 200 images, you can ask Photoshop Elements to cull those down automatically to just 15.

Once you’ve selected your shots, you can use the program’s new Guided Edits and a new feature called Automatic Selection to do things like drop in a new background, create a double exposure effect using two of your images, or add ‘artistic’ overlays.

The coolest feature, though, has to be Open Closed Eyes, which allows you to select two frames, and replace the closed eyes in one with the open eyes from another. The results are incredibly lifelike given that whole thing can be done in a matter of seconds.

Premiere Elements 2018

Like Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements 2018 also leans heavily on AI-powered features to make video editing as automatic and pain-free as possible.

Smart Trim does for videos what Auto Curate does for photos, namely: it asks you what ‘style’ of video you want to create, tries to intelligently find the best clips that match this style, and tosses out the rest to create a coherent clip.

Another interesting addition is a feature called Candid Moments, which tries to find the best candid ‘photo’ hidden within a video clip and pull it out for you. With new smartphones like the iPhone 8 Plus shooting gorgeous 4K 60p, we could see this feature being a huge hit with those ‘memory keepers’ Adobe is all trying to target.

Admittedly, neither Photoshop Elements 2018 nor Premiere Elements 2018 are really targetted at more professional photographers out there (read: many of the people who enjoy reading DPReview). But as these beginner-focused programs get more and more powerful, amateur photographers who are allergic to the subscription model and don’t like to do much post-processing anyhow might actually enjoy using Photoshop and Premiere Elements 2018.

Of course, that’s not to say we won’t be keeping a very close eye on AdobeMAX this year.

To learn more about Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018, head over to the Adobe blog by clicking here, or visit their dedicated landing pages by clicking on the program names above. Both programs are available now for $ 100 new or $ 80 as an upgrade. You can also buy them together for $ 150 new or upgrade both programs at once for $ 120.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

How to Find More Creativity Through Using Less Gear

03 Oct

In this article,

A few weeks ago, I was packing for an 8-day photo workshop I was leading in the Alaska Range. It was autumn, which meant we’d be concentrating on the landscape, but there would likely be ample opportunities to photograph wildlife and create macros. That diversity meant that I would need to pack for every opportunity.