Photography Tips

Photography Tip -- photograph green before Autumn colors arrive

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Shoot green in Autumn - Tokyo, Japan - Nikon D80 Nikkor 50mm @ f/1.8 ISO 400 1/100thWhile I was still living in Japan, a random photo of green leaves and bokeh (view here) happened to garner the most attention of any photo I had taken to that date.  I think it had more to do with the title than the shot itself.  I called the photo, "Last Green Leaves Before Autumn."  Tokyo has four distinct seasons so green leaves do not last year round like they mostly do here in Florida.  So my thinking for this photography tip was to go against the grain and recommend shooting green one last time before autumn foliage takes over the photography world.

PHOTOGRAPHY TIP -- photograph the last green leaves of Autumn

 

Show us the last green in your neighborhood with a link to your photo in the comments below.  Does anyone live where this already no green left?? 

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    • Photography Tip -- travel (or live) abroad

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    Scenes from my 2-week trip in Cambodia July-August 2001, the greatest time of my life; Clockwise from upper left - Me with some children who live on a lake, sunrise over Angkor Wat, a Ta Prohm silk cotton tree before it was made famous by the Tomb Raider movie, yours truly surveying the jungle from Angkor WatI cannot state strongly enough how important I think it is to travel abroad, even better, to live abroad.  In July of 2001 I crossed the western Cambodia border from Thailand in the bed of a small truck.  This was my first time to visit Southeast Asia and the first time to really use my new digital camera, an Olympus 2040 EZ (2.1 megapixels).  This was still the very beginning of digital cameras, very, very few people had one.  I cite this event as my true birth into photography.  

    Therefore, my photography tip is a simple one:  travel abroad for as long as possible

    By long, I mean at least one month (four weeks).  If you have not yet gotten into photography as much as you would like, there is nothing like traveling abroad to be the catalyst to do it.  If you are already a frequent photographer, having a whole new world of subject matter will boost your creative output like nothing else can.

    You might just end up having the greatest experience of your life, and having the photographs to remember it years later.  

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    --I have never yet written extensively about my time in Cambodia, but creating a long photo story from my archives and journals is always on my mind. 

    Photography Tip - search your archives for photos you make like now

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    Abandoned train car in Tampa, Florida - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/2500thI have been going through my photography archives from the past three years looking for images to update my various portfolios with.  While looking for specific types of photos, I also found random photos that I had never edited, never given any attention to before, that for some reason now catch my eye (see above train photo).  This gave me the idea for . . . 

    Photography Tip -- go through your photo archives to find hidden gems & to see how your photography tastes have changed

     

    Not only may you find that what you think is an interesting photograph has changed, but if you have greatly improved your digital photo editing skills like I have over the past few years, you may find that you can save a photo that previously was left for the scrapheap.  

    Go through your archives this week and see if you find a forgotten photo that you now really like or even love.  Post a link to it in the comments below! 

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    • Photography Tip - strong photographs come from confidence

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    Photography strength, like many other things, comes from confidence - Nikon D300 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens @ f/2.2 ISO 200 1/1250thRecently I have had DSLR Photography Lesson students who have wanted to go beyond just knowing how to use the basic functions of their DSLR.  Yet, they are still at the very beginning of understanding photography and how to make images with confidence.  

    PHYSICAL CONFIDENCE

    I was surprised to find that for some people there is even a lack of confidence in holding (and using) their gear at a physical level.  From the very first photography lesson with anyone, I teach how to properly hold a DSLR.  Then I show them how to properly stand.  Then I often tell them to get rid of the flip-flops and where proper shoes (like these).  Having a confident grip on your DSLR and maintaining a strong stance are the very first things needed in order to achieve an overall confidence level.

    When I grip my Nikon D300 and pull it up to my eye and look throug the viewfinder, something clicks inside of me.  It makes me feel stronger.  Just before doing this, I was only standing somewhere.  With camera to my eye, now I am going to be looking for and making photographs.  To give an example, a few weeks ago I was at a networking event, a place I do not feel confident at all and mostly feel uncomfortable.  I enter a room filled with people I do not know and am only there because hopefully I can meet someone who needs my photography services or can refer me to someone who does.  It is my least favorite aspect of being a professional photographer, the "hustle" to book jobs.  After semi-painfully making small talk with a few people, I went off to a corner of the room and pulled out my D300.  Instantly I had purpose and confidence and felt totally comfortable.  I only took three shots of the room, but that was enough.  

    The rest of physical confidence with your gear comes from being able to make a wholesale change of settings (aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO, focus mode) in 5 seconds (or so, depending if your camera has the ergonomics to do it).  I can change any of those five settings without really even looking, or better stated without having to remove my eye from the viewfinder.  If you have to hunt around your DSLR body to change any of those five things, then you cannot have confidence in using your gear.  You must learn how to change any and all of those settings as quickly as you can until you can do so almost without looking.

    EXPOSURE CONFIDENCE

    To be able to quickly change the above five settings, one must also have exposure confidence.  This type of confidence will take much longer to achieve than physical confidence, though it need not.  What is needed to produce a good exposure can be explained in one minute.  To be able to produce consistently well exposed images may take thousands of practice shots.  Students often ask me, how do you know to start out at such and such settings.  I answer, "because I have shot in light like this many times before."  The more time spent shooting, the more experience gained, then the more your exposure confidence will grow.  If you are not confident about your settings before you push the shutter, then you will never on purpose create a great shot.  If it happens, it will only be by luck.  This does not mean that a confident photographer always produces a great exposure on the very first shot, but it does mean that within 2 more shots he/she will.  

    CREATIVE CONFIDENCE

    Once you no longer have to worry about how to hold and use your gear, and how to get a good exposure, the last area of confidence to work on is creative confidence.  It is extremely hard to be able to produce creative photographs while searching for how to change your aperture and then not even being sure what aperture you should change it to.  Creative confidence starts when you approach a shot with physical confidence, then within 2 or 3 shots get your exposure and other settings locked in so you are confident in your exposure, which now frees you to just focus on composition, posing, framing, etc.  At this point, you will be able to consistently and repeatedly produce satisfying photographs. 

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    • The advantage of using HDR processing in photography

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    Over the past few years HDR processing has becoming very popular.  A term has even been coined for photographers who first discover HDR then basically only ever make HDR images from then on, "falling into the HDR hole."  It took me a long time to come around to realizing the benefit of HDR because, frankly, all the HDR images I saw online I thought were horrid, and I still personally do not care for a majority of HDR images I see.  This is of course a heated topic in the photography community.  However, for this photography tip, I just want to demonstrate the power HDR has to produce very detailed & dynamic images.

     

     

    Many times, using aperture priority mode will result in a very good looking image.  The top photo is the result of setting my Nikon D300 to f/11 in aperture priority mode (A - Nikon, Av - Canon).  Aperture priority produced an ok looking image.  I set my focus point on the middle elbow of the lowest branch using matrix metering mode.  Thus, the priority for the sensor was exposing the tree well.  You can see pretty good detail in all the tree branches, the grass and even the leaves.  However, there is virtually no detail in the sky at all.  Using a single exposure, one has to choose whether to expose for highlights or shadows, and if the highlights are much brighter than the shadows, one of them will have to be sacrificed to a certain degree.  In this case, the sky was sacrificed in order to expose the tree better.

    HDR processing overcomes this by using a series of bracketed shots, some overexposed and some underexposed along with the base image (what aperture priority thinks is best).  For this Gumbo-limbo tree shot, I took 7-bracketed images, of which you can see the brightest (+3 exposure) and the darkest (-3 exposure).  I ommitted the other two exposures for blog post space reasons, but those would just be a little less bright and a little less dark.

    Using Photomatix Pro 3 to combine all seven of those photographs, taking the best exposed parts from each, the final HDR image is able to show the tree in even more detail than the single aperture priority exposure shot and also detail and color in the sky as well.  Therefore, when trying to photography a scene that has a high dynamic range (HDR), taking a bracketed series of shots and combining them into one final HDR image can produce results that no single exposure can.  This is the advantage of HDR processing.

    Photography Tip - shoot abstract bokeh

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    Bokeh from lights on a tree in a park - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2 ISO 800 1/40th handheldLast week I wrote about using bokeh for a more creative background.  This time my photography tip is to eliminate the foreground altogether and just make abstract shots using a bokeh filled background only.  

    Recommended gear: 

    • 50mm f/1.8 lens or similar large aperture lens 

    Abstract bokeh background shot technique: 

    • Settings to start with:  f/2 ISO 400 1/80th AF-S --> adjust ISO and shutter speed as needed
    • Set the focus on anything close to you, it can be above or below, it does not matter
    • Keep the focus locked and walk out of the way of the foreground object you focused on, you can even walk forwards or backwards!
    • Using a very steady shooting position compose your shot so the bokeh looks its best
    • Exhale! 

     

    Bokeh from an ATM machine on the street - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2 ISO 400 1/80th handheldAny background light source can be used to produce bokeh.  Strings of light are great to use and probably easy to find.  However, if you are in an urban environment you can use the taillights of cars, or even the glow of an ATM machine like in the above shot.

    Abstract bokeh made before sunset - Nikon D300 with Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2 ISO 200 1/80th handheldYou do not have to wait until total darkness to try this shooting technique.  If lights come on close to sunset you can still make them into abstract bokeh.

    Photography Tip - find lights for creative bokeh

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    Take a photo lesson with Jason & learn how to make this same shot! - Nikon D300 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2 ISO 200 1/80thI have been having DSLR Photography Lessons using only 50mm lenses often lately.  My Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens is one of my favorites to use as a "walking around" lens as its large aperture allows for easy creation of very shallow DoF, which itself of course results in bokeh.  However, not all bokeh is created equal.  

    Photography tip:  find small lights to use as big bokeh in the background of your shot

    The lights in the above photograph were hanging around a tree in a restaurant's back courtyard eating area.  I actually was standing in a very grimy alley (see the second shot here) to make this shot.   

    Using a large aperture of f/2 and focusing on the railing, the small lights seen on the left became the much prettier bokeh on the right.  This also shows the importance of knowing how to creatively control your DoF and what object to set the focus on in order to produce the best results.  

    Try this photography tip this weekend and post a link to your shots in the comments below.