Photodigitary

Pink and Nature Photography

What does the pop star Pink have to do with nature photography? Check it out at www.natureandphotography.com.

Rob

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A Reminder

Remember that this website is no longer my main blog. I am now mostly using www.natureandphotography.com. I just posted a blog entry about live view on cameras today and why I think that capability is so important.

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Titles and Other Text

Titles for photos are a funny thing. In some settings, such as camera clubs, they are expected. In other settings, such as publications, they are usually unwelcome. If you use a title, one thing you have to be careful about is how a title affects viewing of the photo. Often, photographers who do titles only think about how cute, clever, interesting their title might be and don’t consider the impact of the title on how someone sees the photo.

Titles, captions and other text can be very important to the understanding of a photo. Think about the photo here. Suppose I titled it, Alaskan Boulder. You might conjure images of snow and cold. By titling this Alabama Hills, California, you have a very different impression (and that is the correct location). The point is not about “truth” here, but about how words and photos interact. Suppose I called this Sensual Rocks or Big Boulders or even Big Sensual Boulders. All are correct to the scene, but I guarantee you will look differently at the photo with each title.

So  we have to be careful that we do not add words that lead the viewer away from what we want them to get from the photo. We need to think about how the words might affect the viewer.

We also have to be careful that a title or other text doesn’t cause problems with the viewer. A good example of this is the humorous title. Some people do this really well and the photos and the titles complement each other. But some people aren’t so gifted (I am certainly not) and try too hard — the title and photo don’t naturally complement each other. The photographer thought the title was funny, but the viewer doesn’t get it and then gets his or her head caught up in the validity of the title rather than appreciating the photo.

There are no rules for this other than to think about your viewer and what you want the viewer to get from the photo. Never use a title or other text gratuitously or just to do it. Have a purpose that can help you focus your efforts.

Remember that I will be doing this blog less and less. I will be doing blogs at my new blog site, www.natureandphotography.com. I just posted a blog there called Perfection in Photography and Nature.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques | 2 Comments »

Ancient Bristlecone Pines

One of my favorite places to photograph and just to be is the Ancient Bristlecone Forest near Big Pine in California. That is an absolutely amazing place that sits high in the White Mountains just east of the Sierra Nevadas. Here you will find trees that are not hundreds of years old, but thousands. They were growing before the Roman Empire! They live in a challenging environment, so they grow very slowly. Yet, even if parts of the trees die, very often, there is some part that keeps on going. They make for really fascinating subject matter for a photographer and are well worth the trip.

This is a perfect time of year to visit. The snow is gone from the bristlecone groves. Don’t think that is a trivial thing! I was there last week and part of the road was still blocked by snow. Small wildflowers are beginning to bloom in amongst the rocks between the bristlecone, too. The challenge is that there is nothing close by where you can get a motel room, though there is a nice campground on the way up to the bristlecones. I stayed in Independence at a great bed and breakfast place called the Winnemudah Hotel.

You can see more about the bristlecones on my new website, www.natureandphotography.com.

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Nature and Photography

Nature and nature photography have long been important to me. My first photos as a kid were of nature. I remember a shot of Gooseberry Falls in Minnesota from junior high. Then there was a very interesting close-up of a syrphid fly — I taped a magnifying glass to my dad’s Argus C3 (an old rangefinder camera with no view through the lens) and then used a ruler taped to the bottom of the camera to focus.

Being editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine gave me the chance to really see what was happening to photography and nature photography. It was pretty interesting to be part of the digital change from film. There were a lot of questions from photographers who did not understand the potential of the change, but now digital has become the dominant media for photography. And for good reason — digital offers so  much in quality, versatility and control.

I started photodigitary.com to follow and comment on what was happening in digital photography, with some nature photography thrown in. Not all that long ago, I was one of a minority working with digital and communicating about it through my books and articles, along with the blog. That is no longer true. Everybody talks about digital now!

Now I want to get back to my roots of nature and photography, so I have started a new blog, www.natureandphotography.com. The name, nature and photography, is deliberate. I will be blogging through photos and writing about photography (including digital photography), nature photography and as we can connect to nature through photography. I will be keeping photodigitary.com as a reference site because I use it for classes and workshops to refer people to a lot of information about digital techniques and ideas. My main blog will be at www.natureandphotography.com. I will still do most of what I have done at photodigitary — comments on techniques, showing images with how they were done, comments on gear and so forth. The difference is that www.natureandphotography.com will always have a theme related to nature.

Hope to see you there! The top photo is of barrel cactus and brittlebrush flowers in Joshua Tree National Park.

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Photo Festivals

There are a couple of upcoming photo festivals this summer and fall that you might find of interest. I will be a speaker at both.

This summer, there is the Sedona Photo Fest from July 18-25 in Sedona, Arizona. Here’s how the good folks there describe it:

“This weeklong celebration of Southwest photography, Sedona PhotoFest 2010 will include shooting in the field for invited photographers, three days of symposium presentations by internationally known photographers, evening events and a weekend fine art exhibition & sale. From lectures on mastering the digital print to shooting with pros in the field, there are ample opportunities to mingle with those who have mastered the art of snapping the shot that “paints 1000 words” and learning something new.”

Learn more at www.sedonaphotofest.com.

In the fall, Light Photographic Workshops will host the California Photo Festival from September 21-26. Here’s what they say:

“The California Photo Festival is five and a half incredible days of digital photography immersion. Intensive workshops, seminars, lectures, shooting, parties, and more with industry leading photographers and digital gurus designed to boost your creativity, spark your passion, and take your photography, art, or business to the next level. Whether symposium or individual portfolio review our team will deliver a learning experience unlike any other. Set against the backdrop of California’s beautiful central coast, you are sure to make some incredible images, learn the best tips, tricks, and techniques, and, most importantly, have a great time.”

For more information, check their website at californiaphotofest.com.

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Magical Place

I often say that my favorite place to photograph is wherever I am and that is true. I love nature everywhere. I can be happy photographing on top of a mountain or photographing the native plants of my garden.

But I do admit a special fondness for Costa Rica. It is an amazing place. It is “exotic” on the one hand when you see wildlife, especially birds and striking insects, that you have only seen in zoos. Yet it is also comfortable on the other hand because this country likes having Americans visit and the scale of the country is human scale. When I first went to Costa Rica, I expected expansive rainforests, yet most of the lower landscape looks more like Wisconsin with a mixture small farms and woodlands! The mountains are a little different story with volcanoes and the cloud forest.

Much of the rainforest has been cut down and turned into a mix of crops and small patches of rainforest. While it is sad to think of what is lost, on the other hand, places like Wisconsin used to be covered with forest, too. It does make the place more comfortable for humans, and the rainforests that are there are quite remarkable with their dense trees, colorful frogs and insects and even monkeys. The edges of farms and rainforests even increase the population of some wildlife, such as toucans (the first time I saw one of these in the wild, I was amazed) and coatimundis (wonderful relatives of raccoons).

Costa Rica is a place any photographer can go to as it is very accessible. And you always return with unusual and striking photos. The rainy season starts there soon, so late summer through fall is not the best time to visit (though it is amazing to be in a warm rain). The rainy season ends in November and I have a trip scheduled through Holbrook Travel to Costa Rica in early December. That’s a time many photographers think they have to put their cameras into hibernation, so this is an opportunity to do more. We go to a great eco-lodge, Selva Verde, that sits in a rainforest and includes covered walkways so we can photograph even if it is raining! If you are interested, check out Holbrook Travel and the trip to Costa Rica.

I am now working on a new blog that will be called Nature and Photography. It will include many of the ideas in this blog, but it will have its orientation always about nature and nature photography. More about this later this week.

Posted in Workshops and Classes, nature photography | 1 Comment »

A Zoom Is More Than A Zoom!

Zoom lenses are the most common lenses by far. You can’t even by a camera kit without one. Many photographers today do not have the experience of working with a single focal length lens — I suspect that many folks don’t even know they exist. I remember years ago traditional photographers using the old line, “Yeah, I have a way of making my lens show more or less of the subject. It’s called using my feet!”

There is something about “using your feet” that is not simply a joke. Focal length is more than simply a way to change your composition by zooming in on the subject or zooming out to show more of the environment. As you change your position, you change perspective, then the focal length allows you to see those effects. This is such an important part of lens usage that it used to be a critical part of any photographer’s learning years ago. But now with zoom lenses, this understanding of the relationship of distance, perspective and focal length is often ignored, which means really limiting your tools.

First, as you move close to a subject and zoom out (wider angle), you are strongly influencing perspective. Simply zooming from a fixed position does not affect perspective. Perspective can be an important factor in photographing a subject. Perspective is how distance appears in your photograph and is affected by space and relationships of objects from near to far. Perspective can be deep, shallow or anything in between.

As you get close with a wide-angle, perspective gets deeper. The subject gets larger in relation to the background, and the background gets smaller.

As you back up with a telephoto, perspective gets shallower. The subject gets smaller in relation to the background, the background gets larger. Stuff looks much closer together.

Right there, you have two important uses of focal length that go beyond simply zooming in or out for composition. With the wide-angle, you can make the subject look very dominant and the background small. That can also make the background highly recognizable no matter what you do with the subject. With a telephoto,  you can significantly change the background by enlarging it. This allows you to take a relatively small part of the background (a shadow, for example) and make it large behind the subject. Since the background gets larger, sometimes you only see a small part of that background, a hint, so to speak, rather than everything.

These effects can be very strong. A great way to really understand this is to do an exercise with your zoom. Go out for a photo shoot in some interesting area. Alternate every shot from the widest part of your zoom to the most telephoto. In other words, take the first photo with the widest-angle setting, then zoom into the most telephoto and look for a new subject. Alternate back and forth between the extremes (no cheating by using middle focal lengths!) as you take at least 20-30 photos (more is better). That will teach you more about focal length than almost anything else because it forces you to see focal length and not use zooming to fix compositions. Watch what happens to backgrounds, to space, to the appearance of distance, to depth of field.

To ramp up your learning, add in this twist. Shoot the same subject for each pair of shots from focal length change and (and this is very important) move physically closer to the subject with the wide-angle and back up with the telephoto to keep the subject roughly the same size. Then you really have to look at what is happening to the whole photo. Working with focal length in this way is one of the most challenging parts of my Impact in Photography course at BetterPhoto.com because most people are used to just zooming. I also cover this topic in a number of my books, including The Magic of Digital Landscape Photography.

Another effect you will notice is a strong change in the appearance of depth of field (the technical purists can prove that arbitrary depth of field does not change, but since you are changing focal length, you change what is seen in the photo which changes the apparent depth of field — that’s what we care about anyway). Wide-angle lenses give more depth of field than telephoto lenses (or focal lengths on a zoom). That is true even for a wide-angle or telephoto only zoom — then the wider focal length gives more depth of field than the narrower angle focal length.

So ultimately, focal length has a strong effect on perspective (and appearance of space) and on depth of field. These are two important uses of focal length that cannot be accessed simply by zooming. So you can indeed do a lot more with a zoom than simply zoom in and out on the subject!

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Going Really Lightweight

A couple of things have made me think about lightweight and professional quality gear. First, I was at the Nik Software Summit this past weekend —  a great event. I went out with the field trips (lots of people at some terrific locations in the San Diego area). On the first day to the Cabrillo National Monument, I wanted to travel light so I could move around quickly and easily between groups so I just had my Canon PowerShot G11. I showed some of those images I did on a presentation about workflow for Lightroom and Photoshop (my Lightroom Workflow for Nature Photographers are available from my website, www.robsheppardphoto.com) and used those images. They looked great and one person even commented how they looked as good as anything shot with higher megapixel cameras (to be fair, the projectors weren’t showing everything that would be possible, but still, the comment is relavent). The Lighthouse photo above is from that field trip and the G11.

Second, I had a discussion with an aging photographer who is struggling with carrying the weight of a lot of gear and tripod and wanted some ideas on what to use to keep this to a minimum. Is it possible to have quality images with minimal and small equipment? Absolutely. Here’s what I recommend:

As to lightweight, get the G11. I have a G11, plus a Canon EOS 7D and a couple of Olympus E-series cameras. None can compare even remotely with the compact size of the G11. .The G11 does a wonderful job of photography and is extremely light and compact. The other cameras are more versatile, but they are far larger and heavier and you need many lenses. Whenever I have to go really light, it is the G11 and with no reservations. There is also a very fine wide-angle adapter lens for the G11 (which also requires an adapter for the camera) which will add little weight to your package.

The G11 is also definitely superior to the G9 and G10. Those two cameras use older technology in their sensors and have too many megapixels in those sensors for the technology available at the time. The G11 has a far superior sensor and gives better images. It is interesting that Canon has had a drop in sales with the G11 compared to the G10 and this is largely attributed to the mistaken idea that more megapixels are better. (The G10 has almost 50% more pixels — sounds great, right? Except that the sensor is not as good as the G10’s and there are too many pixels so that the camera has to do a lot of image processing to remove noise. This makes the images look mushy when enlarged because noise reduction affects fine detail as well as noise.)

Can the G11 do professional level photography? Absolutely. It will not do as well with  high ISO settings (no small sensors do), but this is no point-and-shoot. The lens is of excellent quality and the camera can be set like any DSLR — you just can’t change lenses. The next two photos show the whole lighthouse image again, but with a small area outlined. That small area is then shown blown up and is roughly equivalent to printing a 16×20-inch print from this image file. This camera is capable of some very high quality images. I did use Nik Software Dfine (which I consider a necessity for digital photography) to reduce some noise in the sky (which would only be significant in a print of this size).

Plus, the tilting LCD is wonderful for the G11. This helps in so very many ways, from being able to easily take low angle shots to being able to handhold the camera more steadily (the trick is to hold it at about chest level so you can keep your elbows tight to your chest — you look down at the LCD).

If you can afford it, I would highly recommend one of the Gitzo Traveler tripods. They weigh less than 2 pounds total (including the head) — I have one and it is great for lightweight travel. The Traveler tripods are extremely lightweight but also strong and rigid. They are no cheap metal tripod that flops around in the wind or when you press onto your camera. The Traveler tripods are solid and extremely well made. They will have trouble with a big camera and a big lens, but for a G11, they are perfect.

Another lightweight camera support option is a beanbag. When I want to travel really light, it is with the G11 and a small beanbag. Years ago I did a whole series of photos in New York City at night done with an older G6 and a beanbag and they were great (they are in many of my books and I would guess that no one would think they were shot with a little camera and a beanbag). There is a handy beanbag imported by Bogen Imaging called T.H.E. Pod that has a tripod screw in it that really helps when using a beanbag in odd positions.

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Mojave Desert

Last week I spent some time photographing in the Mojave Desert with a friend, Chuck Summers. We were mostly at the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California (a National Preserve is like a National Park but open to certain things such as hunting).

I have often gone through the Mojave when driving to Las Vegas or Utah from Los Angeles. The Mojave is a place with big spaces, mountains, cactus, dry lakes, cactus and a lot of desert. I had often said I found it intimidating — the spaces are large and the landscape seems threatening, so dry, so hot.

Chuck and I were in the desert at a great time — warm but not unbearable, cool at night, and filled with flowers. So many of the plants were blooming. I had seen cactus blooming in gardens and pots, but never in the wild, and we found lots of them. This is a terrific time to photograph.

One thing about the Preserve is that it is very big. There are good two-lane roads through it, but they go on for miles. And there are so few people that visit this place that you hardly see anyone on the roads. This place will easily give you more of a wilderness experience than most national parks without taking any long hikes away from the road.

The challenge is in finding a place to stay. Baker is close and has lots of restaurants, but few motels. We stayed in one that was okay, but about the best you could say is that it was clean. There is a nice looking campground in the center of the park and one by the amazing Kelso dunes that looked okay. If I stayed in a motel or hotel, I would probably check out Primm, NV, which is not far on the north end.

If you like landscape photography, the Preserve is filled with stunning scenes, but the distances are so far between them that they cannot be easily covered in a few days. So I definitely plan to get back to the Preserve. At this time of year, it is great for flowers and cactuses. We found great numbers of cactus blooming up by the Hole-In-The-Wall area. The Preserve also has what is said to be the densest Joshua tree forest anywhere and it goes for miles and miles.

After this trip, I have a much better appreciation for the desert and for the Mojave Desert. It is not so inviting as you wiz by on the Interstate, but if you get out into the park, you discover a truly remarkable location. There are visitor centers in Kelso, in the middle of the park, and in Barstow, and the folks there are wonderful and extremely helpful.

Posted in Nature, landscape photography, nature photography | 2 Comments »