April 29th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
The North American Nature Photography Association sponsors a series of traveling Road Shows every year that bring together a group of professional nature photographers speaking about all sorts of subjects from wildlife photography to Lightroom for nature photographers. I am one of the speakers this year.
The next NANPA Road Show will be in Sacramento, California, from May 15-17. After that there will be shows in Rhode Island and Minnesota in June and August respectively. These Road Shows are a great opportunity to get a lot of information about nature photography over a weekend. You can learn more about them on the NANPA website at www.nanpa.org.
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April 28th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I have been doing a lot of Lightroom instruction lately. I love being able to work directly with students and see how they interact with the program. It is easy to try to explain Lightroom from a distance, i.e., when you know it and are just trying to simplify it. It is harder when you are “down in the trenches” with students and seeing what their challenges are. I like doing that because I think it helps me become a better teacher and writer.
In my recent classes some things came up that seem to be challenges for more than just an occasional photographer. So I am going to offer some ideas here that are related to these challenges.
First, it is important to understand that Lightroom is not an image browser like Bridge or ACDSee — both are good programs, but you can do much more in Lightroom with more flexibility and speed. You see all of your files, subfolders, etc., with a browser, not a cataloging software with a database like Lightroom. Browsers browse well.
You can set up Lightroom to see all of that just like you see it in a browser, but you have to tell Lightroom to look at those files and folders. It must be told where things are because it is a database, not a browser. Now this is very important. If you randomly import things into Lightroom, it will happily do just that, but your access to your files will be random, too. You need to have some sort of structure to your filing on your hard drive and use that structure for importing if you want to keep your files structured in Lightroom. Lightroom offers tools for organization, but it does not organize your files. You have to do that.
You need to think of Lightroom as a database. When you use any database, you are storing information about things. First you need to tell it what things to look at, then it keeps a record about them. If I put my address book into the computer, I am not actually putting people into that computer, only information about them. You can store a whole lot more information about the people in a small space than the people themselves! In addition, you can freely change information about those people without affecting the people themselves. Similarly, Lightroom simply has references to where your files are on the hard drive rather than holding onto the files themselves.
That’s what happens when you import photos into Lightroom (you are not actually importing the files, but references to where they are on your hard drive — a “map” of sorts). This is why if you move a file or change its name that Lightroom will put up a question mark or tell you the file is off-line or missing. It has lost the directions to the file just as if you moved a house position to a different place on the street or you changed the address numbers. You have to tell Lightroom how to find that file (this is easy to do — right-click on the file or folder with the question mark and select the option from the menu that appears that allows you to tell Lightroom where the photos are).
Anything Lightroom does is simply done to the data about the files, not to the files themselves. You can then sort, edit and so forth, all of your files, RAW, JPEG, etc., once they are in the Lightroom database. None of this information is applied to the photos until you tell Lightroom to do that. You automatically tell Lightroom to do this when a photo is exported from Lightroom.
The fastest, easiest and most efficient way to export from Lightroom is to right-click on the photo (or a selected group of photos in the filmstrip or Library). (If you are using a Mac and you don’t have a right-click mouse, either set up your Mighty Mouse for right-click or buy a right-click mouse — personally, I am not that fond of the Apple mouse, as pretty as it is. I like the Logitech mouse models very much.) A contextual menu appears. Click on Export down near the bottom (yes, there is an Export button on the left panel of Library, but if you get in the right-click habit, you will find you can export from any module).
A new dialog box now appears. This dialog box gives you a lot of information and a lot of possibilities all in one place. This makes it very, very convenient. Simply start from the top. The first section asks you where you want to put the exported images. The second section asks you how you want to name them. Next, you get to choose the file type and color space. Then you can change file size just by typing in sizes (this is far easier than Photoshop’s resize box) — by the way, sizing is done smartly and extremely well.
You will see a sharpening option. This is only used to adjust sharpening for a specific output, such as for the computer monitor (screen) or printing (matte or glossy). This is not the same as the sharpening done in Develop, which is sharpening for the image as captured by the camera, not for a specific media. You can leave Metadata alone unless you want to watermark the photo.
The last section simply asks if you want to do anything special with the image once it is exported, such as open it in Photoshop. Most photographers can simply click, do nothing, for most photos. Then you tell Lightroom to go to work by clicking okay. This creates a new file based on the adjustments you made to your original image, but has no effect on the original image, regardless if it was RAW, JPEG or any other format that Lightroom recognizes.
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April 22nd, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I sometimes get questions on basic camera setup for beginners. Here are some ideas:
1. Try using your camera on Aperture priority — use small f-stops (e.g., f/11, f/16) for more depth of field (sharpness in depth) but watch that your shutter speed does not get too slow (pay attention to the sharpness in the LCD when you enlarge the photo); use large f-stops (e.g., f/4, f/5.6) for narrow depth of field to emphasize your subject and to gain a faster shutter speed with Aperture priority.
2. Set your white balance to daylight or cloudy when you are outside (try both and see which you like better for most conditions). Set it to tungsten or fluorescent when you are inside.
3. Pay attention to where and what the camera is focusing on.
4. Watch your exposure so that it is neither too low (big gap on right side of histogram) or too high (washed out important highlights).
5. Be aware of the potential of camera movement during exposure causing sharpness problems. Use faster shutter speeds when shooting handheld, use a tripod when shutter speeds are slow. A good rule of thumb is that you need fast shutter speeds when shooting zoomed in to a telephoto focal length — minimum of 1/125 or even 1/250 second. Wide angles allow for slower shutter speeds.
6. Be sure you set your camera so that vertical photos do not auto rotate in the LCD. When they do, they only use about half of the actual LCD, so you are wasting that display.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
April 20th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
If you are interested in something very special for your photography, you might consider a trip to Costa Rica. I am leading a photo tour there this summer, in July, so this is, as they say on Car Talk, the department of shameless commerce. But I do this with great love. Costa Rica is truly one of my favorite places to visit. It is a wonderful country that likes Americans and it is filled with great photo opportunities. We will be spending some time in the rainforest and cloud forest there. And of course we will be looking at how to make the most of digital photography in this place.
The rainforest is not, as many people think, something that covers Costa Rica (though it once did if the cloud forest, a higher altitude rainforest, is included). The country is very agricultural, so you drive through a lot of farmland. But the remnants of rainforest are there and pretty amazing. I love the rich diversity of plants, the really neat waterfalls, the really amazing walk through a rainforest, the incredible amazing birds and more.
You can see more about the trip at www.holbrooktravel.com/RobSheppardCostaRica2009.
Posted in Nature, Workshops and Classes, landscape photography, nature photography | Comments Off
April 20th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
There is a lot of varied information about exposure and digital photography. It gets muddled because a lot of long-time film photographers want to think like film when shooting digital.
Digital is not like film, so that thinking can get you into trouble. You cannot get your best quality from a digital file by exposing like you did with slide film, for example. You cannot get the best quality if you expose “because it looks good” rather than paying attention to how the sensor is dealing with the scene (use the histogram — be sure there is neither a big gap nor a chopped off cliff at the right side).
Underexposure is a very serious problem with digital images. It does a whole bunch of bad things:
1. Increased potential for noise (noise is in the dark areas).
2. Poor tonal contrasts in dark areas (it makes them look muddy).
3. Poor color — your sensor captures the best color in the midrange of the exposure. If your histogram is significantly above or below that, you are losing color.
4. You aren’t getting what you paid for with your camera. Your camera’s sensor works optimally when its whole range is used. When you use less than that, you are asking your camera to, essentially, give you less than it is capable of.
5. Problems with contrast. When you don’t use your sensor fully, you are using less than the full range of contrast that it is capable of. This can make dark images look dingy and unappealing rather than dark.
6. Dull prints that viewers don’t enjoy looking at.
Of course, photography is very much a personal thing and you can ultimately do whatever you want. However, if you want the best quality in digital images, expose to get that quality, then process the image in the computer to the appropriate darkness. This does not have to take a lot of time, especially with Lightroom.
I sometimes see dark images that photographers do because they like the “mood.” Yet they usually just look dark, sometimes muddy (meaning tonalities are muddled because of the underexposure) and less inviting. As a photographer, we all have to consider our viewers. No matter what we think about a photo, ultimately, there is a viewer that we want to affect (unless you only do photos for yourself).
I also go back to Ansel Adams and the classic darkroom workers. They talked a lot about white and black in prints. This was because prints never looked their best without something white and black. This is because the medium needed to have its full tonal range used or the photos would look like they were shot through a gray haze filter. Digital is like those prints. There is a craft involved to shooting digital that means watching exposure.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom, nature photography | 1 Comment »
April 20th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
A couple of things have come to me that show off quite interesting approaches to nature photography.
First is a new e-book by William Neill. Bill is a friend and a superb landscape photographer. He has long been known for his wonderful and thoughtful color nature photography. He takes a journey into classic black-and-white nature photography with his new e-book, Meditations in Monochrome. Yet this is not a retro, back-to-Ansel sort of photography. Meditations in Monochrome truly does offer a new look at nature through Bill’s discerning eye now turned to black-and-white. This is a beautiful book to go through and use for your own meditations on nature. Plus, he includes information about how he did the black-and-white work. Check it out at http://www.williamneill.com/books/meditations.html.
The second reference is Niall Benvie’s blog at http://niallbenvie.churchilljohnson.co.uk/blog/. Niall is a UK photographer. I’ve known him for a while from my work at Outdoor Photographer magazine. European photographers definitely have a little different point of view than Americans. That isn’t better or worse, just different, but I find that difference can be inspiring. Niall’s blog is not the usual nature photography blog, either. I think he has a lot of great ideas to check out.
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April 6th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I let everyone know I had a Lightroom workflow on my website, but when I did a recent Lightroom class, I realized I had forgotten something important. I had not included the HSL section, which I use all the time and consider a critical part of the workflow (at least considering it — I don’t use it every time). So there is an updated workflow now on my website, www.robsheppardphoto.com.
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April 6th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I had a very good question in one of my classes that is worth spending a little time on here. It concerned how to get a neutral background (black, white, gray) and how to use white balance to do that. This actually is not completely a white balance question. White balance, and setting it correctly, is important, but there are other important issues to consider as well.
First, this is going to be affected by the light on your subject and background. Sometimes the light on your subject is one thing (such as flash) while the background is another (such as flash plus ambient or existing light). In that case, it may be impossible to get a true black and keep your subject looking good. This is one reason why studio pros will typically light their subject AND their background separately so that they can guarantee the white balance will match the light on the background.
This may also be affected by the shutter speed used when you are using flash as shutter speed has no effect on flash exposure (other than sync speed) yet it has a huge effect on ambient light. And even if you do not have a different light on the subject and background, you may have enough of an exposure difference that it affects how the background is recorded by your sensor. Again, another reason why studio pros will often light both areas separately.
Second, sometimes the best looking light on the subject (and color of light based on white balance) will not give the best light on the background, especially a neutral background. Once again, a reason for separate lights.
Third, backgrounds often reflect back light to the camera in colors that are not seen by our eyes. This is often a big problem with white backgrounds and can lead to decidedly non-neutral backgrounds. Related to this and the first point, is that sometimes backgrounds will reflect back ambient light in ways that are not easily recognized by our eyes, yet the camera definitely sees it.
The answer to this is to try some experimenting. If you have a true neutral background, you can try creating a custom white balance from it (which will make it neutral) and see how the subject is affected. Or you may have to play a bit with light on the subject and light on the background.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | Comments Off
April 1st, 2009 Rob Sheppard
One of the problems with travel is finding a safe, secure way of backing up image files in the field. I always travel with a laptop, so images are downloaded there as I go. However, I know of at least three pro friends who have lost laptops due to theft or damage, so that is not completely secure. Epson’s photo storage viewers are quite nice, but also stealable and, since they are based on a hard drive, susceptible to damage. A drop to the ground can make either a photo storage viewer or laptop worthless.
I just received several USB flash drives (also called jump drives) for use for backup in the field. I always liked the idea of USB flash drives for backup — they are small, hard to damage, can be kept separate from computer, and so forth. Up until recently, they were not completely valuable for backup because they had small capacities.
That has changed. My drives from Kingston Technology are 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB DataTravelers. Those capacities are way more than anything I will ever need on my trips (I am not gone long enough to need more than 16GB, plus I shoot an Olympus E-3 which has 10 megapixel files), but this level of storage should fit nearly anyone, amateur or pro. And at about $130 for the 64 GB and $80 for the 32 GB, this is very cheap insurance. I am finding that I can use the 32 GB for backup and the 64GB to carry important photo files that I want to take with me. In addition, video from digital SLRs has now arrived and is very “costly” in terms of storage. The 64 GB drive is great for that.
I really do feel more secure carrying these drives. I like being able to backup images onto extremely durable technology (I never fully trusted hard drives in the field) that is very small and easily transported. But if you do try this, remember to keep your backup in a separate location than your laptop. And as with all digital memory, never buy these products just as you are leaving on an important trip. Try the drives out first at home to be sure they are working properly. Nearly always they will be, however, if electronics are going to fail, they will fail right away, so a quick test and use before the trip is warranted.
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