Photodigitary

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 »

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.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Nature, nature photography | Comments Off

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!

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Equipment thoughts | Comments Off

Environmental Portraits of a Low Kind

The environmental portrait is an important type of photography for people. This is a portrait that also shows the environment where the subject works or plays or otherwise lives. You see it in photojournalism where it is common in sports and business magazines. You see it a lot with portraiture studios where it is a staple.

You don’t see it as much in close-up nature photography. I am not sure why. It might be because photographers are excited about getting close and want to see the subject full on in their viewfinder. Those photos can be great fun and dramatic, but I also like close-ups that show off a bit of the setting and environment around the subject. These are, in a sense, ecological photos because they show connection of the subject to the real world.

This isn’t simply about backing up. Too much “environment” and the subject will be hard to see and discover in the photograph. The subject still has to be clearly seen. With light, color and composition, you can make even a small subject stand out in the scene if you look for this.

I love to use wide-angle lenses up close for this purpose. Some wide-angles focus within inches without any other accessories. For others, you might need an achromatic close-up lens such as the Canon 500D (which I use on my Olympus gear, too — it works on any lens with the right filter size or adapter ring), which works quite well with close-ups.

It also helps to get down low and be at the subject’s level. This means dirty knees, and for me, a tilting or swivel Live View LCD really helps a lot.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, nature photography | 1 Comment »

Just Say No

I know I have mentioned this before, but it is an important concept for photographers — just say no. What does that mean? We have many choices when photographing. We choose a subject, an angle, the lens to use, the time of day to shoot and so on. But sometimes the subject and scene just will not make a good photograph. This is confirmed by what you see in the LCD if you do take the picture. To avoid a lot of frustration, this is the point where you make the choice of “no, I am not going to take this picture.”

Probably the most common area this comes up is in exposure. I find that a lot of “exposure” problems are not strictly exposure, although I will hear that the sun is too bright, the conditions are too bright, and so on (often with that “too bright” thrown in — rarely is a scene too bright for a modern camera). The challenge is usually the contrast, not the bright sun.

One thing I find photographers often doing is try to take a picture when it is impossible for the camera to get a good exposure. It is important to understand that cameras cannot see the world the way we do. Even though you can see detail in the bright sun and shade just fine, the camera often cannot. Good exposure then is not simply about taking a picture of what you see, but about finding scenes with light that the camera can deal with. This then becomes a choice that is important, to say no to a shot when you cannot get a photograph that deals with the scene well. By making that choice, you will look for the shot that you can say yes to.

The photo here is of a blue dick flower in Central California. I knew I could control the exposure to hold detail in the clouds and the flowers when I made this composition, so I knew this was a photo to say yes to. If there had been heavy shadows with important details, I probably would have had to say no.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 2 Comments »

Flower Time

I love this time of year with all of the flowers. One reason we moved from Minnesota to California was because of the long spring. In Minnesota, it is very short — green leaves are out around May first and summer starts by mid-June. I am basing this on flowers and spring growth. In Southern California, that same time starts about the end of January and ends in mid-June.

I was up in Los Osos doing a workshop with the great folks at Light Photographic Workshops two weeks ago. We were doing flowers and landscapes and the flowers definitely cooperated. Here are some images with some brief notes about them from that week.

The opening shot is of a blue dick flower. A lot of people don’t appreciate the high quality you can get with an achromatic close-up lens. This was shot at a telephoto zoom setting with my Canon G11 and an achromatic close-up lens (this one from Century Optics, though Canon makes some good ones, too). Blue flowers don’t always record as blue, which was true here, so I had to correct the color in the computer (hue adjustment in Photoshop or Lightroom).

Lupines on a hill at dusk after a storm. There  is no camera that can capture the full range of brightness in a scene like this even though we can see it fine. HDR doesn’t work because it was windy and the flowers were blowing, plus HDR affects the whole image. I shot two exposures, one for the sky and one for the lupines. I processed them in Lightroom then combined the exposures in Photoshop to get an image more accurate to the scene. I then added some traditional “burning in” (darkening) to the edges and bottom for more drama.

Telephotos for close ups give a really nice look with limited depth of field and a change in perspective. This makes the background a pleasing color and tonality.

I also like wide-angles up close. This gives the flower a context and environment. It places it into a specific ecosystem. The trick is to deal with the extended space and depth of field that can make the composition too busy. In this case, the low early light and the sky makes the monkey flowers stand out.

Here’s a good case for a tilting LCD. I had climbed a hill with the group where some bush lupines were. I decided to travel light with only my G11. I got this high angle by holding the camera over my head and framing with the tilting LCD.

In June, I will be leading a workshop on the landscapes and flowers of the Eastern Sierras. Late June offers some wonderful wildflowers in the mountains there. I will be working the area from Lone Pine, California, to Yosemite. GAPW June Eastern Sierras.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, landscape photography, nature photography | 1 Comment »

Make Autoexposure Work For You

It is very possible to use autoexposure and get excellent results. I do it all the time. Sometimes I do use manual exposure (I have to use it for video on my Canon EOS 7D). But I find I can use autoexposure quickly and accurately for exposure. My preference is aperture-priority exposure because depth of field (both deep and shallow) are important to me and I can always get a faster shutter speed by paying attention and choosing a wider aperture.

To do this, you have to understand a little about what the metering system is doing and then use exposure compensation. With a little practice, anyone can do that quite quickly and get excellent exposures that are as good as using manual exposure, yet are easier to do. I am not suggesting that anyone who has a good manual exposure practice change, but I am suggesting that manual exposure is not the only way to get excellent exposures.

Understand that a meter wants to interpret a scene and make everything middle gray from the exposure. In many scenes, that is fine, but not all scenes have a perfect balance of middle gray tones. The metering system tries to compensate for the emphasis on middle gray by metering multiple points in a scene and making some adjustments unique to those measurements (which is what the metering system is doing).

Still, if a scene is mostly bright (such as a scene with a lot of sky), the metering system will want to make it a middle gray which is darker than it should be. I will typically add plus compensation to such a scene immediately before even taking a picture. If a scene is mostly dark (such as a scene with pine trees filling the image), the system will want to make it middle gray which is lighter than it should be, so compensation on the minus side is needed. Knowing that allows me to interpret a scene right from the start.

I typically use the exposure warnings that appear in the LCD review of your shot as an indicator of good exposure. I think it is important that you set your camera so that this review is on longer than the default which is usually way too short (I like 8-10 seconds — you can always turn it off by touching the shutter release button). I adjust exposure compensation either plus or minus until the brightest parts of the photo just start to give the warning or until the warnings just disappear. It is important that you do not automatically accept an exposure that has no warnings as this could mean you are significantly underexposed. When you are adjusting your exposure this way, you are “setting” the brightest parts of the scene as the brightest parts of your photo. This is actually using a part of Ansel Adams classic exposure system, the Zone System, without doing a lot of study and work.

So I simply set your exposure as best as I can, then take a picture for a test. I will then check my review to be sure my exposure is correct by watching for those blinking highlight warnings. A quick adjustment of exposure compensation and another shot gets the right exposure quickly if the first exposure is off (and often it is correct). With practice, you can actually interpret what you see in the LCD to give a rough idea of exposure (it is not completely accurate, but it can be a start).

For difficult scenes, or when I am just not sure what the camera is doing, I will check the histogram. The important thing about the histogram is that you do not want large gaps at the right side with most of the histogram at the left (which is underexposure and an underuse of your sensor). A challenge is when you are constantly changing your shot so that the background changes and influences the exposure. For that reason, I pay attention to the shutter speed the camera chooses in order to make a good exposure with the aperture I chose in aperture priority. Then when the scene changes, I quickly shift the camera’s exposure compensation to give me that shutter speed for a specific shot. That way I am not constantly shifting back and forth between manual and autoexposure and my autoexposure is ready for changing conditions.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 1 Comment »

White Balance is Subjective

A lot of photographers use auto white balance and accept it. They largely accept it because they don’t necessarily know there is a better way. But I see the problems of AWB all the time — inconsistent color and compromised color outdoors (usually with a slight blue cast which really hurts red, orange and yellow, plus it mucks up neutral tones). I am teaching a class in Los Osos this week and we  are photographing the wonderful wildflowers that are out now. One of the students decided to test AWB. He found, indeed, that auto white balance is very inconsistent. The same flower, for example, would change color depending on the background.

But choosing how to set white balance is very subjective. It may help to consider this. For years, pro photographers shot Kodachrome and Fujichrome for all outdoor images, including before sunrise, sunrise, sunset and after sunset. These were daylight balanced films, although they were actually warmer than Daylight white balance on most cameras (there is no standard for white balance settings). They did respond consistently to light conditions and give consistent color, color related to their specific daylight balance. I find that a lot of cameras work well with the Electronic Flash white balance setting outdoors because it is close to these films for normal conditions. I also find that Canon cameras tend to overemphasize yellow when you use Cloudy or Shady in sunlight.

I have shot with Daylight, Cloudy and Tungsten before sunrise and after sunset. There is no rule to this. I find that Cloudy works best for me and does respond like daylight films responded to these conditions.  Try different settings and see what you like.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 6 Comments »

A Twittering We Go

I am now on Twitter at robsheppardfoto. Follow me for ideas and tips about photography, Lightroom and more.

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Backing Up Lightroom

A lot of photographers now understand that it is important to back up their digital images on a separate hard drive (or drives). This is really important because hard drives do fail.

A lot of Lightroom users do not understand the importance of backing up the Lightroom database. Lightroom is a database. That means that it does nothing to the images themselves (until you export them) — that is a great advantage. You can freely work with images without worrying about hurting them. You can’t.

However, Lightroom has to store the information somewhere on what has been done with your photos. That is its database and is a .lrcat file usually found in the Pictures folder (both Mac and Windows) in its own Lightroom folder. Backing up this database is an important back up. You can simply go to the Lightroom folder just mentioned and copy the latest .lrcat file to a new location. You can also tell Lightroom to remind you to back this up when you open Lightroom (go to Catalog Settings under the Lightroom menu for Mac and the Edit menu for PC). Lightroom 3 will prompt you to back up your database when the program closes (who knows when Lightroom 3 will actually be out — Adobe is still messing around with public betas).

This backs up the Lightroom database. I have needed it more than once. This allows you to reopen Lightroom with all of your work if the database gets corrupted. Or you could have a crash of your computer and lose Lightroom. I had a situation where I think the Mac Genius folks were lazy and reformatted my hard drive because of a problem with the disc drive. I could reinstall Lightroom easily, but when you do that, it starts over from scratch. You don’t want to do that. You want to start from where you were before. So that’s exactly what I did, used the backed up database.

I can’t overemphasize how important this is. Without that database, your work in Lightroom can be lost. One safety thing is to tell Lightroom to save any processed files with an .xmp file (that is the data used for processing and will be reread by Lightroom if the database is lost). That is also under Catalog Settings, Metadata.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom | 1 Comment »