Photodigitary

Who’s Looking Over Your Shoulder

I’m not trying to increase anyone’s paranoia in this blog. I do want to talk about something that affects all of us as photographers, and often badly.

First, I have to tell a story that explains the idea. My son played baseball in high school. A friend of his was a very good pitcher. He was consistent and evidently had a wicked curve ball that was hard to hit. One day my wife and I went to a game when this friend was pitching. He was terrible. We had never seen him do so badly. The coach kept him in for a bit, obviously hoping he would settle down, but he didn’t. It had to be one of the worst games he had pitched.

So what changed? Did he just face a tough team? No. He had done very well against them before. Was he having problems in his life? No. He was came from a terrific family and was a solid kid. The difference was … there was a new girlfriend and she was in the stands that day. He had quit pitching with focus and attention on the game and was pitching with part of him paying attention to what the girlfriend was thinking.

We all do this. Instead of focusing on the work at hand, we start worrying about someone else and what they might think about what we are doing. That someone could be a spouse, a boss, a competitor, and so forth.

This gets really bad for photographers. What will a client think? What will camera club members think? What will my spouse think (especially since I just bought this new camera supposedly to get better photos)? What will the workshop instructor or other students think? I do it to myself at times. I have been shooting for a project and I start thinking too much about what this person or that person with the client will think? Will they like this photo? Will they dislike it? Should I waste my time shooting something if they aren’t going to like it?

Let me tell you that this can freeze you and keep you from getting good photos. Now I have to qualify this by saying that when you shoot for a client of any kind, of course you need photos that will make them happy. However, just like my son’s pitcher friend, you will not do your best work if you are letting them “look over your shoulder” in your mind.

I believe it is so very important to find what pleases you and work with that. Sure, you can modify what things you are taking based on how your photos might be used, whether that is in a camera club competition or for a client, but you have to find what excites you about the world and about photography.

It is very difficult to do good work when you keep focusing on someone else’s possible ideas about your photographs before you have even taken the photo. Tell that person in your head to shut up and go away. You have more important things to do than listen to them, such as actually responding to the beautiful world in front of you. Whatever subject matter turns you on, be excited about that and respond to the subject and your photography from your own perspective, not the skewed perspective of someone looking over your shoulder. Look at the playback of your image on the LCD and think about what it is that you like about the photo, or you dislike about the photo, and what that means to you. Later, you can pay attention to a real person looking at your work, whether that is a spouse, a boss, or a camera club person doing a critique, but you will do it from your perspective and what your photo means to you. Your strongest work will come when you care about the subject and the photography enough to honor your vision and strive to express that.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, nature photography | Comments Off

NANPA

I am in Reno, Nevada, right now at the NANPA Annual Summit. NANPA is the North American Nature Photography Association. And this blog is a plug for this organization. I have been a member for many years now, starting in my capacity as editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine. I have also been on the NANPA Foundation Board which handles non-profit fundraising for certain education projects, including education grants, refuge blind building and Summit programs for college and high school youth.

NANPA is a wonderful organization. You can learn more about it at NANPA.org. If you are interested in nature photography at all, I would suggest you check it out. The organization has been a terrific experience for me personally. I have gained a lot of friends who share the same ideals and interests that I have, friends from across the country. I love going to the Summit if for nothing else, meeting new people and rekindling friendships.

The Summit is much more, too. It brings in a lot of great speakers, some of the top nature photographers in the world. At this summit, folks like Phil Borges, George Lepp, Staffan Widstrand, Joel Sartore, Piotr Nasrecki are all giving keynote speeches. In addition, there are multiple breakout sessions every day on all sorts of topics from video for nature photographers (which I am doing with Ian Shive) to using nature photography to cure nature deficit disorder to making the journey from amateur to pro to the art of butterfly photography and much more. There is also a trade show where you can see and handle all sorts of gear appropriate to nature photography.

NANPA is also worth supporting for the things it does for nature photography, including promoting ethical practices in the field, offering insurance for photographers, sponsoring a major nature photography competition, sponsoring regional nature photography programs and so on.

Check it out and keep it in mind if you want to develop as a nature photographer.

Posted in Workshops and Classes, nature photography | Comments Off

Unique Project for Nature Photographers

I was just contacted by Clay Bolt and Niall Benvie about a very interesting project they have started. I have known Niall, a UK photographer, for a while from some things he had done for us at Outdoor Photographer. I think they have  a very ambitious, yet also very important project. It might be something you might be interested in, too. At the least, check out their website, http://niallbenvie.churchilljohnson.co.uk/blog/?p=4028, for some ideas on a unique approach to photographing the natural world and getting it known.

Here’s what Clay told me:

Meet Your Neighbours is about reconnecting people with the common wildlife in their  communities through the medium of photography. This will be done by giving each subject  the celebrity treatment – photographing it in a backlit white field studio-  then putting this work out in public places such as shopping malls,  hospitals and on the street. The central message is “biodiversity begins at home.” For many, most people, these familiar species are their first, sometimes only contact with wild nature and as such are especially important as sources of inspiration and perspective. Yet they are normally over-looked and undervalued. This is why we photograph them in such a stylised way, where the subject is an individual, a character, rather than merely a member of an eco-system.

We are seeking photographers - especially those beyond the US and Europe -who will partner with their local conservation NGOs in this effort. It doesn’t matter whether they are professional or recreational photographers ; they need only believe in the project’s ethos and have good relations with the conservation community already.

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Beyond Boring

I am not sure of all of the deep psychological reasons but there is no question that I get bored by certain types of photos, even my own. But I think I am not alone. The public will often get bored of seeing the same old types of nature photos, even if the photos are pretty shots. Such images then become just a part of the ever present visual “noise” that assaults us every day, stuff that we start getting immune to. That’s not a good place for our photographs.

I have to tell a story. Years ago, I worked for a production group that did photography and video production. We were owned by a large company. A friend in the group and I did PR portraits for the company. I enjoyed doing it as it kept me in contact with lots of interesting people in the company. However, I tended to get bored by the same sort of photos. Now honestly, PR photos should have a standard look and should not change. But I got bored and would change the light. Not enough to really affect the portraits, but enough that the images were not consistent. But that was me.

I am still that way. I get restless when I am in a location that I have photographed before or I have seen photographs from that area before. That, unfortunately because of my work at Outdoor Photographer over the years, means just about everywhere!

But that is not such a bad thing. It forces me to look for images that go beyond the typical photos of the area, to find images that are special to me and take me new places with the location. In today’s world of constant bombardment of visuals, that really allows my photos to be a bit different, to stand out. That also means that I tend to avoid the standard “beauty” shots of locations, which is not always good, because sometimes I would like them. Still, I prefer to find new ways of looking at a location. It is more satisfying to me.

You might not be as extreme as I am in this area, but I would suggest that sometimes it is worth sitting down at a location and just looking before you start taking pictures. I often do that. Find out what is really there visually and how you relate to it, not simply how you can capture another pretty picture of the location that will be forgotten quickly.

The two photos seen here are from the Eastern Sierras of California (where I have a workshop scheduled this June with the GAPW). The first is in the Alabama Hills looking toward Mt. Whitney. The second is in the Ancient Bristlecone Forest by Big Pine.

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

Photographing Projects Near You

When I was editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine, it amazed me how often folks would write in with suggestions for articles about places far away from their homes. And as I have done classes at BetterPhoto.com, I am still surprised at how often people say that they don’t live in areas where there are good opportunities for nature photography. I have also found that in workshops, a lot of people want to know where is the best place to go.

I know this may seem a little flip, but it is the truth: my favorite place to photograph is wherever I am. I have been to locations in nearly every state and a few foreign locations, too. I have yet to find any place where there is not some sort of interesting and good opportunities for nature photography. The photo at the top of this entry is from Castro Crest in the Santa Monica Mountains. This is less than an hour away from me. Now lest you think I am in some amazing location, I live in the Los Angeles area and nearly half of the time to get to this location is through LA freeways. In addition, this location is within 10 miles of millions of people. Yet whenever I have been to this spot, I have never seen another photographer other than friends who came with me.

I suppose that the old saying, “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence”, didn’t become popular because people always appreciated where they were. A dear friend of mine has some wonderful opportunities to photograph stunning scenes of nature near his house, yet he is always searching for another place to photograph far away from home. Now there are wonderful places that are worth the travel. I am glad I get to go to a lot of interesting places around the country. But I can’t do that all the time. Yet nature and photography are too important to me to wait until my next “big trip.”

I have found so many locations around LA that I enjoy visiting for nature photography. But one thing that has become very important to me is a personal project — photographing the chaparral of Southern California, especially in the Santa Monica Mountains (which, it seems, is not well known anywhere, even in LA — “Santa Monica has mountains” — no, they don’t, but there are mountains to the north and west that have this name). I have mentioned a bit about this before. The chaparral is a wonderful ecosystem once you get to know it. It is a very important part of the natural history of Southern California, covering nearly 15% of the non-built land. It is not so dramatic as Yosemite, it doesn’t have the big trees of Sequoia, it has no bold waterfalls or big rivers. But it is close (it is throughout Southern California), interesting and worth getting to know. Admittedly, the Santa Monica Mountains do have mountains (up to about 3,000 feet), but without tall trees and not a lot of water, these soft-green mountains are often ignored by folks.

Everywhere there are areas like this, areas that you can “adopt” as your own. As you really get to know that area, you will learn more about your camera technique, you will discover cool things about the nature of your region, you can photograph throughout the year, and you can even build up a body of significant work that you cannot get in any other way. For me, the chaparral project started as a way to better know and understand a natural system in my state. Now it has truly become a love affair. That is a big deal, actually, because I grew up in the East and Midwest where thick forests were the native ecosystems that I loved most. Not that I will ever forget the forests, but I do love the chaparral now, too. As Stephen Stills wrote in a song popularized by the Rolling Stones, “And if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Here are more chaparral photos.

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

Composition and Focal Point

I have often been asked if a photo has to have a focal point in its composition. Ask this question at a camera club and you will surely get a lively discussion. It is actually not an easy question to answer because … it depends!

Good composition is about creating an image that is clear and directly connects with the viewer (unless you are doing obscure fine art photography, which is a whole different discussion). That can happen with one focal point or many. Frequently, landscapes have either multiple focal points or none that stand out. The key is to create some sort of underlying structure to the image that shows clear relationships among the elements of the photograph. That simply means that the photograph is clearly understandable as to what it is about.

One composition might be muddled and unclear with multiple interesting points of interest, while another might be perfect. One composition might be muddled and unclear with one focal point (because of a distracting light or background that has no focal points, though), while another might be perfect. The key is not to think “rules” — i.e., does it or does it not have a focal point, but instead to look at the photograph and see what it is really about. And then, is that clear. Photos often get muddled because the photographer did not made a clear decision as to what the photograph is about. This can happen even with a single, clear-cut subject when there is something else in the photo that the photographer wanted to include but did not integrate it into the composition or with the subject.

If you were to look at the work by Eliot Porter, the great nature photographer of the middle of the 20th century, you would find that very few of his photos had a single, clear-cut subject. However, everything in each of his photos belonged there and there were always clear relationships among the pictorial elements within the composition. Relationships are key.

Sometimes what is more important than a focal point are these relationships. They cause the viewer’s eye to move around the photograph (which also happens with a single focal point — there are still relationships). A viewer’s eye should move around the photo, but not to competing picture elements, but to related picture elements. That is important. Research has shown that when a viewer’s eye moves throughout an image, the viewer will stay with that photo more and get more from it. That does not mean an eye moving from unrelated things that compete with each other. Then the viewer gets annoyed and moves on. That also tends to happen with centered compositions using a single focal point. What happens then is that the viewer sees what the photo is all about in a single glance, is done with it, and wants to move on.

The first photo is from a class I worked with last spring on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. The last photo is from the chaparral in the Santa Monica Mountains outside of Los Angeles (it is also HDR — no camera can handle that tonal range).

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

What are the rules, anyway?

This past fall, I had a great group of photographers with me on a GAPW workshop in the Eastern Sierras (I will have one on the wildflowers of the Eastern Sierras next June). One morning we went to Mono Lake a little before dawn. Some of the group went right down to the water, some did not. I hung out with some photographing tufas not down by the water. The sun came up and there was beautiful light on the tufa formations. Then I decided to walk down to the lake and see how the rest of the group was doing.

On my way there, a whole mess of people were leaving, heading back to their cars. One person says, “You’re too late. The light is all gone. The good photos are over.”

Now let’s think about this for a moment. The light was still low and creating some wonderful shadows, and creating some excellent textured light on the tufa. The man who spoke, who seemed to reflect the whole group, was that there was only one possible way of photographing at Mono Lake and the tufas. I heard later from one of my students that there were a whole horde of folks all lined up facing the same direction, the sun rose, they finished shooting and all left.

I found this rather sad (as did my group who merrily continued shooting). Yes, light and color are affected by sunrise and conditions do change. And yes, it is possible to get to a light that is unattractive on a landscape. However, the latter had not happened. What seemed to be happening is that these folks were photographing according to some unwritten rules about how to photograph Mono Lake. Which is probably one reason why I found a lot of Mono Lake photography pretty, but also without a lot of originality. How often do we need to see the same sort of pre-dawn colored tufa? Or their silhouettes against the sunrise?

Whenever you do anything of a creative nature, whether that is photography, writing or somethings else, there are no absolute rules to guide you. Sure, there are things you must know about the craft of photography, etc. You need to know how to get a sharp photo, for example, or how to expose properly. But beyond that, “rules” tend to be more ideas that someone else wants you to do either because they have a limited sense of right or wrong or they are scared they are wrong if no one else follows what they are doing.

This can be very restrictive to a photographer’s growth, a photographer at any level, from beginner to expert. It is very true that as you try new things, you can feel a bit insecure about them. So when someone comes by with the “rules”, it is easy to quit doing what is true and right for you, just because it seems to be “against the rules.”

The photo above is not the typical shot of Mono Lake and I like it because of that. Before I ever visited Mono Lake, I thought that the tufa were so common that you saw them all over. Wrong! They are only in a few select areas. This photo shows Mono Lake and some tufa in early light, light that shows the lake and the setting well, and shows largely an open lake (which is truer to the location than many shots of only the tufa). To make the lake look stronger in the composition, I had to make the tufa look less dominant. Because they are tall, they cut through the lake and into the sky from normal camera heights. I put my camera on my tripod, set the self-timer, pressed the shutter and hoisted the camera on the tripod high over my head. I had to do a few shots to get it right. And to do this, you often need to shoot manually. But it does give a different view of the lake and its tufa, giving a perspective of what the place is really like. I like the strong, early light after sunrise here.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Uncategorized, Workshops and Classes, landscape photography, nature photography | Comments Off

What Do Cameras Really Do, Anyway?

I find it curious that so many students feel they have to “confess” to doing perfectly normal “darkroom” work in the computer. So you added contrast and saturation to the image file. Often a photograph needs something like that to correctly interpret a scene.

I think this comes from a misinterpretation of what cameras really do and because people have gotten afraid of being accused of “Photoshopping” their photos. What the camera does not do is create an arbitrarily objective view of the world. The camera creates a very biased look at the world based on the limitations of the sensor, image processing done inside the camera (which is done even with RAW), and very subjective decisions by engineers and designers of the camera. Every camera is a compromise in terms of image capture because it must do a good job with all sorts of photographers, plus sensors have some issues with tonalities and colors, and camera designers know this. It is impossible to create a camera that could capture every scene of every photographer’s vision objectively because conditions are so varied.

All photography is interpretation. Nothing else is actually possible because you cannot put the real world into a picture. You can only capture a representation of it that is defined and limited by what a camera can actually do in capturing a scene. The great LIFE photographer, Andreas Feininger, talked about this many years ago in his photography books published during the 1960s and 1970s. He noted that a photograph is rarely the same size as the real world scene, it has only two dimensions to represent a three-dimensional world, it is limited to one vantage point that cannot be shifted, it includes none of the subjective things that we always react to when we are in the real world such as heat, cold, smells, sounds, and so forth (these actually do influence what we see), and more so that any photograph is always an interpretation of the world.

In fact, he went further and said that an unadjusted photograph is very often any inaccurate interpretation of the world (he called it a lie) because many of its elements are undefined in relationship to this interpretation. I believe this is important if as photographers we are to get images that truthfully and accurately interpret the world for our audiences. We have a responsibility as a photographer to be sure that the image appropriately interprets the world so that our audiences better see and understand our world.

I once had somebody tell me that they didn’t worry about this concerning nature photography because nature is perfect so all they had to do is take a picture of it. It may be true that nature can be perfect, but a photograph of nature is not the same as nature. A photograph of nature can be very imperfect and can even lead us astray from what is really important in the scene. Often we must make some corrections to the original photo as interpreted by the camera so that it more accurately reflects an appropriate interpretation of the scene.

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

Snow

In many areas of the country, snow is now becoming part of the winter landscape. Even in “sunny” California, we are getting snow up in the mountains. Snow can be a wonderful addition to a scene and can create some beautiful images.

Snow can be hard to deal with for exposure because it is white. Generally, you need to give at least one stop more exposure than the meter says. Now that will vary. If you are shooting snow that is mostly in the shade, but there are some sunlit highlights, then you want to expose for the highlights and not for the snow at all. Watch your histogram — you want to be sure that there is not a big gap on the right side, but also, no clipping of whites on that side either. It is very easy to underexpose snow badly which will crush the dark tones all together and make it very difficult to bring out a good tonal range in the image. However, it is also easy to overexpose small areas of snow in a larger scene of dark tones so that you lose detail and texture in that snow. Watch your highlight warnings and be careful of clipping of the whites on the right side of the histogram (clipping looks like a cliff at that side rather than a mountain slope that comes back to the bottom line of the histogram just before reaching the right side).

You will probably find your snow looks best shot with any of the daylight white balances. This is tricky because no matter what you do, you can get blue snow and that can be absolutely correct. If the sun is out, then shadows will be reflecting the usually very blue sky of winter. If you overcorrect for that blue, then the highlight areas can look too yellow or too amber. I find that a cloudy setting works well, sun or clouds, with snow, but this is going to depend, to a degree, on the camera model. With a scene mostly in shade, you may do okay with shade white balance, but you may find that that does not completely remove the blue, especially if you are shooting at altitude. You may have to go to your Kelvin settings (if the camera has them) and set something upwards of 9000K. You might also find it helpful to do a custom white balance (which can be done on clean snow as it is a good neutral tone).

And finally, sometimes snow just looks right with blue in it. This is especially true at dawn and dusk.

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Noise and Exposure

Noise, that annoying sand-like texture in a digital photo, has been seriously attacked by all major camera manufacturers. It is unwelcome in most photography, but especially nature photography. You can actually get away with more noise in certain types of photography because viewers accept it there, such as low-light photography of people and news. And some photography, such as travel and fashion, will use noise in creative ways. But most photography needs “cleaner” images, meaning less noise.

Most cameras today have better sensors and noise-reduction algorithms built into cameras to keep noise low even at high ISO settings. With some of the newest cameras from Nikon and Canon using full-35mm-frame sensors, noise levels are extremely low, even at high ISO settings (low noise at high ISO is a good reason for a full-35mm-frame sensor). In addition, programs like Nik Software Dfine do a terrific job in reducing noise (it makes my smaller sensor Olympus E-3 perform much better at higher ISOs for example).

But one thing you don’t hear too much about is how exposure is still a limiting factor. In fact, exposure becomes more critical with higher ISO settings. Higher ISO settings are not changing the sensor — they amplify the signal coming from the sensor. Manufacturers start applying noise reduction right on the sensor itself, then to the signal being amplified and more to keep noise down. However, as you amplify any signal, noise increases. What happens, in a sense, is that noise is just waiting to be revealed.

So if you underexpose a high-ISO exposure, you are likely to make that noise visible. The more the underexposure, the more likely noise will be noticed. You have more latitude with exposure with low ISO settings because the noise is less to begin with and not so close to the final image.

This also shows up when shadows from high ISO shots are processed. Shadows are essentially “underexposed” compared to the rest of the scene, making them closer to the noise, as dark areas will always hold more noise than brighter areas. That’s not a problem as long as those shadows stay dark. But as soon as they are brightened in Lightroom, Photoshop, etc., noise will quickly become obvious no matter what camera you use. You have less flexibility in processing an image when it is shot with a high ISO.

The solution to all of this is, first, be sure you expose correctly for a scene without underexposing key tonalities in that scene. Second, if you need to get the most out of an image, from shadows to highlights, expose properly and use a lower ISO. You will start hearing people say that you can shoot all the time at higher ISO settings. That can be a benefit for some photography, but remember, that as the ISO goes up, the exposure latitude goes down and the ability to get clean, noise free shadows also goes down.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, nature photography | Comments Off