Celebrating Winter!
Archive for January, 2009
Every photographer, from amateur to professional, will take pictures of Christmas Decorations because these are beautiful, eye catching, and most of all, memorable.
From the view of the entire Christmas tree, to close-ups on simple and sophisticated decorations, it’s all sparkle and lovely. For the shots, remember to have a tripod and a remote controller.
For the first Christmas tree picture, my friend Tudor used flash (with -2 exposure) in rear mode, in low light. Picture was taken in “Program” mode.
The second Christmas tree picture has +3 exposure, no flash, and low light environment. Longer exposure time in this case: 20 sec.. Picture was taken in “Shutter Mode”.
The white balance in case of such photographs is better set to “auto” since the colors from the lights differ from the environmental light and other lights coming from nearby. After all, the multitude of colorful lights is what makes Christmas beautiful.
Now let’s see the close-ups: the most simple setting scheme is: “Program” Mode, rear flash, adjusted exposure (differs from scene to scene), tripod and remote control or 2 seconds shutter delay. For brighter scenes you can put the flash off and increase ISO.
On most of the photos, on post-processing, I added a warm filter to make the tree have a yellowish green, and to make the red color stronger.
To promote rural tourism, in Romania, many photographers go from village to village to take pictures of local habits and activities, local activities and clothes, objects, houses.
During the late summer of 2008, I choose to go in a wonderful village in the Apuseni Mountains on a specific day: the first day of the “Love Festival”, on the “Chiken Mountain Pick”.
I wanted to keep distance from people in order to capture instants of their live, not well prepared portraits. In order to do so, I used a tele-ob.: Tamron 70-300 mm.
Here I show you an old man playing a local musical instrument.
This is an instant portrait of on old lady covering her eyes from the burning sun.
Children are dancing on local music.
Since it was the “love festival”, here’s a portrait of the girl who won the contest for “perfect marriage country girl”.
Here is how the houses looked like in the old times in this area of my Country.
On the same topic, I have some older photos to illustrate the Romanian traditions.
In a Circus Show there are many factors different from any other kind of photography type. For example, the white balance does not matter too much, and you should also not worry about having too much noise: sure you will since the lighting environment is poor and the use of flash will only ruin the magic of the show.
The magic of the show is mostly based on motion and secondly on clothes. As a result, try to capture motion blur in your picture, but remember: slow shutter speed is not needed: fast motion in poor light is easy blurred at relatively fast shutter speeds. Try to capture the most expressive moments. In a show, the performers will always stop in a fixed position critical for the show, moment when they expect clapping. Be ready to shoot at this point of time.
I made these photos during the Aquatic Circus (from Italy) performance in my birth town. The main point of interest (for children more of all) were the aquatic animals. The gear I used is a Nikon D40x with Tamron 70-300mm lens. Tripod is not necessary.
The most important thing to remember when photographing a circus show is TO BE FAST. Prepare and test your gear before in such way that you will not have to change the lens or settings too often. There will be short breaks between different parts of the show, time to make some changes if needed.
Circus bring acrobats that move their body forming curves that look great in photography. Here is such a series. The difference of colors between the images is given by the lights used in the show.
Final note: remember these tips for concert photography too.
