Hello my dear reader!
I am kind of busy at work these days, but soon the “storm” will be over and I got new interesting tutorials waiting for you. Meanwhile, there are 2 things I want to tell you:
First, don’t forget about the photojournalism contest (write your story and win a book).
Second, I’ll leave you a gallery from my latest winter shooting session in the mountains near my town. There is a lake there and I had the chance to shoot during a snow fall. Enjoy!
Nature Photography
Passioned about underwater photography? You want to take spectacular underwater photos with a gear that is worth less than $500 US?
Here’s what tp do: look at the underwater photo gallery from the Caribbean and plan a trip to this cristal clear see. Then, while packing your stuff (snorkel and mask in the first place), read the tips given by The Digital Story.
Images from the gallery are taken with Canon PowerShot SD700 IS camera packed into Canon WP-DC5 waterproof case.
Tip 1:
If you don’t want to use the flash, shoot in shallow depths and use image stabilization.
Tip 2:
Use the camera’s Underwater scene mode if it has one.
Special Tip:
Don’t touch the coral or harass the fish.
Underwater photography is a terrific way to spice up your image library. I like the exercise I get with a good swim, and then you can celebrate your “catch” with a cold rum drink or two while relaxing on the beach afterward. – Derrick Story
Another very good article on this mater (with more technical tips): Underwater photographer Mark Snyder shows how to shed extraordinary light on the world below the waves. However, this is for those who afford a more expensive gear.
Bird photography is one of the most popular and challenging genres of nature photography because the birds are colorful living creatures hard to observe and shoot in their fast speed life. Besides from the general photography “rules”, there are a few specific tips you should know before going out and hunt for birds in their natural environment.
1. Use Proper Photographic Gear
It is difficult to approach to the birds and by shooting from a longer distance you won’t get big deal if you don’t have a powerful telephoto zoom lens (For serious bird photography, a quality 300 – 500mm f/4 telephoto lens is ideal). You can even use teleconverters to increase the effective focal length of your lens by 40 percent. However, some common birds are familiar with human presence and if you take some bread with you, you can use some bait to get them closer. This is the case of most of my shots. One more thing before going on: since it’s likely that you will use the higher zoom power of your camera, I recommend getting a tripod with you and activate the anti-shake more or image stabilization.
2. Use Manual Focus and Custom White Balance
In the foliage, the camera will likely have trouble focusing on the bird and not on some closer leaf. Therefor, I suggest using manual focus. However, not all bird are found in the foliage so the general rule, no matter if auto or manual, is to focus on the bird’s head and particularly the eye. Coming back to the foliage situation, you may also notice that the colors may not be very accurate nor vibrant with the auto settings. Use custom white balance to warm up the scene and if possible shoot in RAW mode to avoid purple fringing, artefacts and so on (it will allow you to adjust all settings in a photo editing software after shooting).
3. Be Fast but Move Slowly
Like I said, the birds usually have a very fast life, making sudden moves by flying from a place to another even if not far away. It’s good to have a fast speed camera (like a SLR) and react quickly to do not miss your shot. Before your fast shooting you will be able to approach your subjects by minimizing disturbance (birds are genetically programmed to flee when they detect quick movements).
4. Capture the Right Moment at the Right Time
There a few things you should know about birds: in spring they come and build “houses”, lay eggs and get mate. All there moments are invaluable when captured with the camera and will make everyone say “wow”. To obtain such thing you must go into the forest and climb some trees during spring. Another important thing is that during the morning the birds are a little more “noisy” as they sing their song (within the 3 hours after the sun rises the birds are most active). By following the song you can find and identify them easier.
Tags: bird photography, photo tips, bird photography tips, photography tutorials, top tips for bird photography, bird photos
“Now You Can Combine Underwater and Abovewater Scapes in One Photo” – this is the title of an article I read today that totally captured my attention. I spend a few neurons this summer trying to capture both the lake bottom and the sky without loosing colors and details. If the colors problem could be solved by shooting in RAW, using gradient filter and making vertical panoramas, the details of the lake bottom were always lost.
The secret is related to split photography.
With optimal lighting conditions and high water transparency, the level of illumination under the water is one f-stop less intensive than above the water. Early in the morning and at the end of the day, when sun rays fell on the water surface at an angel, this difference is even higher, it reaches 3 f-stops. Thus the best time for split photography is from 10 am to 2 pm, when the sun is high in its zenith. However, the level of illumination of two parts of a split is different, even if the conditions are ideal. It means that it is impossible to set an ideal exposure – either the upper part will be overexposed, or the bottom part will be underexposed.
The thing I did not thought about:
When we shoot with a wide-angle lens, we use a spherical port as well. Under the water a spherical port forms a kind of additional ‘lens’ above the main one. As a result we can see a picture above the port (about 30-50 cm above), which is called a virtual picture. If a wide-angle lens focuses on a virtual picture underwater, then any subject above the water which is situated farther than 30-50 cm will be out-of-focus. To solve this conflict, use a magnifying attachment. Usually it is a filter put on the lens. Part of this filter is transparent, and the other part is a magnifying lens.
During the past few days I had a walk in the park and I noticed the beginning of autumn. After a few shots capturing lonely people in the far distance on the “golden” autumn afternoon – melancholic spirit, I got connected with the ground: some leaves (left standing or prearranged) create patterns and abstactional lines, shapes and colors. A few stairs covered by leaves and empty feet stepping on them was an idea I go but could not yet do. When I found myself close to a branch, I toked a close-up of it with the rest of the forest behind. However, macro shots of leaves are more impressive is you take one in your hand and shoot it even closer, creating a deeper DOF behind it. Another interesting idea I had was to combine old rusty objects and architecture pieces with the dead leaves. Go on and try that!
The 10 Tips
By trying to make a resume of how to acieve great photos in autumn I came out with these tips:
1. Try to take photos in the early morning or late evening (however, shooting directly against the sun will only cause a mixture of overexposed and underexposed areas – you don’t want that, but if you are lucky, you might get some spectacular sun rays through a golden forest)
2. Combine colors: take together red, yellow, green, and maroon leaves
3. Look up, look down and try different angles and backgrounds (I admit I climbed a tree to get one of my ideas done)
4. Follow the rapid changes of nature day by day on a near foliage
5. Look for contrasts but also fill one frame with just one color (same leaves)
6. Set the white balance to cloudy (even fluorescent might work) to get more vibrant colors – ah and by the way, also choose the vivid option for the pictures
7. The sun might be very powerful over the yellow leaves, and, in order to obtain more vibrant well-exposed colors, slightly underexpose your shots
8. A polarizer also helps allot, if any
9. Shoot near a lake and capture the colorful reflection
10.When editing your photos, saturate in yellow and red channels and add a yellowish photo filter to warm up the scene (if the cloudy white balance didn’t done well enough)
Tags: autumn photos, leaves photos, autumn photo tips, photo tips, macro leaves
Remember what I told you about an open wild bird photography contest? In order to prepare and get inspired, look at the video and then, below the video, some of the pictures I made yesterday (using my new Nikon D40x) at the Central Park lake in my home town. More photos and written tips on shooting birds will be coming later on at photoaxe.com (swans pictures expected).
Tags: bird photography, wildlife photography, photo tips, nature photography, bird photos, wild birds photos
This summer I had the chance to go on a trip at the seaside, the Black See Romanian Coast. I had all the needed gear with me: camera, extra memory cards, extra rechargeable batteries, tripod and a laptop. Every experienced photographer developed a certain shooting style of his own (for example photographers who shoot the sea only at long exposure times), but the below examples are kind of a mixture of what one can do in order to give you the chance to see that you like most.
-I- The Shooting
Tip 1:
Sunrise is at around 5:30 am. No matter of the weather, a sunrise shot is always impressive. Between 5 and 6 am I was up sad because the fog completely covered the sun, however, some lonely people were walking on the beach inside the fog and that made a great shot. Later on, the fog and the few clouds at the horizon rise and below you have my see-sunrise picture with the sun rays in the above side and the sun reflexion in the watter at the bottom side of the shot. Don’t forget to use a tripod or otherwise you risk having a blurred sunrise.
Tip 2:
During the day, it’s important to think “what is there interesting to shoot?” – finding a subject. Just shooting around where plenty of people lie down will result into busy images with no precise subject. A girl playing with a ball, a boy running under a natural umbrella, a surfer behind an umbrella, a lady trying to teach her dog how to swim, and so on. Now that you saw something you want to shoot, let’s see how to get the best out of it:
Tip 3:
Being somewhere in a nice place, most people tend to take pictures to distant subject in order to capture the so called environment. This is wrong. Fill your frame, don’t worry about the environment: landscape / seascape can make the subject of another picture, but now don’t miss your chance. As an example for this look at the picture with the lady and the dog: there is nothing else, no other people, no horizon line – your attention can only be at the given situation.
Tip 4:
Use a telephoto lens (like 200mm) if you want to better capture situations and people on the beach. In this situation, it’s like you are a photojournalist and the subject will pop out from the busy background as a result of the narrow DOF. As an example look again at the pictures of the girls with the ball. The are many people far from the girl but in the same area, and, if I didn’t have used the right lens, the group of people would have been disturbing the attention on her.
Tip 5:
In some other tutorials I once told you about perspective. There are several images here that I toked by standing at the see level: I wanted to capture the girl with the ball and the beauty of the waves. By combing the two elements in different parts of the picture in order to balance the composition, I managed to give the viewer the unique feeling about how great is to feel that ball moved by the waves, splashing and floating. Also, this is a way of avoiding to capture the horizon at the middle of the picture.
Tip 6:
Look down. You may see footprints, seashells, sea crabs, jellyfish… really, I did! Take a macro shot of these creatures if you can. And speaking of creatures and macro shots: you can order sea fruits at lunch 
Tip 7:
Like I said at the beginning, some photographers do the long exposure trick. At sunrise or sunset, put your camera on the tripod, get into Aperture Priority mode and set the aperture so that in the camera will enter only the lowest amount of light (the camera will automatically increase the exposure time). In the Shutter Priority mode, put a longer exposure setting, as longer as better, and don’t forget to adjust the exposure compensation to the lowest number (underexpose), otherwise your picture will be a white rectangle and nothing more.
Tip 8:
Night shots also requires long exposure time, but, besides from that, you also need to increase the ISO number (sensitivity). The picture will result grainy but at least you won’t be worrying about it being too dark. Even at night the beach can still be interesting in matter of objects enlighten by a soft back light like those umbrellas.
-II- The Post-Edit
Step 1:
Add contrast and saturate the colors by using curves on each channel (R – G – B) in different adjustment layers.
Step 2:
Sharpen the images that were taken with fast shutter speed: the watter droplets will pop out even more.
Step 3:
If there are objects in the frame that ruin the composition but at the shooting point you could not avoid them, you can still use clone tool and healing brush to remove them. I did so at the picture with the running boy: behind him, there were other people laying down on the beach.
Step 4:
Black&White or Duo-tone will make your images look even more expressive and artistic.
Step 5:
Is there a need for cropping? If yes, now it’s the moment. Maybe after you toked the shot, when you saw the image on the computer you realized that by cropping vertically you can obtain a better composition.
Step 6:
Resize the image for web and/or printing. Why not making a photo album of the great photo vacation and show them to others? Make a good selection from the hundred of pictures.
Step 7:
For a better presentation, before pressing the print button or submit picture button, add a simple border to each of them. This way your images will pop out from the plenty of other see images around the world.
In the end, I hope these tips will help you get better creative vacation pictures next summer… unless you live on the oceans shore and the sea is always at your feet.
Tags: seaside photos, seaside, photo tips, summer photography
Rick Sammon gives in this video specific tips for shooting the Sunrise/Sunset with a Digital Rebel. To mention one: don’t use any filters at all!
Tags: sunrise photo, sunrise photography, sunset photo, sunset photography, photo tips
Inspirational nature scenes from Asia and other parts of the world. Enjoy.
Tags: landscape photography, nature scenes, nature photography
