Clouds and Light

I love clouds :-)
As I turned into my driveway I saw this image, so I quickly took out my phone to take it. Clouds and light are amazing things, they add an intense dynamic to photography, and if you are patient enough to wait until the sun finds its way through the denseness, you can be rewarded with rays of light. If you set the exposure off the light you will lose details in the low tones, it's best to play it safe and get the exposure off a mid tone and bracket the shot one stop either side of the setting.

 
have fun :-)

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How to be your own critic ...

If photography is subjective, then why do we have critics, competitions and awards?

Before I answer that question, here is how I critique my own work. I think of the acronym E.A.T. If you are a good photographer then you will be able to E.A.T. if not, then ... Ok, so E.A.T. stands for emotional, artistic and technical.

Emotional: does my image create the emotion I am looking for? It is hard to create a sombre mood in full sunlight if there is nothing to give the viewer the cues to feel sad or reflective. What story am I telling and is it working?

Artistic: How have I composed the image or elements within the image to produce an effect? How effectively have I used either my camera or the space around me to create the image? Has the use of Photoshop been effective?

Technical: Is the image sharp? in focus? bokeh? noisy/artifacts? overdone the use of Photoshop?


Here is an image ... I would love you to critique it for me.

Getting back to the question about competitions and awards; I can see the need to award photographers who create awesome images that can tell a powerful story and possessing artistic and technical brilliance - how about you?

have fun :-)

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My Latest Still Life Image: "Illusion"

Here is my latest still life shot. Does it speak to you? What does it say?

"Illusion"

I would love to hear what you think of it ...

have fun :-)

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How to make your camera move ...

There is a saying: "There is emotion in motion", so why not try to create some emotion into your photography by creating motion.

There are at least 4 different ways you can create motion in a shot.

1. Keeping the camera stationary whilst increasing the exposure time of something that is moving: a waterfall, hot air balloons floating, people walking and so on. This will cause the moving element to blur whilst the stationary elements remain still;
2. Pan with a moving object - cars, birds flying and so on. This will make the moving object stationary (relative to the camera) whilst blurring the stationary background (since the camera is moving);
3. Not pan with anything moving, but simply moving the entire camera during exposure; and
4. Adjusting the zoom during exposure.

Here are some images that show methods 1, 3 and 4. I would love to hear how you went with method number 2.

Long exposure

Moving the camera during exposure

Changing the zoom during exposure

Here are a couple of tips to get you started. When moving the camera during exposure - by having the camera attached to a tripod you reduce camera shake and the motion is "cleaner". Also when changing the zoom during the exposure, practise twisting the zoom in the given time before shooting live. Experiment with zooming in and then take another shot where you are zooming out during exposure and see which effect you like best.

have fun :-)

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Early Morning Shots

I love the early morning colours, Here are a quick couple of "snaps" with my Galaxy S3. The trick now is to be up earlier so I can make better use of them.

Have fun :-)
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How to shoot at night ...

Don't reach for the flash ... don't you do it! ;-)

Ok, here are some general settings to get you started ... ISO 800, f4, 30 sec. Experiment with these depending on your desired effect. If you are near water, 30 seconds will yield a misty look to the scene .... oh and here are three tips: since cameras cannot see too well at night, turn off the auto focus and use manual focus instead; take a torch to shine on an object so you can focus the camera, then turn the torch off; and, lastly use a tripod or some other stable surface.

Here is a shot I took during a full moon and a 20+ knot wind - the wind was so strong that as soon as I detached my camera, the tripod flew away!

The settings I used for this were ISO 6400, f5.6 and 10 seconds of exposure time.

have fun :-)
Here is another tip - find out when the next full moon is going to occur and get yourself ready to do some night shooting...
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Using my 90mm Tilt/Shift Lens

I recently picked up my 90mm tilt/shift lens and just started playing with it.

My Cannon 90mm t/s lens

It [ie the "shift" feature] is traditionally used in architectural photography to keep walls straight and in perspective; however, it's a very cool lens because the tilt feature allows you to adjust the plane of focus relative to both the axis of the camera and plane of the sensor. In short, it allows you to tweak the depth of field and also the shape of this space in focus. Here are some quick shots of some of my kettle bells on a rug to show you how the depth of field can be manipulated by tilting the lens.

Normal shot taken at f2.8

Shot again at f2.8 but with 8 degrees of down tilt. Notice how the tops of both handles are now in focus whilst the ground is blurred.

Shot again at f2.8 but this time I used up tilt to focus on the top half of the object in the foreground.

I've touched on the "tilt" feature of these cool lenses. Here is a link to a very complete understanding of tilt/shift lenses. But be warned, have a strong coffee before reading as it requires your full attention :-)

have fun :-)


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What is the go with ISO?

Back in the days of rolls of film. The sensitivity of the film to light was measured using ISO (or ASA). The higher the number the more light sensitive the film. So ISO 50 had low sensitivity (good for bright sunny days) with good colour saturation, where as ISO 800 was sensitive to light and could be used in low light situation and leaving the image with a "grainy" look to it.  

Now in the days of digital cameras, CMOS and CCD sensors why do cameras still have an ISO feature and how can I use this to improve my photography?

To answer the first part of the question, the sensitivity (ie number of pixels used) of the sensor can be adjusted to meet the lighting needs. To answer the second part of the question, the lower the ISO number, the less light sensitive the sensor is (ie using less pixels to render the image and record light as colour). So ISO 50 or 100 is far less sensitive than say ISO 800 or ISO 1600.

So far so good. Now as we double the ISO number (ISO 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, ...) the exposure is also doubled. This needs to be taken into account when setting the correct exposure.

As an example, let us  say that the correct exposure when ISO 100 is dialed in is 1/20 sec at f8. Now if  I dial in ISO 200 instead, we could correct this increase in exposure by halving the shutter speed so ISO 200 1/40 sec and f8 will produce the same exposure. This has the advantage of using a faster shutter speed (if needed to reduced camera shake, or to get an action shot). Of course we could have adjusted the exposure by making the aperture smaller, but it is often useful to think of increasing the ISO to speed up the shot (ie use faster shutter speeds) and lowering the ISO number to slow down the shutter speed (longer exposures are needed since less pixels are used).

The advantage of understanding the connection between ISO and shutter speed has lots of useful applications. For example let us say that a scene needs 1/8 sec and f32 at ISO 800 to get the correct exposure but you would like a longer exposure time to blur some motion in the shot, so we could lower the ISO from 800 to ISO 50 which is halving 4 times, so we double the exposure time 4 times (now 2 seconds). The correct camera setting would now be ISO 50, 2 seconds and f32.

On the other hand, during night photography (without a flash) ISO 800, f4 and 30 seconds is a good starting point and adjusting the ISO (and shutter speed) we can become creative in what and how things can be captured.

So have fun playing with ISO,  just a final word of warning. The higher the ISO the more noise is introduced into the shot, which needs to be removed in post editing. I learned a very cool and deadly quick method for removing noise using Photoshop which I am excited to share with you another time.

have fun! :-)


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Understanding Camera Exposure in 2 minutes.

Understanding camera exposure must be one of the confusing parts to photography. Once you get your head around this seemingly complex idea, you will become more creative in your photography and set the exposure with a particular creative feel in mind. For example, tweaking the time will have a different creative impact when the shutter speed is 1/1000 sec as compared to 30sec. Also having the aperture wide open (small f-stop number like f2.4) will have a significantly different result to the image than the same shot taken with the aperture very narrow (large f-stop number like f32).

I will explain exposure settings in a way that I have not read before and I believe that it makes a difficult concept easy to understand. I will take all of 2 minutes to read and hopefully understand, so get your stop watch ready. Here  goes:

Imagine you have an empty bucket and a hose is connected to a tap and placed into the bucket. You then fill up the bucket with water. Let us imagine that the amount of water in the bucket is the exposure.

Ok, so if we want to have the same amount of water (ie exposure)  in another bucket.  If we use a wider hose we can fill the bucket up in less time, but if we have a thinner hose then it will take longer to fill the bucket up with the same amount of water.

In terms of the camera,  the water, thickness of the hose and the time the water is running through the hose is equivalent to exposure, aperture (ie the width of the hole in the lens through which light travels) and the length of time the aperture is open to let light through.

So to get the same volume of light onto the sensor we can either use a small aperture and have light running through the lens of a long time or have the aperture wide open and have the light run through it in a relatively short period of time.

How are we going so far? all good? Ok, we are over the hard part. All we have to mention now is how much to tweak time when I use different aperture settings. To nail this down, let us return to the bucket and hose analogy.

If it takes 60 seconds to fill the bucket with a particular width hose, then how long will it take to fill if we use a hose with twice the diameter? Not half the time but actually 1/4 of the time (since the area of the hose is as circle and doubling the width quadruples the area), so it will take 15 seconds to fill.


Here are some aperture widths that double each time and so the area is quadrupled with each change in aperture setting.

small width  aperture                           large width aperture
f32           f16          f8            f4            f2

So how can we use this information when playing with the camera? Good question. If the camera is telling you that an exposure setting of 1 sec at f4 is needed that is the volume of light (the camera thinks) is needed. This volume (ie exposure) can be generated in many different ways.

1. keep f4 and 1 sec
2. Halve the aperture width and use four times the time; ie use f8 and 4 seconds
3. Double the aperture width and use a quarter of the time; ie f2 and 1/4 sec
4. Use f16 and 16 seconds
5. use f32 and use 64 seconds.
and so on. 

A natural question would be to ask: "why bother to change these settings if they all give the same exposure ?"

Using a small aperture (ie large f-stop like f16, f29, f32) allows more of the scene to be in focus, that is the depth of field is large; whilst at the same time the length of time the sensor is exposed to the light needs to be long (to ensure we have the correct exposure). Lengthening time makes: water turn to mist, blurs sparklers we wave around at night, creates star trails. make trains blur, creates the line of lights created by car headlights at night and in general introduces motion. A cool artistic effect! Like wise if I want to capture the motion of birds in flight, a child throwing a netball, a dog catching a ball in mid air, turn water in to droplets and so on, a very short time period is needed such as 1/100, 1/500. 1/1000 depending on what is needed, and a wide open aperture (eg f4, f3.2, f2) is used to achieve the correct exposure.

Hopefully I haven't lost you, now we are in the position to previsulalise an image and decide on a particular effect.

Effect 1: image sharp and background blurred. We need the aperture wide open (f4, f2.4 etc)
Effect 2: all of the image in focus. We need the aperture narrow (f29, f32 etc)
Effect 3: create motion in the scene. We need a long exposure time ie 1/4 sec, 1/2 sec, 1 sec, 10 sec etc
Effect 4: freeze everything in the scene. We need a very short exposure time 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000 etc

You get the idea.
Here are three steps to help you with what we have covered so far.

1. Decide on the effect you want to create (use the above as guides).
2. If the effect needs you to manipulate the aperture, turn your camera setting to the aperture priority setting (AV) and set the aperture to the desired value and the time exposure will change automatically.
3. If the effect needs you to manipulate time, turn the camera setting to the time priority (TV) and set the time to the desired value and the aperture will be changed automatically to create what the camera thinks is the correct exposure needed to render a well exposed image.

In a matter of minutes we have gone from using a camera as a point and shoot device to us being a creative visionary using a camera to produce creative images we have preconceived. Now that is cool!

I suggest you go and have fun taking shots and explore each of the four effects mentioned above. Remember that I have given general guide lines to get you going on the correct  track, so experiment, be creative and learn how to get the most out of your camera!

have fun! :-)

I'd love to hear how you got on with your creative experiments.



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Why you should look down ...

Something I've been learning to do .... "look down" - you never know what you will see ...

have fun :-)

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Are you thinking like a photographer?

Whenever I arrive at a location, I get a huge energy rush of excitement ... it's a bit like a young boy on Christmas morning, eagerly waiting to see what gifts he would get. The difference this time is that I can not wait to take that killer shot and share this amazing moment with everyone on the planet!

For me that is the difference between a tourist and a photographer. Let me explain: a few years ago whenever I arrived at a gorgeous place, I would put my moto guzzi in the frame  - to show others that I was there; that was me thinking like a tourist. Photographers take images to show others why they should come to this place.

Ok so after Ive said "wow" a few dozen times, my photographer's brain kicks in. At first I can only see the big picture, the forms, colours, textures, how the light is interacting with the land and sky. After I've walked around for a while and immersed myself in the location, only then can I see the small scale things, like the texture of the individual trees, how individual elements within the scene interact with each other, or feeling and seeing the light change in brightness as it hides behind clouds and its effect on the colours and shadows.

I often get overwhelmed with so much beauty in front of me and how I should interpret or frame it. To help me find the shot I am looking for, I ask myself "Why do I want to take this shot?" or "What story do I want to tell?" or simply thinking of the name I would give the image often helps me find the shot I am looking for. 

Here is an image I love. I only saw the main tree and the red earth from the roadside, but once I could "see" the background, I had an idea of how I would connect them all together.  

Thankfully  I could position myself so that the composition is balanced and the trees in the background were placed neatly under the lower branches of the main tree.

So the next time you see a gorgeous view - will you be a tourist or a photographer?

have fun ... :-)

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