this is a webpage with a lot of information on camera's and different effects.
Perform Local Control
Use Adjustment Layers and their Masks to have more control
Many digital files can be improved if an exposure adjustment is restricted to a specific area. A problem arises in that most software programs target global exposure adjustments. If this prevents you from optimizing an image, use Photoshop adjustment layers and their corresponding layer masks to take control of selective portions of the photo.
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Step 2: With the Layers palette open, click on the “Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer” button. It's a half light, half dark circular icon on the bottom of the palette. Mouse over the word LEVELS in the popup menu and click.
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Step 4: Make sure the Levels layer mask is active - it will have a black outline around it. Click on the Brush and be sure the foreground color is set to black. Adjust the brush opacity to 50% in the Options Bar and choose a soft edge. Begin to paint over the area you want to restore. As you get to the edge where the transition between the darkened background and subject touch, zoom in and adjust the hardness and size of the brush to paint in a feathered edge. Continue to paint back the good
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If you make a mistake and need to paint some dark background back into the image, switch the foreground color to White and paint over the area you want to correct. Be sure to use a very soft edge brush if you want the effect to look gradual.
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Same Subject, Different Background
The goal of a great image is to have your subject stand out from what’s behind it.
Before I press the shutter, there are four conditions I evaluate. In no set order, I determine if the light is right, if the subject is compelling, if the composition has interest, and if the background complements the subject. If the answer is yes to all four, I know I have a winner. If I answer yes to three or less, I may take the picture if what’s before me tells a story. If only two seem strong, I may or may not make the image. But if all four factors are strong, I never leave until I have exhausted all possibilities. One of the ways I do this is to try to alter the background.
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Depth Of Field: Depth of field determines how much of the background is in focus. The general rule of thumb is to have it defocused to make your subject stand out or have everything in focus to tell a story. To achieve shallow depth of field, open the lens to its widest aperture, use a telephoto, and place your subject far away from the background. For an image with lots of depth of field, combine a wide angle lens with a stopped down aperture and you have the ingredients.
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Prevent Mergers: If parts of the subject’s shape, position, color, etc. blend in with what’s behind it, they become one and create a merger. Mergers are bad in that they make it difficult to differentiate the subject from its environment. If possible, move the subject or change your angle to prevent them..
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Reflections In Nature
Still water provides the nature photographer with great opportunities to make gorgeous images
Reflections can be found on many different surfaces. Glass buildings, mirrors, mylar, chrome bumpers, and puddles to name a few. All provide the opportunity to produce creative images. Some provide smooth and uninterrupted surfaces while others add a rippled texture with variations of the reflected effect. In the natural world, the diversity of mirrored surfaces isn’t as vast narrowing the amount of photographic opportunities. Nature photographers often rely on still water for the effect. This mandates no wind. Early mornings and late evenings are the best times to find this condition. A bonus is the light at this time of day is warm and directional.
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Animals are great subjects to photograph with their reflections. If you’re just getting into wildlife photography, it’s a great way to “cheat” not having to buy a super telephoto. Including both the animal and its reflection, in effect you’re doubling the size of your subject so you don’t need as long a lens to fill the frame. Key to creating successful compositions is to not cut off any part of the animal’s mirrored image. This is one of the reasons why I’m a proponent of zoom lenses as it’s easy to tighten or loosen up the composition. Whenever I see a published image of an animal with an awkward crop, my immediate thought is the photographer had a fixed focal length lens and as a result, had to amputate part of the subject.
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How To Use The Zone System In Challenging Conditions
High-contrast scenes like late-winter snow and ice can be difficult to render in a photograph. Use the Zone System to get your best results.
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
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The abstractions that occur in nature are wondrous and demanding, requiring an open mind and intuitive eye. As an example of a type of scene that's particularly challenging, but also rewarding, I've selected ice formations. This is an excellent time of year to photograph ice, and the late winter has a lot of variety. Ice, such a quirky subject matter, has become over many years my favorite obsession. It takes many shapes and forms, ranging from small, delicate details to large, grand views of still lakes and rivers. As with any subject, ice presents certain technical pitfalls, photographic problems that must be solved. These solutions, after being worked out, often will hold true whenever the same subject is photographed.
Solving The Tonal Range Challenge
The first technical conundrum will be the tonal range. There are often no true shadows in ice compositions, especially in details. The tonal range tends to start around Zone VI (a light gray) and run up to a bright white. While there's no rule that a black-and-white print must have darker tones, high-key prints—photos with only highlights—tend to be harsh, offering the viewer no compositional base.
 Wintery conditions with snow and ice can be tricky to expose properly. Using the Zone System will help you get a handle on these sorts of high-contrast exposures. Maintaining detail in the highlights and the dark areas usually can be accomplished if you take your time and plot out the Zones properly. |
Each drop in aperture translates into one lower zone. As a rule, you won't want to lower any given tonality more than three stops, as the shadow detail will begin to disappear. In cases where the lower tone detail isn't important, the drop in aperture may be as extreme as the scene requires.
Dropping the lower tones is the first step in spreading out the range. Raising the upper tones will finish this process, and this is achieved through development. The cornerstone of the Zone System is that exposure controls shadow densities, and development sets highlights. Cutting development depresses the highlight densities, and extended development time expands them. When a range requires spreading, a push in development is called for. Taking the recommended normal time, gradually begin to push past it, using small, incremental increases. If a normal time is 5 minutes, push the film up to 61⁄2 minutes. This will approximately equate to a one-zone push. Pushing the time up to 8 minutes will translate as a two-zone push, extending the highlights even further up the scale.
How To Use The Zone System In Challenging Conditions
High-contrast scenes like late-winter snow and ice can be difficult to render in a photograph. Use the Zone System to get your best results.
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
When a particular composition does contain a full range, from shadows to highlights, the more classic system will come into play. By picking the shadow that should have strong detail (Zone III), metering only that area and then closing down two ƒ-stops, the tone will hold detail. In most instances, the development will need to be cut in order to hold detail in the highlight, which would be a Zone VII. By lessening development times with film, you're squeezing the upper tonalities down into a range that will be printable. This type of negative will then print in a standard manner, making use of all information contained within the negative. For digital capture, simply meter the scene and evaluate the exposure on the histogram. Again, the most important thing is to prevent the highlights from being cut off on the right. If by maintaining the highlights you're losing shadow detail, you're going to have to employ a different technique by compositing two images, one exposed for highlights and one for shadows.
 Zone System Basics Every Zone in the Zone System is one stop apart from the adjacent Zone. Zone V represents "middle gray," or 18% gray. Zone IV is one stop darker and so on. Traditionally, we think of Zone II through Zone VIII as having at least some detail while Zones 0, I, IX and X have no detail. Some photographers don't use Zone 0, reducing the scale by Zone. In the digital era, we usually can coax a little more detail out of the Zones at the ends of the spectrum compared to film. |
There's a third possibility that occasionally will appear: that scene where lower-end tones are missing, and if introduced, would detract from the image. While rare, the possibility exists, and the photographer should be open to recognizing it. When dealing with this situation, choose the strongest highlight, the one that should have just perceptible detail (Zone VII), and meter it. Then, open the reading up two ƒ-stops, using that as your exposure. This is turning the Zone System on its head, as you are exposing for the highlights and ignoring any other meter readings. As odd as it seems, this will give a workable, high-key image. If there are any shadows in the scene, this technique won't work, as all lower-end detail will likely disappear.
Thinking Abstractly
Composition is always frustrating and is the most difficult aspect of the photographic process. This holds true for the sorts of ice photographs shown in this article more than with most images. Cropping out extraneous elements is always good policy, but becomes of equal importance when working with abstract subjects. By eliminating anything that gives scale to an image, by cutting out anything that offers the viewer a clue to the reality of the subject, you're enhancing the sense of abstract while veiling any intrusive elements.
How To Use The Zone System In Challenging Conditions
High-contrast scenes like late-winter snow and ice can be difficult to render in a photograph. Use the Zone System to get your best results.
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
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For more classic compositions, ice may be used as an accent within the photograph. Ice-tipped tree branches, for example, add an interesting element to what otherwise might be a mundane scene. Small patches of frozen water within a greater landscape may also add an important element, particularly when placed in the foreground. These will be more classic scenes, and you'll be using the ice as a secondary element, but it's a technique that can work well.
When It's Time To Print
When you begin printing, more decisions will come into play. During exposure, composition and development, a series of choices are made culminating in a negative of certain densities and compositional delineations. The image will contain a certain amount of information, but how this translates into the final print is very much up to the photographer. The overall contrast range must be selected, as will smaller tonal areas within the image. Whether to enhance the range or, conversely, when to compress it down, as well as dropping upper or lower tones are also important choices. The myriad technical selections will be determined completely through intuition, which is informed by a visceral reaction to the photograph. With a digital image file, you can explore manipulating the midtones easily through the use of curves. You can completely change the mood of the shot by making the mid-tones shift slightly darker or lighter. Try it, and you'll be amazed how much of a difference a small shift can make.
A viewer's eye is always initially drawn to any highlights within a photograph, a fact that emphasizes the importance of these value placements. By carefully composing a photograph of ice, balancing out the various tonalities, this type of image can be wildly successful.
Through the winters, I've always actively sought out ice formations. This is a subject that has become one of my favorites. Whether tiny little patterns in a small alcove pool or larger sections of the frozen landscape, the ice within the natural world has always intrigued me, and the photographic rewards have been generous. To paraphrase the rabbit, the water is stiff and the possibilities are endless.
 Essential Gear...To keep your gear protected in the snow, ice and rain of winter, a protective sleeve is indispensable. LensCoat makes a number of options for just about every camera and lens combination. If you want to maintain a low profile for photographing wildlife, its products are available in RealTree camouflage patterns, or you can opt for simple black, green or navy. Shown here is the TravelCoat on a Canon lens. To see the full collection of LensCoat products, go to www.lenscoat.com. |
To see more of Steve Mulligan's work, go to www.mulliganphotography.com.
Snow In The Landscape
Snow provides great opportunities to capture majestic photographs
I love to exploit the beauty of a freshly fallen snow. Blankets of white transform landscapes into pristine wonderlands with little clutter. The world takes on an entirely fresh look. Everywhere you look, there’s something different to shoot.
Snow photography can be broken down into two general types of conditions - A) Images made while the snow is falling; B) Bright sunlight reflecting off a blanket of white. Each present some concerns with regards to metering and composition. Both provide great opportunities to capture majestic photographs.
Falling snow reduces the overall contrast. Additionally, an atmospheric perspective is created wherein subjects recede into the distance. Clutter is subdued in that it’s hidden beneath the fallen snow or via the atmospheric conditions that simulate mist or fog. Falling snow adds layers of perspective that emphasize foreground elements while the background ones fade away.
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Bright sun and snow are a wonderful photographic combination, but they present some exposure concerns. If the contrast range is high, you’re guaranteed to get areas of overexposed snow. Check your histogram and compensate accordingly. Check the LCD page with flashing highlights to see the areas of overexposure. I urge you to bracket snow scenes to get a good exposure. If the scene exceeds the capture range of your sensor, merge the bracketed series into an HDR program such as Nik HDR Efex Pro or Photomatix.
Experiment with a wide range of focal lengths. Use your wide lenses to exaggerate perspective and emphasize the receding layers of subject matter. Medium telephotos allow you to compress the compositional elements that result in an image where the subject matter is brought closer which emphasizes the falling snow in the entire frame. Macro subjects abound as you’ll find lots of hidden gems as you explore the miniature world of white on white.
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Do More With Your Polarizer
It’s the ultimate outdoor photography landscape filter, and we’ll show you how to do more than just darken skies
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
If you think a polarizer is only for darkening the sky, you're missing opportunities to enhance reflections, saturate color and emphasize texture in shade or overcast. Many nature photographers are simply screwing on a polarizer without understanding how it works, mistakenly believing that merely having it attached is sufficient. When used properly, a polarizer is one of the most valuable tools in your bag for creating rich, evocative landscape photos.
When used improperly, it can mess up your image in a way that no amount of postprocessing can fix. The amount of polarization any composition calls for is a creative decision that can make or break an image. And, unfortunately, a misoriented polarizer is worse than no polarizer. With no Photoshop substitute to help you recover, your only option is to get the polarization right at capture. I'll show you how to make the most of a polarizer and provide pro secrets on how to use it in situations you may not have considered.
Why Use A Polarizer?
A polarizer can transform a lackluster scene into a photograph with depth, richness, saturation and contrast. With reflections minimized by a polarizer, pale blue sky is transformed to a deep blue, the natural color and texture of rocks and foliage pop, and clouds that were barely visible suddenly snap into prominence. Or imagine mountains reflected in a still alpine lake—as you rotate your polarizer, the reflection is replaced by rocks and leaves dotting the lake bed; keep turning, and the reflection returns.
How To Think Beyond The Blue Sky1 Look down! As nice as the effect on the sky is, it's the polarizer's subtler ability to reduce glare in overcast or shade that I find irreplaceable. Lock your eyes on a reflective surface and rotate the polarizer. The effect is most obvious on water, or wet rocks and leaves, but even when completely dry, most rocks and leaves have a discernible sheen. As you rotate the polarizer, harsh glare is replaced by natural color and texture; continue rotating, and the glare reappears. The glare is minimized when the scene is darkest.
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2 Experiment with the middle of the range. Regardless of the effect, there's no rule that requires you to turn the polarizer to one extreme or another (maximum or minimum reflection). Rotate the outer element slowly and look carefully through the viewfinder as the scene changes. Stop when you achieve the desired effect. This is particularly useful when shooting reflections. In the North Lake autumn reflection scene, I was able to find a midpoint in the polarization that kept the best part of the reflection on the mountains and trees, while still revealing the submerged granite rocks at my feet.
3 Chase rainbows. Dialed to just the right point, a polarizer can make a rainbow stand out more by darkening background clouds. On the other hand, dialing a polarizer to cut reflections will make the rainbow disappear.
In this example, the rain was dumping as I waited for the image above, but I had just driven through clearing skies to the west, and I knew it wouldn't be long before the clearing reached Yosemite Valley. When the rainbow appeared, I dialed my Singh-Ray polarizer while peering through my viewfinder; maximum polarization erased the rainbow completely, but I found a partial setting that revealed the rainbow while darkening the sky.
Do More With Your Polarizer
It’s the ultimate outdoor photography landscape filter, and we’ll show you how to do more than just darken skies
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
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5 Is this a good scene for a polarizer? When you approach a scene, ask yourself, does this scene call for a polarizer? Get used to trying your polarizer for everything you possibly can. To determine the polarizer's effect, rotate the outer element 360 degrees as you peer through your viewfinder or while viewing the LCD in live-view. Often, just holding the polarizer to your eye and rotating it slowly is enough to determine its benefit. Either way, if you can't see a change, you probably don't need to worry about a polarizer.
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Three Polarizer Pitfalls To Avoid
> Lost light. A polarizer costs you one to two stops of exposure, depending on the polarizer and the amount of polarization you dial in. Since aperture manages depth, landscape photographers usually compensate for the lost light with a longer shutter speed—one more reason to use a tripod.
> Differential polarization. Because a polarizer's effect varies with the direction of the light and wide lenses cover such a broad field of view, light strikes different parts of a wide scene from different angles. The result is differential polarization: parts of the scene that are more polarized than others.
Differential polarization is particularly troublesome in the sky, appearing as an unnatural transition from light to dark blue across a single frame. This effect often can be reduced, but rarely eliminated, with careful dodging and burning in Photoshop. Better yet, avoid images with lots of boring blue sky.
It helps some people to understand that a wave of light oscillates perpendicular to its direction of motion—picture the way a wave in the middle of the ocean rises and falls as it advances. The wave moves forward, but the water moves up and down. In simple terms, by removing light that oscillates in a specific direction, a polarizing filter removes reflection. Polarization (reflection reduction) is most pronounced when your lens points 90 degrees (perpendicular) to the direction of the sun (or other light source); it's least effective when the lens points directly toward or away from the sun. A circular polarizer, which is what you want for today's DSLRs, screws to the front of your lens. Rotating the polarizer's outer element relative to its fixed, inner element varies the orientation and amount of polarization. You can see its effect through your viewfinder or on your live-view LCD. |
Do More With Your Polarizer
It’s the ultimate outdoor photography landscape filter, and we’ll show you how to do more than just darken skies
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
| Gary Hart's Recipe For Using A Polarizer > Always on (unless it's night) > No other filters except a graduated neutral-density filter, when needed > Compose my shot and lock it in place on my tripod > Turn the polarizer to get the effect I want > Expose the scene > Check for lens flare, and shield, if necessary > Click > JUST DO IT! |
Most of the best polarizer manufacturers offer a low-profile version that minimizes vignetting. Low-profile polarizers typically cost more, they sometimes require a special lens cap, which can be a minor annoyance, and they don't have external threads to accommodate another filter.
How I Use My Polarizer
> It's almost always on. Since I'm all about simplicity in the field, and determining whether I need a polarizer and then installing or removing it as needed is more trouble than it's worth, each lens has its own polarizer that never comes off during daylight hours. I remove my polarizer only when I need more light; but remember, I'm always on a tripod, so unless it's night or I'm dealing with wind or water motion, the light lost to the polarizer isn't a concern (Image 6).
But shooting with no polarizer is better than using an incorrectly oriented polarizer. If you're going to follow my "always on" polarizer approach, you must be diligent about rotating the polarizer and checking its effect on each composition or risk doing more harm than good to your image.
> Protection. Like many photographers, I always use a filter as protection for my front lens element; unlike many photographers, I don't use UV or skylight filters. While it's possible to stack a polarizer with a UV or skylight filter, I don't. Instead, because it almost never comes off, my polarizer doubles as protection for the front lens element.
| How To Stretch Your Polarizer Budget If you have a lot of different-sized lenses, buying a polarizer for each can get expensive in a hurry. Not all scenes benefit equally from a polarizer, and photographers on a budget can't always afford one for every lens. A viable solution is to buy one for your largest-diameter lens and use step-up/step-down adapters for your other lenses. As long as you're shooting on a tripod, another solution is simply to hold the large polarizer in front of the smaller lens as you shoot. Just take care not to have your hand in the shot! |
Do More With Your Polarizer
It’s the ultimate outdoor photography landscape filter, and we’ll show you how to do more than just darken skies
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
Resources |
 Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue Polarizer |
| B+W (Schneider Optics) www.schneideroptics.com Heliopan (HP Marketing Corp.) www.hpmarketingcorp.com HOYA (THK Photo) www.thkphoto.com Kenko (THK Photo) www.thkphoto.com Pro Optic (Adorama) www.adorama.com Singh-Ray www.singh-ray.com Sunpak (ToCAD) www.tocad.com Tiffen www.tiffen.com |
> The polarizer and lens hoods. To anyone who knows what a pain it is to rotate a polarizer with a lens hood in the way, I have a simple solution: Remove the lens hood. I never use a lens hood. Ever. This is blasphemy to many nature shooters, but personally I hate lens hoods, which always seem to be in the way. Like I said, I strive for simplicity in the field. But beware! Jettisoning the lens hood must come with the understanding that lens flare is real and sometimes impossible to correct after the fact.
When there's a chance direct sunlight will strike my front lens element, I check to see if shielding the lens helps. With my composition ready and the DSLR on my tripod, I peer through my viewfinder and shield my lens with my hand or hat or whatever is handy. If the scene becomes darker and more contrasty or random fragments of light appear and disappear when my lens is shaded, I know I have lens flare and need to manually shield my lens while exposing. Of course, if the sun is part of the composition, no shading in the world will eliminate lens flare.
All Polarizers Are Not Created Equal
Use only quality polarizers; you don't need to spend a fortune, but neither should you skimp. Not only does the quality of the optics affect the quality of your results, but I've also seen many poorly made polarizers simply fall apart for no apparent reason.
I advise buying polarizers that are commensurate with your glass—if you have top-of-the-line lenses, it makes no sense to use anything but top-of-the-line polarizers. I use Singh-Ray, but other quality brands include B+W, Heliopan, HOYA, Kenko, Pro Optic, Sunpak and Tiffen.
Like anything else in photography, using a polarizer is an acquired skill that improves with use. You don't need to immediately jump in with both feet, but I suspect once you tune in to the polarizer's benefits, you'll have a hard time photographing nature without one.
Solutions: Big B&W Prints Made Easy
Quick tips for Adams-esque results
| Epson Stylus Pro 4900 |
When he was working in a black-and-white darkroom with glass plates and later with film negatives, Ansel Adams frequently made very large prints. His dramatic scenes of the American landscape, rendered in black-and-white, called for prints that could show every razor-sharp detail. For Adams, the printing process was both art and craft. The art lay in determining how to render each aspect of the image while the craft was translating that vision to the light-sensitive, emulsion-coated paper.
Today, it's easy to become complacent about the craft side of making a print. We have tools that are both immensely powerful and easy to use. You don't have to be a good craftsman to get a pretty good print, but if you're not satisfied with pretty good, we have some tips to get you on the road to gallery-quality.
1 It Starts With The Image File. If we were still shooting film, we'd be saying it starts with the negative, and that's how you should be thinking of your photograph from the moment of initial exposure. Having the most detail and the best possible exposure from the outset puts you on the path to top-echelon prints. Otherwise, you're always going to be fighting against shortcomings and trying to coax detail where it has been lost. Take care to get the exposure perfect. If possible, bracket in the field to give yourself options down the road. You may have met photographers who say they never review images in the field and who say they can tell the proper exposure without the use of a light meter. Maybe they can, but if you have the DSLR on a tripod and you're shooting a landscape, chances are, you have the time to do a quick check of the composition on the LCD screen and call up the histogram to be sure you aren't clipping.
2 Shoot In Color. We always suggest shooting in color and converting to black-and-white in the computer. This gives you the most image information in your image file. A number of DSLRs do an excellent job in monochrome mode, and we like using that mode in the field for getting a quick look at how a scene will render, but when it's time to make the critical exposure, do it in color.
3 Shoot In RAW. This one is a no-brainer. If you're looking for the most detail and best tonality, you have to shoot in RAW. As good as JPEG compression is, it's still compression. If you want to make Adams-esque prints, start with a RAW file.
4 Convert To Black-And-White. There are lots of options for doing the conversion. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom have sophisticated controls, as does Apple Aperture. Our favorite choice is Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for its combination of power and a simple photography-oriented interface, and the fact that it gives you a layered file, which gives you even more control over the image as you proceed to printing.
5 Set Your Image Resolution To 300 dpi. There's no shortage of opinions about this point on the Internet, but we prefer to keep it simple. Set your image resolution to 300 dpi, and if that doesn't leave you with as large of a print as you'd like, up-res with a program like onOne Perfect Resize (this is the new name for Genuine Fractals). Boosting resolution isn't ideal, but if you start with a large image file that has a lot of image data, the resizing algorithms do a very good job. We prefer this to resampling in Photoshop most of the time.
6 Print In Color Or Monochrome Mode? This one is a little more subjective. Printer drivers and inksets do a very good job in pure black-and-white modes, but for the best possible prints, we still like to print in full color. For most images, this gives you added depth and dimension. It also lets you give the image a warm or cool tone, if you'd like.
7 High-Quality Paper. The printer manufacturers make excellent papers that have been designed to give you optimum image quality with their printers. There are several third-party paper manufacturers who make a variety of alternatives. Ultimately, this is a subjective choice. A glossy paper will show detail better, and it will make incredibly rich black areas. Satin and matte papers give a slightly softer effect. Watercolor paper is much softer still. For highest impact and an Adams-esque look, we suggest glossy or possibly matte papers.
Be A Modern Ansel Adams
Top tips to create high-drama landscapes
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
Ansel Adams was an accomplished musician, as well as maybe the finest landscape photographer of all time. He famously described a negative as the score and the print as the performance. Looking at the body of Adams' work, one could say that his images harken to the big, dramatic Romantic symphonies of Beethoven more than the more mild-mannered Classical chamber suites of Haydn. Drama! In Adams' best-known photographs of the American landscape, one can't escape the sense of high drama he conveyed. He loved the great scenic vistas—the rugged mountains and wild rivers of the West—and he tried to convey the emotion he felt when seeing special places like Yosemite Valley in his photographs. No photograph could match the scene itself, but Adams worked hard as an artist and as a craftsman to distill these places into two-dimensional photographs.
For many nature photographers, Adams is still held up as the great inspiration for their love of photography. Many of us would like to be a modern Ansel Adams. In this article, we explore some compositional devices and technical tips for adding drama to your landscape photographs. These techniques won't magically transform you into the reincarnation of Adams, but we'll give you some things to think about the next time you're out in the field trying to capture the essence of a grand scenic vista and translate it into a photograph.
1 Use Foreground Elements To Create A Sense Of Depth. In this well-known Adams' photograph of Mount Williamson as seen from Manzanar, he set up his camera to give the boulder in the foreground the same relative size as the mountains in the background. The result is an image that conveys a vast expanse of land, and it invites the viewer to move through the scene. If he had used a longer focal-length lens on his 8x10-inch view camera or if he had simply changed the camera position, he could have eliminated the boulders from the frame, but the result would have been a less dramatic image.
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Be A Modern Ansel Adams
Top tips to create high-drama landscapes
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| This Article Features Photo Zoom |
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6 Seek Bold Color Opposites For Drama. Adams is primarily known for black-and-white photography, but if you prefer color, you can still put his techniques to use. Where he used contrast, you can use color contrast by shooting color opposites. Think of the color wheel with red at the top, green on the lower right and blue on the lower left. Yellow hues would be roughly opposite the violets and blues, magenta is roughly opposite the greens, and cyan is roughly opposite the reds. For dramatic color contrast, look for these color opposites and frame accordingly. In this photograph, the bold yellow aspens contrast with the azure sky and dark green conifers.
7 Shoot The Moon. Adams often included the moon in his photographs, most famously in Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. In addition to adding a point of visual interest, as in this image taken at Mono Lake, the moon lends cosmic perspective to a scene. The trick is having a moon in the shot and not having a textureless white disc. To get the exposure right, use this simple rule: Take the reciprocal of your ISO and ƒ/8. If you're set at ISO 400, make your shutter speed 1⁄400 sec. (bracket at 1⁄320 and 1⁄500 sec.) at ƒ/8. Adjust this basic exposure for depth of field or handholding as necessary.
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8 Print Big For Big Drama. Size always makes an impact. In his darkroom, Adams made prints large and small, but he made frequent use of an enlarger that was built on tracks so he could make especially big enlargements by projecting the negative to a piece of paper on the wall. Today, high-quality inkjet printers give you the ability to make big 16x20-inch and larger prints. A dramatic photograph looks best in a big print. It's really that simple.
Solutions: On The Slide
Slider dollies add interest to your DSLR time-lapse and motion shooting
Labels: How-To, Camera Technique
| Cinevate Atlas 30 DSLR Slider with all-terrain, nonskid feet. |
The recent trend in jerky, handheld, rapid-fire, jump-cut TV defies this rule, but novice filmmakers would do well to start with less nausea-inducing techniques. As DSLR filmmaking has taken off, camera movement has become more common. The small, light cameras lend themselves to handholding and other motion, so talented cinematographers have found ways to make good use of the mobility without necessarily resorting to any kind of crazy movement. Handheld shoulder rigs from Novoflex, Redrock Micro, Zacuto and others are popular mobile options for some situations. Steadying rigs from VariZoom, Glidecam and Steadicam give a different look—smooth while allowing a camera to move big distances without any of the telltale bouncing of a shoulder rig. On a tripod, pan/tilt fluid heads always have been popular for small movements, and they remain so for DSLR filmmakers, as have full-blown dollies that let the camera move on a cart. A device that has taken off with DSLR filmmakers is a sort of hybrid between a dolly and a pan/tilt head: the slider dolly.
There always has been a general rule that when you're shooting video, the camera should record motion; it shouldn't create motion.
Slider dollies are also useful for time-lapse shooting. As time lapse has exploded in popularity, people are looking for ways to add interest to theirs. Incorporating some camera movement can make a dramatic impact. Check out time-lapse videos on YouTube and Vimeo that show a camera breaking through cornfields and tree branches or that look up at the night sky and have the camera moving throughout the shot. Compared to basic nonmoving time-lapse, having the camera on a slider dolly will make yours stand out.
Some of the most popular slider dollies for DSLR shooting are made by Kessler Crane and Cinevate. The Kessler CineSlider is made for heavy rigs, and it's overkill for most DSLR work.
For DSLRs, the Kessler Pocket Dolly, Kessler Stealth and the new Philip Bloom Signature Series Pocket Dolly are solid options. Cinevate makes the Atlas 10, Atlas 30, Atlas 200, Atlas FLT and Pegasus Carbon sliders. To see individual specs and prices, go to their respective websites at www.kesslercrane.com andwww.cinevate.com.
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