BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

On the Road to Carolina Beach, NC

This is an exceptionally busy time of year for nature photographers. After finishing up in Helen, GA teaching a class for the PPA of GA, I'm now in Carolina Beach, NC, teaching a class for the PPA of NC. This is such a great time of year to be here. The people haven't really showed up yet and the photo ops are incredible. There is a great cyprus swamp with blooming flowers around it, a great arboretum. Tomorrow, we're off to take a ferry to Bald Head lighthouse and to photograph an historic city in the vacinity.

With the class out today we worked on some special effects imagery, including panning and multiple exposures. The class is all professional level photographers, so they pretty much wanted to be left to their own devices after my instructional slide presentation, giving me a rare opportunity to photograph a few of my own images. Of course, I really can't resist sharing ideas with other photographers. One of the best things about using digital when teaching in the field is that I can show someone exactly what I'm talking about and what I'm trying while it's happening.

I found a great small stand of trees with some small green bushes in the foreground. I thought that it would make a great multiple, so I called the class over to show them the technique. After seeing the first image, those with multiple capability cameras went off to work on their own multiple exposure ideas. But, some did not have multiple exposure capability. So, I showed them how to achieve the same effect with a single exposure, while panning upwards, keeping the trees in the same line as much as possible.

Despite the fact that the weather was a bit rainy and unpredictable, we managed to work "between the rain drops," and had a great and very productive shooting day!

Breaking the Language Barrier When Traveling

"Due cappucini, un normale e un decaffinato, per favore."

This became the phrase my partner, Jed Manwaring learned to speak the best when we were in Italy last Spring. After all, if you are a coffee drinker, you learn the essentials wherever you go! He did also learn "please, thank you, hello", and a few other phrases to get by and be considered a "friendly American". Reflecting on our trip of a year ago, it got me thinking again about how important it is to try to speak the language of a place you visit, even just a few words, to allow you to connect with the people. I can speak from first hand experience that it has helped me gain access to places the average tourist won't ever get to, and allowed me to make better pictures of people, too. I learned how to say "interesting face" "beautiful house/garden", "may I photograph here?" and other general phrases.

As a professional travel photographer, it's my job to get access to places that might provide me unique viewpoints, and to get great pictures of the people. I can't do that if I am hiding behind my self-consciousness, or a lack of willingness to try and speak to strangers. The rest can be a lot of fun hand and charade-like gestures, but what a great way to get involved! For Jed in Italy, using his hands and being willing to laugh about his attempts to communicate made such the difference, and he usually got his ideas across with a good time had by all. Taking the time to learn a few words and then using them also expresses your respect for the culture, and that can open people up to you.

Our 7 weeks provided many photographic opportunities, along with the chance to drink some of the best cappucinos in the world, in my opinion. Ah, what better life than sitting in an outdoor cafe in Montalcino, watching daily life happen before us in Italian subtitles! We're going to do the tour again in May 2006. Check out my website in June for exact tour dates and costs.

My Garbage, a Treasures Trove: Back Ups!!

Over the past three years the idea of "backing everything up" digitally speaking has, for the most part, fallen on deaf ears - my ears, specifically. After all, I had a Mac and the horror stories I heard about shooters and the like losing data and files were resigned to the "poor souls who opted to buy a PC." Well that all changed three days ago and, if not for the late arrival of the garbage man, and my discovery of a treasures trove, this story would not have a happy ending.

Three days ago, following six months of sporadic writing for my newest book, Understanding Digital, a companion to Understanding Exposure, I finally reached the finish line. It was time to move the file from my ever trusty Macintosh Powerbook G-4 over to my Mac G-5. A simple burning of a CD was all it took and, just like the file, it was now sitting securely on the desk top of the G-5. The following day, I opened the file once again to make some minor corrections and did my usual "save" when I was done. Only this time, that famous "rainbow wheel" of the Mac, just kept spinning and spinning and spinning until I finally had to resort to using the "force quit" option. I have done this move many times with other files and software such as Photo-Shop, I-Tunes, and even once when working with my Nikon Cool Scan. But this was the first time the computer got "stuck" while working in Microsoft Office. Following the "force quit" command the desktop looked no worse for wear and, sure enough, there was the folder that held my entire 43,000 word manuscript. Clicking on it revealed a horror right away that I hope I never have to experience again!

The entire text had somehow been completely altered into "computer speak"; in other words, there was not a single word that I could identify! The text NO LONGER existed!

Earlier that morning I chose to straighten up the office and that, of course, included throwing stuff I no longer needed into the garbage. Now, of course, that included the copy of the text for my book which I had burned to the CD. Once I had verfied that the text had indeed been burned onto the CD and transfered over to the G-5, I was just as quick to put this folder into the trash of the Powerbook which I of course had "dumped" the night before.

As far as the local garbage pick-up goes, these guys are here faithfully every morning by 7 a.m. - the sound of the garbage truck will wakes me every morning if I am not already up. However on this day, I had arisen at 6 a.m. and had not really paid attention as to whether the garbage men had come or not. Faced with the only possible recourse I knew, I charged down the back steps, all three floors worth, and went to the garbage room and made the most wonderful of discoveries - the bag of trash I had placed in the bin the night before, as a treasures trove, was still there! The last time I made mincemeat of garbage like that was about 15 years ago when I mistakenly threw out a vaild American Express card. Needless to say, the sense of relief that overwhelmed me was no less intense than the relief I felt at being released from jail in Burjumbura, Burundi in 1987. I had been arrested two days earlier for "spying" (employed by a Tanzanian Rebel Group) according to the charges. Shooting with a 600mm lens out in the "bush" can arouse those kinds of suspicions, at least in Burundi.

Returning upstairs to my office with the CD in hand, I reloaded it onto my PowerBook and this is where it once again rests. After transferring the file to the desktop, I made two more copies and burned them onto a CD and now have these safely stored in a CD wallet. The G-5 is now in the shop, since it was also on that same day that it corrupted a number of TIFF files, refusing to save them as photos but choosing instead to save them as "striped colored bars of sandpaper".

This was my first and, hopefully, last time I will have that kind of scare. There are obviously two lessons here for me; BACK UP EVERYTHING and don't be so smug about owning a Mac. I should also add that since day one of getting started in digital, I have backed up all of my RAW files, making two copies of each folder onto DVD's and also copying the folder onto a 250 gig external hard drive. However, I had never made back-ups of text until this memorable day.

Bryan Peterson

High Speed Photography and Luck

The photo of the spectacular explosion I posted last week was taken at an air show where the U.S. Airforce Thunderbirds performed brilliantly before a huge crowd. I wanted to share with you another photo I took during the show that stunned me almost as much as capturing the picture of the wall of fire.

The photo you see here captured two F-16 fighter jets passing each other at a combined 1200 miles an hour. Each plane was traveling just under mach one, and it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to set my Canon 1Ds Mark II on motor drive. I took only a single frame and, much to my utter surprise, I captured both planes in the frame. Not only that, but they happened to be in a perfect position with respect to each other. I don’t claim this was due to skill or coordination. It was pure luck. My shutter speed was 1/2000th of a second (the camera was set on program) and yet the plane on the left is slightly blurred, which attests to the remarkable speed it was traveling.

The original background was a solid blue sky. The sun was behind the planes and it was too high in the sky to create beautiful lighting. In Photoshop, I turned the two jets into silhouettes and then replaced the mundane sky with stormy, gray clouds. The light coming from the clouds would, indeed, cause the planes to be dark forms had this been the real sky. When two images are composited together, it’s very important to pay close attention to the lighting in both shots. They need to make sense together. When I teach both my Photoshop I and II courses I make this point often.

Use In-Camera Controls Wisely by Peter K. Burian http://www.betterphoto.com/photocourses/PBN01.asp

Many of today’s digital cameras include overrides for controlling color saturation, contrast and sharpness. If your digicam offers these functions, you may be tempted to really boost all three aspects for more "punchy" images. But that can be a mistake, because inappropriate settings can produce unnatural effects as illustrated in the photo above.

A slight increase to sharpness, contrast or color saturation can be useful at times -- if needed for specific reasons. The problem is, very few cameras offer fine control. They require you to make a fairly significant adjustment. If you’re not happy with the results, it’s very difficult to fully correct a major problem using image editing software.

Hint - Evaluate Your Camera: Before you decide to use any of those three controls on a regular basis, make some test shots with your camera. Take some pictures of subjects that you frequently photograph: a person, a landscape and some buildings, perhaps. Start by testing the color saturation adjustment. Take the first image at the Low setting, the second at the Normal setting and the third at the High Saturation setting. When reviewing images on your computer monitor, ask yourself the following questions.

Does high saturation produce a very pleasing effect, or a garish, wet-paint look? Is it ideal for colorful icons that you might find while traveling but totally unsuitable for people pictures? And what advantage does low color saturation provide? When would this option be useful? Use the same testing approach with the Sharpness and Contrast adjustment controls.

Note: Most cameras’ LCD monitors are small and they rarely provide a truly accurate view of an image. Make all of your evaluations on a computer monitor after downloading the JPEG’s. If you don’t have time for extensive testing of your own camera, leave all three parameters at the default (Normal) level. The better digicams will produce surprisingly good results.

Does your camera produce slightly low sharpness, contrast or color richness? No problem. In fact, that’s probably ideal because it’s easy to boost any of the three aspects in a computer. Decreasing their effects (while maintaining a natural "look") is much more difficult. Use the appropriate tools in your image enhancing software. You’ll get ultra fine control and you can adjust the levels until the image looks perfect.

The Bottom Line: After testing dozens of digital compact and SLR cameras, I rarely find a need to increase sharpness, contrast or saturation with in-camera controls. Occasionally, I’ll select a lower level for sharpening or for color saturation, at least for some subjects: portrait and wedding pictures with a “softer” effect. And in very harsh, noonday light, I’ll decrease the contrast level for most types of images. Since it's easy to boost all three parameters in Photoshop or Elements, I’m generally satisfied with the end result.

Subhankar Banerjee's Alaskan Adventure

Subhankar Banerjee, New York Copyright 2005 Jeff Wignall

At one time or another most of us have fantasized about tossing aside our everyday lives and diving headlong into a life of total adventure and creativity--just throwing caution to the wind and following our dreams. Fortunately, most of us come to our senses before we jump off the deep end, spend away the retirement fund and wait for our families to have us committed (and, no doubt, justifiably so). But occasionally one of us slips through the cracks and not only lives their dream, but finds a new life even wilder and more successful than their daydreams. One such person is photographer Subhankar Banerjee.

I first met Subhankar Banerjee this past autumn when I was assigned by Outdoor Photographer magazine to write a profile on him. All I was really told in advance was that he had shot a book on the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--little did I know that this was (sorry for the pun) just the tip of the ice berg.

Seizing the Moment in Travel Pictures

While walking around the village of Newport, County Mayo, Ireland, I encountered this man sitting with his morning paper and coffee. Just as I was framing up the composition, the waitress walked out of the door to come serve him. I had time for one frame, but it's all I needed to capture this moment. I have found that the more I spend time observing daily life around me at home, the more I also see it in the places I travel. The more I can anticipate the action, the more prepared I am to capture it. This one took me by surprise, but instead of missing the shot, I pressed the button on instinct. Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness it's been said...

Right now, I'm prepping my list of what to bring on the tour I'm leading to Western Ireland later this month, and I'm excited to have a new digital camera to bring! It won't make any difference in terms of my timing in capturing the moments, but it will be nice to see that I did get it on the monitor on the camera. Even though I know it's the photographer and not the equipment that makes the creative image, the few pictures I made this week with the Canon 1Ds Mark II have me very excited about taking this camera to Ireland. The quality is awesome! I’ve been testing the camera all this week, but I can't get too far from my laptop or home office right now, as I quickly realized that the flash cards I'd been using for the Canon 10D were not large enough capacity for the 16.7mp file sizes I'm now getting with this new camera! So another order had to be placed for larger and more memory cards.

As a travel photographer, I photograph a lot of events in places I visit - whether they are farmers' markets, sporting events, parades or festivals. Those types of photo opportunities offer me the best opportunites to photograph candids and portraits, but they also will use more memory than doing landscapes or scenics in a day's time, so a portable downloading device may be essential in order to keep photographing without running back to the van or hotel to download to the laptop! The last thing I want to do is lose some special moments because the card is full! (that's like running out of film).

Back at the hotel, I'll quickly review the images on my laptop (not much sleep planned for this photographer!), and copy the “keepers” on to a portable hard drive as backup. I want to have two copies of everything as backup.

Jumping into digital over the past six months has me realizing theimportance of developing a routine in downloading, backing up and organizing the image files. If I don't keep them organized, I'll quickly lose control, and I need quick and efficient retrieval later when I'm back in my office and an editor calls me for scenic pictures of Western Ireland! There are so many choices of software out there, but I'll be using Photoshop CS and Extensis Portfolio to track and work on my images. I have a lot of work ahead of me to get up to speed, digitally speaking. This is such an exciting time in the history of photography - and while I'm not totally giving up film yet, I love being a part of the changing times! I'll post some pictures from the road in future blogs...

A Great Day for Pictures of Ferns and Pink Azaleas!

What a great day we had today! I was hired to teach private photo lessons to two individuals. We were at a great and well known garden in Wheaton, MD called Brookside Gardens. The azalea were in full bloom and lining many pathways with a great array of colors. There was a great area of pristine fern. The greens were that great early spring lime green. We had some great reflections in a small pond area to get started, then moved on to finding good flower subjects. Bright colored flowers were everywhere. We worked on finding interesting subjects with soft, colorful backgrounds.

Backgrounds are critical. Busy backgrounds or a bright highlight can greatly take away from the visual impact of your composition. Backgrounds in bright sunlight are a little known very effective and beautiful background. Distant colorful areas can be used to add color behind your subject. The attached image was shot with a 200mm Nikkor macro lens on a D2X digital camera (making it a 300mm macro). The image was composed to take advantage of the brightly lit azalea bush 50 feet away. The green (fern) against pink (azalea) composition heightens visual interest.

After 3 and a half hours, the students went to lunch to return to Brookside to work on what they learned and I returned home to catch up on work and get ready to go on the road again next Sunday for a week to Wilmington, NC to teach a class at the PPA of NC.

Rule of the Thirds in Photography

For many years, I've wanted to photograph explosions. I've wanted to incorporate them into my 'components library' for use as composites with other images, but they are obviously hard to come by. If a pyrotechnician is hired to create the desired blast, it can cost about $1000 per explosion, with no money-back guarantees if you don't like the pictures.

Yesterday, I brought my family to a spectacular airshow in Smyrna, Tennessee to witness a demonstration of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. As part of the show, biwing planes took to the skies and created mock aerial dogfights. Part of their engagement were several dramatic explosions on the ground as if they were on a bombing mission. The last explosion was the most dramatic -- a wall of fire that took my breath away. I didn't expect it, but fortunately I had the presence of mind of keep my eyes glued to the viewfinder to get this shot. It lasted for only a second or two.

As you gain experience and confidence in photography, fundamental concepts become more and more automatic to you. It's like learning a language. At first, you translate words in your mind into English and then use them. Later, you don't even think about them as they flow off your tongue. In photography, concepts such as depth of field, choice of shutter speed, and compositional decisions go through your mind without any hesitation.

One of the basic ideas behind composition is the Rule of Thirds, where important lines in a photo are placed along the upper or lower horizontal third or the left or right vertical third of the frame. This rule can certainly be broken, but it's a good guideline to follow in a majority of your pictures. Without even consciously thinking about it, that's what I did here. The edge of the fireball, which represents the boldest graphic line in the photo, was placed in the upper horizontal third.

I was very excited to get this shot. It made my day.

SELECT THE RIGHT INKJET PHOTO PRINTER

Tips Provided by Peter K. Burian www.peterkburian.com
BetterPhoto Instructor

http://www.betterphoto.com/photocourses/PBN01.asp Digital Photography with Guest Instructor Peter Burian

Whether you shoot with a digital camera or scan photographs, print making can be one of the most rewarding aspects of photography. In the past, you needed a darkroom and a great deal expertise to make beautiful color or black-and-white prints. Today, anyone can make prints that are suitable for framing, without working with caustic chemicals. The pre-requisite of course, is a printer designed to produce optimal results when outputting photos.

There’s no simple method for identifying the ideal inkjet photo printer, because that depends on individual budgets, preferences, and printing plans. However, if you’re considering a letter-size inkjet photo printer that will make beautiful photo prints, look for one with the following features:

* A resolution of 1440dpi. Much higher resolution capabilities are available. However, the difference between a print made at 1440dpi and another made at 2880dpi is noticeable only by a critical observer.

* Six ink colors, preferably in individual tanks. Four color printers simply cannot reproduce an adequately wide range of subtle hues and tones. Individual ink tanks are ideal because you can replace only the tank that runs out. In the long run, that’s more economical than buying a large cartridge that includes three or six ink colors.

* An ink droplet size of 4 picoliters, or preferably smaller if you’re a perfectionist or make very large prints. Some machines generate droplets as small as 1.5 picoliters. (A picoliter is a millionth of a liter.) Smaller droplets offer several benefits: more subtle the gradations of color, more detail in the print and a smoother overall appearance.

* A lightfast or print permanence rating of 25 or more years. Such ratings refer to the life of a print (framed, matted and displayed under glass) before significant fading becomes noticeable. The latest Canon Pixma http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=103, Epson Stylus Photo http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductCategory.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=-8165 and HP Photosmart http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/generic_category.do?storeName=storefronts&landing=printers&category=inkjets&catLevel=1 printers all meet or exceed the 25 year rating when using the printer makers’ premium or pro grade photo papers.

(For more information on permanence issues, visit the www.wilhelm-research.com web site.)

Hint:The quickest way to compare the specifications for several machines of several brands is on a photo retailer’s website. Also read test reports in photographic magazines or on the Web. Such Reviews can be invaluable in identifying machines that will meet your expectations.