BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

Visit to a Maasai Village

By Jim Zuckerman

We visited a Maasai village here in Kenya, and as usual it was a great experience.  The people are very friendly and warm, and we always get great pictures of this proud culture.  I find that when I return to a place, my pictures are often better the second time around.  That was true in this instance, and I’ve included four of my favorites.  The silhouette of the two people was digitally composited with a telephoto shot of the sun, and the semi-silhouette of the single figure standing at one of the entrances of the compound was enhanced with color and contrast.

What I look for in a situation like this are compelling faces and images with graphic compositions.  I find that the strong graphic designs add a powerful artistic component, and they hold people’s attention.  That’s why I am especially pleased with the silhouette of the two people because their shapes are so dynamic.  When I took this shot, we were in the middle of a severe dust storm.  I was terribly afraid of the damage that wind blown sand can do to camera equipment.  Many years ago, when I was shooting a medium format film camera, I went through a dust storm in Arizona and it cost me $850 in damage to my camera.

This time the Canon camera held up well and no damage apparently occurred. The photo of the two people was taken with my 500mm f/4 IS telephoto hand-held.  This is not something I usually do, but I didn’t bring a tripod and I didn’t expect that I’d be shooting the long lens.  I saw this composition and didn’t want to approach the subjects for fear that they would change positions.  I wanted the candid image as I saw it, so I quickly switched lenses and shot into the bright sky.

Lion Cub in a Tree

By Jim Zuckerman

Even though there are a lot of animals in the game parks in Kenya, the areas they inhabit are vast.  Sometimes we can drive around for a long time and not see anything special.  For most people, the highlights of any African safari are the cats – leopards, lions, and cheetahs. The smaller cats like servals, genets, and caracals are happy finds, but the real excitement is from photographing intimate shots of the big cats.

After driving around Samburu Game Park for a while and not being inspired by what we saw, my tour group found three lion cubs in a tree.  We had seen the mother earlier, although she was not in a good location to photograph her.  She was hunting for her young and earlier had tucked them away in a tree for safety.  The picture you see here is one of the three siblings.  I love how huge those ears look in proportion to the cub’s face, and the alert expression makes the picture.  I also like the soft light we had.  You can never go wrong with diffused ambient light for outdoor portraits of both animals and people.

I took this photo with my 500mm f/4 IS lens at f/4 with a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second.  The ISO was 200, and the camera rested on a bean bag for stability.

A Breathtakingly Beautiful Bird

by Jim Zuckerman

I am writing this from Samburu Game Park in Kenya, where today I photographed one of the most beautiful birds in Africa -- the lilac breasted roller.  Every photographer covets the opportunity to get close enough to this bird so it can fill the frame.  The incredible color and detail are so stunning that it's an exciting moment to see it up close and to capture it in a photograph. Today I had that chance. 

Even though my van was close -- about 16 feet -- I still had to use a serious telephoto to get a frame-filling portrait.  This photo was taken with my Canon 500mm f/4 IS lens plus a 1.4X teleconverter, giving me 700mm of telephoto magnification.  Because the background sky was white, I used an exposure compensation adjustment of + 1 1/3 f/stops to get this exposure.  A white sky will influence the meter into underexposure in an attempt to make the scene middle toned, as all meters are programmed to do.  To make a white sky middle toned means underexposing the shot, and this is not what I wanted to do.  To compensate for this underexposure, I set the camera to overexpose by 1 1/3.  The result turned out perfect.

Normally, I feel that a white sky is distracting as I mentioned in my blog yesterday about the giraffe.  However, in this case the background almost looks like a studio setup, and I liked the result.  The colors are so vivid that the monochromatic sky simply acts as an unobtrusive environment.  There is really nothing else to look at here except this extraordinary bird. 

I used a bean bag to steady the lens as I photographed out of the roof hatch.  The ISO was 320 and my camera settngs were 1/125 at f/5.6.  I would have preferred a faster speed with such a long telephoto, but the murky lighting didn't permit that unless I raised the ISO, which I didn't want to do.

By Jim Zuckerman

I was really excited today here in Kenya because I got a picture that I’ve wanted for years.  Other photographers have photographed giraffes at water holes where their legs are spread, but I never had that opportunity to get a good shot of this until today.  I had just arrived with my group at the Sweetwaters Permanent Tented Camp, and we were on our way to lunch when a beautiful reticulated giraffe approached the pond in front of the restaurant.  With just a little hesitation, the animal assumed the vulnerable position that enables him to drink.  I had my camera with me but not my tripod, but I pulled out my 500mm f/4 IS Canon lens and, hand-holding this monster lens, used a shutter speed of 1/640th of a second to capture the wonderful moment.   The image stabilization feature helped insure it was sharp.

The original sky was white, and since I felt it was distracting (because our eye tends to go to the lightest part of picture first, and I wanted the giraffe to hold all the attention without any distractions) I used Photoshop to insert another sky that made sense with the diffused lighting.  This was taken about 1:30pm, and I was very lucky the sky was overcast.  Mid-day sunlight would have been a disaster.  The contrast would have been too harsh and shadows under the giraffe would have been black.  It would have been a picture that I would never show because it would be so disappointing. With an overcast day, I can shoot from morning to early evening.  When the sky is clear, sunrise and sunset offer the most beautiful lighting, and the middle of the day is used for resting, downloading and organizing images, or simply enjoying the ambience of Africa.

The technique I used to replace the sky was the layer mask procedure I explain in Lesson 2 of my Photoshop:  Creative Techniques course here at Betterphoto.  The tops of the bushes behind the giraffe are very difficult to cut around in Photoshop such that it looks real.  Therefore, instead of cutting them out I blended the clouds with the bottom portion of the image using the gradient tool and the paintbrush tool.  First I pasted the clouds over the entire image of the giraffe, and then with a layer mask (Layer > layer mask > reveal all), I blended the two photos such that the clouds merged with the foliage in a natural way.  It is not 100% perfect because I don't have a Wacom tablet with me.  Instead, I used the track pad on my laptop with is very awkward to work precisely.  The top of the giraffe's back and the clouds don't blend perfectly, but I'll fix that when I get home.  However, I'm 99% happy with this now.

Layer masks are one of the most powerful tools in Photoshop.

Mother and newborn baboon

by Jim Zuckerman

I am in the Amboseli Game Park right now, and this morning was very productive.  I was especially happy to get an amazing series of shots of a newborn baboon.  My driver thought that it was born last night, and it clung to its mother the entire time I and the other people in my photo tour watched it.  Even though the baboons were only about 15 feet away as they sat on the side of the road, I used my 500mm f/4 IS Canon lens plus a 1.4X teleconverter to get these tight close-ups.   The lighting was getting fairly harsh at 8:30AM, so I was glad that the animals were mostly in the shade of a tree with their backs to the sun.

My favorite picture is the one that includes both mother and baby, but the challenge was depth of field.  With an effective 700mm telephoto, depth of field is extremely shallow.  I could get the baby’s face in focus, but if the mother’s head was not on the same plane she wouldn’t be sharp.  When the mother put something in her mouth, her arm brought the baby’s face very close to the same plane as hers, and that’s when I grabbed the shot. 

For all of these images, instead of shooting out of the roof hatch, which is much more comfortable, I got down low and shot out o the window.  This eye to eye perspective produced a more intimate portrait.

Google Earth is the best, true dat, double true!

By Sean Arbabi

Last week, while on my way to a Seattle Mariners game at Safeco Field, I was walking through downtown Seattle with a friend who pointed out the tallest building in Washington. "It used to be the tallest building west of the Mississippi", he stated. Moving close to the front facade, I pointed my wide-angle lens up toward the sky and captured this image. We were trying to make the first pitch of the ball game, so I didn't spend much time trying to find out more about the location; however, I knew I could license the image to a publication or two at a later time, or turn it over to my stock agency to do the same.

Off we went and I didn't think much about the image until it showed up on my computer in Adobe Bridge (Photoshop's media manager for imagery and RAW digital files). Opening the graphic shot, I came to like it more and realized I hadn't gathered enough information for a solid caption. Off to Google Earth - an jammin' free Mac/PC application that let's you go anywhere on Earth- one of those scary I-hope-the-terrorists-don't-get-into-this programs allowing you to fly over mountains, view any landscape at any angle and elevation, and navigate through cities past three-dimensional buildings. It's addicting for sure.

So I typed in Seattle and in a few seconds found my original location of this photo. Through links and information on the building, I was able to gather all the facts and figures I needed. The Columbia Center, the building on the right (along Fourth & Fifth Avenues and Cherry & Columbia Streets) is the tallest skyscraper in the downtown Seattle skyline at 937 feet. It is also the 19th tallest in the US- constructed in 1982 and completed in 1985. The building on the left is the Seattle Municipal Tower, 62 stories high, completed in 1990 (designed by Bessetti Architects).

I hadn't played around enough with the 3D city views in Google Earth and was so amazed by it, I decided to see if I could re-create the view I captured in this virtual globe platform. Sure enough, after a little finageling, I was able to get it pretty close ... I'd say close enough.

Wow. Our world in real-time, available for so many educational functions including a travel photographer gathering caption info for his commercial business.

Unique perspectives

by Jim Zuckerman

When you are looking for unique compositions, don't forget to look upward.  Whether you are in a forest, a building, a festival, or another location or event, sometimes you can find amazing shots simply by looking skyward. This concept is the basis for one of my lessons in the Developing Your Creative Artistic Vision course here at Betterphoto.

This photo was taken in the Marriott Marque hotel in Atlanta.  I used a 15mm fisheye lens to capture the incredible architectural design.  I was very surprised that no one minded if I used a tripod, which I did.  The interior lobby offers an endless variety of compositions, and most of them are upward.

In exposing for this, I took a reading in the side of the frame where I ignored the brilliant center.  Then, I locked that in place with AE lock and took the shot.

Seattle at sunrise

By Sean Arbabi

Being a night owl, I'm not a big morning person- although as an nature and travel photographer, I've had to get up at dawn a ton of times to catch and photograph sunrise.

Sunrise not only has a wonderful quality to it with beautiful light, but air is usually cleaner and clearer. And although the first 15 minutes waking up is painful, I'm always glad I did so when I get out there.

Last Tuesday, before before returning to the Bay Area from the Pacific Northwest, I was due to photograph one of Jimmie Hendrix's guitars at the Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, Washington - one he smashed during a performance (for a Via magazine article). The problem was I needed to reschedule my flight and didn't want to pay the change fee - so I headed to the airport with a friend at 6am, booked myself on stand-by for a noon flight, and headed back to downtown Seattle with another friend (who works in the financial district).

After catching a cab to the EMP arriving there at sunrise, I had a few hours to kill so I decided to photograph the Space Needle which stands right next to EMP. The light was beautiful and clear, there were few people around,

and I spent the next two hours playing around documenting some of the amazing architecture with a few of my wide-angle lenses.

Here are some of the images captured that morning with my Nikon D200 digital SLR camera - images I didn't plan on taking, but was able to get due to certain circumstances, my experience understanding light, as well as creative play with no particular goal in mind. "Chance favors the prepared mind", as Ansel Adams once wrote.

We Have Newfie Pups, Part 3!

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while :-) but here's an update! Our nine Newfoundland puppies are all doing fantastic at about 4 1/2 months old. From a birth weight of 1 1/2 to 2 pounds, they now check in at 53 to 74 pounds! My wife Mary and I kept two - a male and female - and the other seven are thriving at their new homes.

Here are now-and-then pics of our male Newfie pup, Fritz.

Following is Fritz at sunset ... 4 1/2 months and 70 pounds. Note: He's not quite half-size yet!! :-) ... with an expected adult weight of about 160-170 pounds.

 

From my previous blog, here's Fritz at 3 weeks old and 5 pounds:

Thanks, Kerry Drager

Creative Close-ups

Flood plug-in for Photoshop

by Jim Zuckerman

Flood is one of my favorite plug-ins for Photoshop.  It makes realistic reflections, and it can be used in a remarkable number of situations.  The red eye tree frog you see reproduced here was taken during a frog and reptile workshop I gave in St. Louis, and I applied Flood to suggest the flower on which the frog was perched was overhanging a small pool of water. 

The original photo of the frog was taken with a ring flash on a Canon 1Ds Mark II and a 50mm macro lens.  I used f/32 and set the camera on manual exposure mode.  The flash was set to ETTL.  This gave me maximum depth of field and a perfect exposure.

Flood can be purchased at flamingpear.com.