Sep 2, 2011 | Field Reports
I’ve written about and use the Rogue Flashbenders and Rogue Grid (which I’m actually using this very moment) and wanna tell you they now have custom gel sets for both. The Rogue Gels are pretty darn slick in that they are made to fit perfectly, come in a pouch that not only protects them but tells you their use. You look closely you’ll see lots of shooters using these and now with these custom gel sets I’m sure more will as well. You can get either set right here and be shooting instantly with some great light!
Sep 2, 2011 | Field Reports
The thunderheads were brewing, I got the tripod out, D7000 out and I was ready to shoot a video in the rain to demonstrate just how well the new LensCoat RainCoat works. Not a drop of rain fell at the house! OK then, I’ll wait until a sunny day and use the hose to make it rain to add a little humor just to say, “Damn fine product” but the time has simply slipped away from me. So instead, you can look at the video on the LensCoat site that tells you the story. Some of the best photography is in the worse weather. The LensCoat RainCoat permits you to take advantage of that!
Sep 1, 2011 | Field Reports
Jake (our son for those who don’t know) is simply knocking the pixels out of the park! Here’s his latest spread(pg45). Congrats kid, now I know what we never saw you at Osh!
Aug 30, 2011 | Field Reports
“What am I teaching?” Next week is Photoshop World and I’ve been receiving more and more emails with this question. There is so much to see, hear and learn at PSW, one simply can’t make every class so prioritizing is a must. If you’ve not grabbed the new, outstanding, free Photoshop World app for your iPhone/iPad, grab it because it permits you to create your own special schedule of classes you must attend. I will be of course teaching with my good friend, the amazing Joe McNally, the Napp Safari. We have a brand new locale for our shoot that I know will be a haunting good time. I’ll be on the show floor in the Peach Pit Theater talking wildlife photography and I have two classes I would like you to attend. Aviation Photography on the 8th at 8:15 and ACR Landscape on the 9th at 8:15 (ouch!). So why would you wanna get up early and come to my classes, just what might your learn?
You point your lens at a bird, rock, boat, car, baseball player or perhaps a plane every now and then? Then you’ll leave this class learning tons. What, it’s not just for aviation photographers? Aviation photographers will dig the subjects in all the photographs the most because all the photos are of planes. But the techniques from metering, panning, background, depth of field, static or moving targets are the same for birds or sports or planes. Once we cover these basics we move on to much more important topics like composition, communicating motion and the most important, romance! Yeah, you can bring romance even to a photo of a plane if you understand the basics and connect it to exposure and run that through your heart. I’m sure you’ve heard that saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” You could say that same thing about my classes. So if you’re into photography and getting the most out of every click, you might just like this class. Wanna take your photography to the next level? I know I’ll give you at least one tip to accomplish that. And if we go for the home run and you have an interest in aviation photography, I might just take you down the path I’ve gone with this exhilarating and exciting photographic pursuit! And if not, you might just find out it’s a pretty cool photographic pursuit. Oh yeah, there will be some finishing tricks as well!
Now what’s this ACR Landscape class all about? Most know how to use ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) since it’s native in Lightroom, Bridge and Photoshop. But how many of you compose your landscape photos using ACR in your mind? I have found many photographers pass by amazing photos because they have not spent enough time playing with our finishing tools to know instinctively how they can make a great photograph from what appears to be zero. Even more important I feel is knowing these tools so they can help you at the point of capture to arrange the elements in the frame so you not only entertain the viewer of your photograph, but grab their heart strings. How am I going to teach this so in an hour, so bloody early in the morning it will not only make sense but you can use it? Well, I’m going to teach it in a totally new way that I think will almost guarantee you’ll learn the concepts, techniques and be able to apply them the next time you go shooting.
I’m teaching and presenting during the entire conference but these are the only two classes where I’ve taken all the step by step notes for you which you’ll find in the massive Photoshop World Workbook. These are also the only two classes that are so bloody early! And if that’s not enough, I have bribery, give aways to get you to my classes! If you see me, say hi, introduce yourself and hopefully I’ll see you in class and have the opportunity to share with you what I’ve been so fortunate to learn behind the camera!
Aug 25, 2011 | Field Reports
Yeah, if you don’t have it sharp to tack sharp when you go click, it never will be sharp! There is no fix at this time for a fuzzy image (which is just as bad as a sharp image of a fuzzy idea). There are a lot of variables in getting a sharp image and getting them all perfect every time you go click. The only way to get there is practicing them perfectly. And that takes time. One major problem of having a major website like I do with thousands of pages of information (and blogging as much as I do) is information gets buried that might be of big help. Since I seem to be talking about elements that I feel that need to be in place when you go click, I thought I should repost a previous post on what I do to get a sharp image when I go click.
From the get go, the AF settings in the D3 have confused folks (and all Nikon DSLRs since). I was no different in the beginning but lucky for me, I was able to ask two of the lovely ladies at NPS back when what to do. They told me exactly what the designer of the new AF system at Nikon told them when asked which is the best. “21 Dynamic, it’s the best!” And that’s what I use the majority of the time ever since. That means, I go into the Custom Setting Menu > Autofocus > a3 Dynamic AF Area > 21 points and then select the AF sensor I want to use. That’s how both of these images were taken. To take advantage of this selection, the lever on the back of the D3x is pointing at the middle icon, not the top or the bottom icon, but the middle icon. This is what I use for basically all my landscape, people and wildlife work and it serves me very well.
And while the power of the D3 AF system makes it possible to not have to manual focus all the time (I still manual focus a lot, old habit), it’s still only part of the equation to getting a sharp photo. The other part is spending a lot of time with gulls so when the great opportunity like the Osprey appears, I’m ready for it. I practice A LOT! Yeah, after doing this for 30yrs, I still practice this on an almost daily basis! Personally, I don’t know of any other way. Now I realize these videos are a bit old (shot before I knew anything about video), but the techniques none the less are still the same. So if you don’t know the techniques that go along with the technology, check these out.
Now I really find personally that using the Nikon AF system is this simple, 21 Dynamic and go, it just works. If you find though the camera searching for focus alot, more times then not, it’s the pilot that’s the problem and not the system. That’s where practice kicks in. And the time I don’t use this AF setting? You’re lookin at it. When I have something in the sky, a single bird, a giant flock and I want the front of the flock sharp or planes in the sky, I switch over to Auto Area AF or what I simply call Triple A. What does this do? It gives you all the attributes of Dynamic; Focus Tracking, Focus Lock and Color Recognition but adds to this list Closest Subject Priority. Added to this is the fact you no longer have to select an AF Sensor to lock onto you subject because the ENTIRE area in your viewfinder is now one, giant AF Sensor! The beauty of this system to me is the ease of operation. All I have to do is move the lever on the back of the camera from the middle icon to the top icon. Wanna go back from Triple A to Dynamic? Don’t have to take the eye away from the action, just flip the lever. Even a Moose can handle that thought process.
Does the AF work 100% of the time? No. Do I focus on a subject, lock focus and then recompose? No! Do I use the back AF Button to activate focus? Can’t get coordinated enough to ever make that work, I’m a spaz! So then do you use the shutter firing button to activate focus? Yes, I can manage that much. Have you tried other combos? What do you think? Do you manual focus? I think I’ve answered that but to make it clear, alot! Will you modify this system since you seem to change other settings with time? I don’t think so, not with the D3 because it works for me. Will it work for you? Only is you go out and practice. If you just set these settings because you read them here and then in a week to two think you can go out shooting and every thing will be sharp, you will be really disappointed in your results. I don’t know anyway around practicing to make this technology work for you and your photography. The D3 AF system does make it possible for this important aspect of photography to take a back stage but it’s still up to you to make it sing!
Aug 24, 2011 | Field Reports
My posting on The Crop brought in a flood of emails, not about cropping but about exposure. The “Don’t give yourself the option of fixing in post” seemed to, ah, intrigue folks. The idea of getting the exposure right in the camera. I’ve written about that many times here on the site. I’ve posted the Teddy Bear exercise which I invented (for film 25yrs ago) and understandably, exposure still eludes many. In Captured, I wrote and illustrated nearly 50pgs on this one topic in an attempt to explain how I approach exposure. I’m hoping this excerpt will open some doors to how I expose and better yet, get some to buy Captured to get the whole explanation. But the bottomline, when I go click, the exposure that I want to communicate what I’m feeling is captured.
“Seeing” light, “feeling” light is such a challenge yet so essential. Getting to the point where you point your lens at that Alaskan Range, know how much exposure compensation to dial in a click takes many clicks before that one from over the years but shooting digital cuts down the learning curve and time by lifetimes if you use it by thinking! Just looking at your own digital images, looking at the metadata and learning from what you did in the past can greatly impact the clicks you make tomorrow. Those images you like, how did you deal with the exposure? Those images you don’t like, how did you expose for them? Remember both so you can repeat the successes and avoid the failures. (Which are still a learning opportunity so don’t be afraid of failure!)
You have a feature on your camera (available on nearly all cameras these days) called Highlight Warning. I affectionately call it Blinkies because that’s what they do. Remember we have a five stop range of light that we can capture with one click (HDR doesn’t work for wildlife). When you have more than five stops of light, when you have 5.1 stops of light, you’re outside the range of the camera’s single click ability to hold detail in highlights and shadows. With the Blinkies turned on, those highlight areas in your photograph that are outside the five stop range literally blink at you, black then white. You have to use your LCD (a good reason to look at it) and have the Highlight Warning turned on in your menus and active on your LCD to see them. When you’re trying to learn light, Blinkies will teach you instantly when you are outside that five stop range. But they can help your photography even more than that! They show you exactly where in your photograph you have lost that highlight information. That’s big time important!
What does the mind’s eye crave first in a photograph? Yeah, light and bright. If you look at those blinkies as not only a possible exposure problem, because blinkies are not necessarily bad, but as something the mind’s eye is guaranteed to latch onto, you can then make the decision of if they are good or bad, not for exposure sake but visual communication sake. It is amazing that your digital camera cannot only teach you about the range of light, but also predict where the mind’s eye is going to go in your photograph and visually show that to you. Wow!
Let’s say you’re photographing that Great Egret, an all white bird. What if you see a couple of small blinkies on its body? Is that a good or a bad thing? The knowledge and sight of blinkies doesn’t mean all is lost. In this case the subject is all white. Is the loss of some detail in that white messing with what you’re communicating visually? Is it taking the mind’s eye somewhere you don’t want it to? I don’t have that answer, you will have to answer those questions when you have it in the viewfinder and on the LCD. Half the battle is knowing what question to ask, your camera can help you there with blinkies. Loosing some detail in a white subject I don’t think is the end of the world though so personally, more than likely I wouldn’t worry about a couple of small blinkies. You have to make that call but at least, you now have a tool to use and a thought process to employ to make an informed decision. Just remember in this process you don’t forget to ask what’s the subject.
Here’s another way to think about it (because you do have to think about it). If you write a paragraph of words and then from that paragraph take away 20% of the words near the beginning of that paragraph, would someone understand what you’re trying to say? Now imagine your photograph between the X & Y axis being 100%. If you don’t have information in 20% of that top area (like blown out clouds) because it’s information lost (or anything else visually distracting), the blinkies are going wild, will someone understand what you’re trying to say visually in your photograph? Don’t lose sight we are visual communicators and one of our key methods of communicating visually is with light!
When you start thinking about light and the levels of light in your photograph that you control via exposure in this way, you start to feel it in your photograph. The photograph of the White Ibis, if you look at the butts of some of them (bird perverts), you’ll notice there is NO detail, it’s just paper white. When I looked on the LCD to do a visual check because white subjects in the shade are not a great light situation, I could see blinkies. Yet, the photo is in the book and the image is a favorite. Why?
The mangrove forest in which the ibis are standing in front of is a real busy one, real busy. Those roots go every which way and instantly grab the eye’s attention. Standing in the water and looking through the viewfinder, they came glaring in. But where are those roots in the photograph? They are in the shade and lost because of the exposure range. What’s the subject (there’s that question again)? The subject is the line of Ibis and their reflection, White Ibis in mixed light. It’s not one individual Ibis. What’s the light range between the background, the roots and the subject, the Ibis? You think, 7, 8, 9, 10 stops? How many stops do we know the camera can capture in one click? Five right. So then knowing the meter is going to sacrifice the shadows (why, because of that light and bright thing the mind’s eye craves), with that kind of light range, the roots in the shadows will go black making their busyness disappear literally in the shadows and creating a background that makes the ibis blaze off the page. That’s feeling the light and letting it work for our photography. I exposed with my normal -1/2 dialed in. Normal?
What do I mean by “normal” exposure compensation dialed in? How many of you shot film? Do you remember how we would take Kodachrome 64 and rate it at ASA 80? Do you remember why we did that? Because that underexposure of 1/3 stop saturated the colors and made the shadows go a little deeper black. For those same reasons and some more (like protecting some highlights), color saturation and darker shadows, the majority of the time I underexpose by 1/2 stop. That’s all that was done in this case but that made those roots a little darker, the red in the bills a little more vibrant and possibly brought one or two of the blinking pixels back within five stops.
Light, mind’s eye, exposure, they are all so intertwined I don’t really believe they can be separated. And when you think of these as all ways of expressing emotions, I don’t think they should be separated. For some though this “touchy-feelie” approach to combining shutter speeds and apertures just won’t work when it comes to making an exposure (just gotta have those numbers). I understand that but guess what, since I don’t use that method, I can’t begin to address that side of exposure. I think the last thing the world needs is another technically perfect photograph. What the world needs are more photographs with passion. You have to decide if the system you have brings to life the drama you see and if it does, disregard this conversation. I bet though you might find some wiggle room where there is something in my images you would like to incorporate into yours. If that’s the case, you might just want to try feeling the light. The worst that can happen is you delete the photograph, right? And the best thing, your exposure problems disappear!
