Say Cheese

I went out last night into the garden hoping to practice my night photography skills and get some good shots.  The sky was very interesting.  Some very dark blue sky still to be seen, with white clouds moving by.  I set up my tripod and clicked away.  May I say I froze my tush off and I didn’t wear gloves so my hands were freezing.  Oh well, I wouldn’t have cared if the pictures had turned out.  As it was, I deleted them all.

Perhaps what I should have done is read the part about settings before venturing out.  Better late than never and, at least I didn’t waste any film - thank you for digital photography.  So here are some hints about night photography, courtesy of Digital Photography School.

1. Place camera on a tripod
2. Increase ISO setting to one down from the highest setting on your camera (if your camera’s highest setting is 3200, set it to 1600)
3. Set shutter priority mode on your camera.  If you don’t have this setting, set Night Photography setting.  Both these settings will turn off the flash and that is what we want here.
4. Plug in your external shutter release.  If you don’t have one of these, activate the self timer on your camera.  The self timer will activate once you fully depress the shutter button, giving you a few seconds to remove your hand away from the camera so it is steady when you take the shot.
5. Compose the shot you’d like to take.  Half depress the shutter to see if the camera can find the focus.  If not, then point the camera towards a light source that’s about the same distance as your subject so it can focus.  If you don’t have any other lights, shine your flashlight on the subject until it focuses.
6. Fully depress the shutter and the first picture will be taken.
7. Look at the image in your LCD screen, zooming in if necessary.  If it is too dark the camera hasn’t focused properly.
8. Fix your exposure problem by changing the Exposure Value (EV) setting of your camera.  For images that are too dark, set the EV to -1 or -2 and take the shot again.  If the resulting image is not right, try a lower EV value.
9. Another way to fix exposure problems is to switch to Manual mode.  Use the camera’s menu system to display the shot record (EXIF) data of the first shot you took.  Make a note of the Shutter Speed and Aperture settings.
10. Switch the camera to Manual mode, set the same Aperture and Shutter Speed and then take 4 more shots, each time varying the shutter speed to be slightly longer than the time before.  Ie: if the camera chose an aperture of 5.6 and a shutter speed of 2 seconds, place the camera into manual mode, set the same aperture 5.6 and try 3 more shots with slightly lower shutter speeds - say 2.5, 3.2, and 4 seconds.
11. Take a look at each of these photos on your camera’s screen.  You will find each image to be brighter than the previous image.  What you want is brightness where you can see the darker areas of your photo, but the lights aren’t too bright.  Take one last shot , setting the shutter speed to be slightly lower once again because sometimes the image in the LCD doesn’t quite give the same view that you will see on your computer.

Well, it would have been great had I read his advice before going out in the cold night air.  Live and learn or, shall I say, read and learn.  I’ll try again tonight.

The guys at the club are great.  Better yet, so many new young people are joining the club.  That’s always good news.  Some of the older guys have been members for the better part of 50 years.  Well, you have to know that young blood is important for the club to last.

Anyway, last Saturday we had a workshop in the “Art of Seeing”.  We gathered at a lovely country estate, very treed, very quiet. 

This particular morning was especially beautiful what with the coloured leaves still on the trees as well as on the ground, the air so crisp and clear.  It was joyous. 

Marcus led this particular workshop.  He brought a cardboard box containing a number of items.  After each of us introduced ourselves to everyone else, we had to take a pictures of ourselves yelling “Yes” (self-portrait). Then we each had to reach into this box and pull out an item.  I picked what turned out to be a glass flask with a cork stopper.  Others picked things like plastic funnel, scotch tape dispenser, empty plastic water bottle, a roll of toilet paper, etc. We were given an hour in which to finish our project of at least 20 pictures.  

After the hour was up, we met at the club, uploaded our creations and had a show of all the slides.  You wouldn’t believe the creative stuff people came up with. It was great.

Next, we went to our favourite Tim Horton’s for lunch.  Even though I had left the house at 6:30, I did not get home till around 1:PM.  So, I’ll post some of my stuff.  Sorry, that’s all I have for now.

The whole point of the exercise is that you can make something out of nothing.  At least, nothing much. 

It was called Getting Back to Basics workshop.  These workshops are great.  We do learn a lot from each other.  For instance, depth of field has always been a mystery to me.  Honestly, when I shoot, I use the f-stop like a distance meter.  I figures 5.6 - Hmmm, must mean about 5 1/2 feet away.  Only, that’s not right either. 

My camera is the first digital SLR that Canon put out.  The Canon Rebel.  Only 6 megapixels.  Everybody else seems to have 10MP.  I feel deprived.  Oh well, let’s get to work.

Course Introduction

This workshop will be a review of the basic principles of photography, including:

• Exposure
• Aperture
• Shutter Speed
• Lighting
• Elements of design and composition

Exposure

• Photography=lighting
• Exposure is getting the right amount of light for you photo
• Use the exposure triangle

Exposure Triangle: Aperture

• Volume of light that reaches film or digital media
• Measured in f-stops (2,2,8, 4, 5.6, 8, etc)
• Smaller the f-stop (eg: 2.8) the larger the aperture
• Larger the f-stop (eg: 11) the smaller the lens opening
• As numbers increase, the light halves

Exposure Triangle: Shutter Speed

• Amount of time that the volume of light is allowed to reach film or digital media
• Normally, as settings increase the time is halved (eg: 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250)

Exposure Triangle: ISO

• Measure of a film or digital camera’s sensitivity to light
• Increase ISO 100 to 200, keep the f-stop constant, you can double the shutter speed
• Allows you to decrease exposure time in dark settings (eg: interior shots) for hand holding
• Default ISO is normally 100 or 200
• In some digital cameras, higher ISOs (above 800) can introduce noise

Aperture & Depth of Field

• Smaller the number= smaller the depth of field (sharpness) in the photo
• f-2.8=narrow depth, f-11= wide depth
• For portraits (people or things) shoot “wide open” - using small f-stop (eg: f-2.8) to get narrow depth of field
• For landscapes shoot use high f-stop number (eg: f-11) to get as much depth of field as possible.

Shutter Speed for Lens

• For sharper pictures, choose the right shutter speed for the lens
  • Reciprocal of the film lens length
  • For a 300 mm lens should use 1/300 sec minimum

  Sharpness = Stability

  • Become married to your tripod/monopod
  • Tripods are best but monopods are portable
  • Nikon/Canon SLRs use lens stabilization providing 3 to 4 f-stop advantage
  • Sony/Minolta/Pentax SLR’s use in-camera stabilization.  Provides 2 to 3 f-stop advantage, but every lens is stabilized (up to ~300 mm)
  • Post-processing sharpening, apply via Photoshop (recommended for digital cameras)

  Right Shutter Speed for Subject

  • Freezing the Subject
  • 1/500 to 1/1000 for fast moving parallel subject.
  • PanningMove camera parallel to and same speed as the subject (eg. an athlete, race car, etc.).
  • Shutter speed of 1/8 to 1/60 to blur background.
  • Follow through (don’t stop panning after clicking shutter).

  Right Shutter Speed for Subject

  Freezing the Subject

  Shutter Speed for Implied Motion

  • Blurred subject / still background for implied motion
  • eg. waterfalls, streams, car lights, joggers
  • Use tripod and set shutter speed for:¼ sec for wind blowing trees
  • ½ sec for waterfalls, streams
  • 1/60 sec for speeding train
  • 1 sec for hands knitting
  • 8 sec for car light streaking

Shutter Speed for Implied Motion

Light

• Best Time To Shoot
    Early morning (1st hour) or late afternoon light (last 3 hours) is the best time for photography.
  Textures, shadows, depth in warm and vivid tone.
  Change in weather patterns.
  Harsh and flat light during other times of the day.
• Overcast
  Better than shooting in direct sunlight.

Light

• Sidelight
  Gives highlights and shadows and creates illusion of 3 dimensionality.
  Additional exposure of -1 for digital.
 • Backlight
  Creates silhouettes
  Easily done with sunsets.
  To avoid having subject merge into surround-ing darkness, point telephoto lens at the bright
  sky to right / left of sun and take exposure.Metering (Average & Centre)
• Average measures light & shadow and gives average reading.
  Fine for subjects with equal shadow / light, otherwise can give faulty reading.
• Centre weighted measures reflected light from whole scene with bias to centre.
  Put subject in middle of frame, meter and then recompose

Metering (Spot & Matrix)

• Spot measures light at narrow 10 - 50 and gets accurate reading for specific area.
  Good for subjects that are light in primarily dark surrounding (or vice versa).
• Matrix has chip programmed to “see” and recognize subject and set exposure accordingly.
  Accurate about 90% of time.
  For digital bracket -2/3 f stop and compare.

Polarizing Filter

• Important accessory for landscape photos.
• Reduces glare on sunny days from reflective surfaces (water, glass, metal).
• Darkens blue in sky and enhances clouds.
• Use when at 900 angle to sun (ineffective if sun is right behind or in front of you).
• Rotate to get best effect.
• Use for sky and waterfall/river shots.

Polarizing Filter

Without Polarizing Filter
Neutral Density Filter
• Reduces brightness of light without impacting colour.
• Great for implied motion shots during sunny days.
• Comes in different grades – most popular are 0.30, 0.60 and 0.90 densities which reduce exposure by 1, 2 and 3 stops, respectively.

Elements of Design

• Line
• Shape
• Form
• Texture
• Pattern
• ColourElements of Design: Line
• Can be long or short, thick or thin.
• In nature, it is usually irregular (rivers, hills).
• Emotional impact on photos:
  Curving lines are seen as restful, relaxing (surf, dunes, rivers). Try for “S” curve in pictures.
  Jagged lines are forceful, chaotic, threatening (silhouette of mountain ranges).
  Diagonal lines show movement, speed and give an “active” composition.

Elements of Design: Line

           “S” curve

Elements of Design: Shape

• Often seen through silhouettes, using strong backlight or frontlight.
• Must have high contrast.

Elements of Design: Form

• Has 3 dimensions (Shape only has 2).
• Shows depth
• Photographed under sunny skies with sidelighting.

Elements of Design: Texture

• Needs low angled sidelighting to compose.
• Often created with macro lens.

Elements of Design: Pattern

• Repetition of lines, shapes or colours.
• Provides sense of harmony.
• Use flat even lighting and straight on camera angle.

Elements of Design: Colour

• Can be used to add impact to photo.
• Red, Yellow, Orange are “warm” colours – passionate / powerful.
• Blue and Green are “cool” colours - have a calming effect.
• Cool colours appear smaller than warm colours and they visually recede on the page so red can visually overpower and stand out over blue even if used in equal amounts.

Colour Wheel
Elements of Composition

• Fill the Frame
• Rule of Thirds
• The Right Third
• Frame in a Frame
• Portrait vs Landscape.

Composition: Fill the Frame

• You mind selectively sees what it wants.
• Check that what attracted you to the shot is filling the frame before you “click”.
• Move closer or use a telephoto.

Composition: Rule of Thirds

• Oft used compositional tool.
• Imagine a 3 x 3 grid superimposed on picture
• The grid is divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines.
• The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph.
• Aligning a photograph with these points can create more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering it.

Composition: Rule of Thirds
Composition: Right Third

• Place primary object in the right third.
• Normally an eye enters the photo from the left and flows to the right.
• The eye seems to prefer a resting place on the right most of the time.

           Composition: Right Third
           Composition: Frame in a Frame

• Framing isolates / emphasizes the subject.
• Overhanging tree limbs, building doors and windows can all be used.
• Frames that colour contrast with subject are very effective.

Composition: Portrait vs. Landscape

• Horizontal:
– More static peaceful effect.
– Landscapes.
• Vertical:
– Suggest vigor, strength, power.
– Use for full length figures, tall buildings, etc.

Composition: Portrait vs. Landscape

Bibliography & Further Reading
• Editors of Kodak; Mastering Composition and Light
 Time-Life Books, New York, 1983
• Editors of Kodak; More Joy of Photography
 Eastman Kodak Books, New York, 1981
• Kelby, Scott; Digital Photography Handbook
 Peachpit Press, 2007
• Peterson, Bryan; Learning to See Creatively
 Amphoto Books, New York, 2003
• Peterson, Bryan; Understanding Exposure
 Amphoto Books, New York, 2004