Today, let’s start a mini-series. This will be a three part series looking at silhouettes, shadows and light through smoke. They are all essentially the same thing, but we’ll pull them apart to see the subtle differences.
Example
How did I shoot this shot? Where did I meter?
Some post-processing trickery was used (to highlight the prayer wheel and bit of robe). But otherwise, how did I shoot it?
Here’s the experiment you can run:
1) Set your camera on Manual mode with ISO 100. Pick any lens you like as long as it fits your subject.
2) You will need an object that is highly backlit. Either have a light source behind it.
3) The key here is to meter for the bright light, not the items you want in silhouette. Because the dynamic range of your camera is less than the dynamic range of your eye and brain, even objects you can still see in detail may become excellent silhouettes.
4) Compose your shot after setting metering and shoot.
Done!
Things To Consider
Try using spot metering to help isolate the bright object you want to meter off of.
If the object of your metering is white, consider overexposing as we mentioned in Making White Tone, White.
Your histogram will look like a bowl; high on both sides and low in the middle. Most likely.
Before we jump into tomorrow’s topic of Shoot Some Shadows, can you see how this technique might apply?
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
Yesterday’s topic was Sun Stars. Today let’s try something fun, but sometimes frustrating; Panning Blur.
First some inspiration and then the experiment.
Examples
Here’s the panning blur experiment you can run:
1) Switch to Manual mode.
2) For starters, pick a shutter speed of 1/20. This is a good place to start but play around with shutter speed as objects are closer or further from you, or traveling at different speeds. The shutter speeds in the photos above are from .3 seconds to 1/8. ISO set to the lowest number you can achieve (L1.0 on Nikons, for instance).
3) You will need a moving object, preferably not in a brightly lit place. Shots at night work, but near dusk works as well. If your photos are over exposed, you will need less light. (see Things To Consider below)
4) The best objects to practice on are cars on the road because they will move usually at a constant speed (stay away from stop signs and lights if possible). It is perfectly legal to take a photo of someone’s car on a public road while standing on a public sidewalk in the USA. You might get waved at. You might get flipped off. People are like that.
5) The important thing here is to track the object and follow through. Don’t stop when you take the photo.
6) Set your camera to its highest burst rate, in terms of frames per second. This will be the “Continuous” mode instead of single shot.
7) Also change your focus mode to AF-C or AI Focus, depending on your camera. More info on focus modes can be found here.
8) Now then, track your object well before it gets to you. It’s important to match the speed as best you can.
10) When the object is perpendicular to you, compared to its path of travel, start taking photos. You can even do it a bit before, if you like. Keep your finger down on the shutter release for 4-8 shots as the object passes.
Done! With Shooting.
Practice and repetition is the name of the game. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and sometimes everything will suck. As you play around with this method, you will find that fast moving objects are harder and objects moving toward you are really hard. Try to practice on constant speed items. If there is a velodrome near you, try that as the curve of the corner is a perfect place to stand.
Things To Consider
If the object is big, like a semi truck, different parts will have different amounts of blur. Track the part you want to be most in focus.
The longer the shutter speed, the more blur, but the more chance your subject will be too blurred.
If there is too much light, consider purchasing a 3 stop (.9) neutral density filter for your lens. These filters block out a certain number of stops of light, much like sunglasses, but are neutral in color to not change your image.
You can also buy a variable neutral density filter, but they are more expensive. The advantage is you can adjust the amount of light coming in based upon your situation
The more zoomed in you are, the more blur occurs.
As with many things in photography, this method can be a lot of fun and add flair to your images, which might otherwise have been boring.
Tomorrow’s topic will be Shoot Some Silhouettes.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
18 day photo trekking tour. Fully supported (we carry your heavy gear, you carry your camera) and lead by experienced Sherpa guides who grew up in the Himalayas.
14 day fly and drive cultural tour. For those who want something a bit easier and who love wildlife, culture and vistas. Includes a flight-seeing Mt. Everest plane ride to get you close to the Himalayas without the trekking.
Both tours are all-inclusive (food, lodging, in-country transport, entry fees, game drives, guides, porters) and fully supported. Each day you’ll only need a small day pack with your camera and personal essentials…leaving you free to explore and capture the beauty of Nepal as only you will experience it.
Tours limited to just 8 guests to keep the setting intimate and the instruction personalized. You will visit a number of UNESCO World Heritage Site and get an up close, personal experience with the country.
Because of Covid-19 we have reduced the deposit for each tour to $200. That will hold your place while we figure out this pandemic in the next 1+ years and is fully refundable for Covid-related reasons.
Today’s experiment is fairly easy on the surface, but so is most photography at first glance. Point, hit button, look at back of camera. But we want to go a little deeper and think about what we, meaning you, are photographing today.
Today’s topic is to photograph a portrait of someone or, if the mood strikes you, some animal. As is my plan with these experiments, I am going to back off telling you what to do and instead, this time, give you some things to consider when photographing. If this doesn’t work for you, please let me know in the comments section and I’ll pass along a few hints.
Hint: Your aperture setting will be important here as you want to keep few things in focus. A good portrait typically uses varying degrees of focus to help bring attention to the subject. Knowing that, what do you want your aperture to be?
You can also use differing amounts of light to help bring attention to your subject. Move your subject around to find good light. Diffused (spread out and softened) light is often easier to work with than harsh light.
Focus on the eyes. Sony cameras now have a nice “Eye AF” feature that will make sure your eyes are always in focus.
Consider the mood and emotion you want to convey. Not all great portraits are shiny, happy people holding hands.
Once you have things set, check hair and small details. Do they help the portrait or detract?
There is a whole other world of things to consider when looking at complexion, clothes selection, advanced lighting, makeup, etc… We’re not heading there with this one simple experiment. I’m trying to get you to think of the baby steps it takes to get there.
What are your settings? How is the subject framed? Where is the light coming from? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Please feel free to post a link to your results.
Examples
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
Today’s moonrise experiment is actually for you to try in a few days but I want to make sure you have time to read and prepare. I know there’s a lot of hype about the next full moon because it is also a lunar eclipse visible to North and South America, plus little bits of Africa and Europe.
But before that eclipse happens, the moon has to rise.
The key to a good moonrise photo is to get out the day before it is actually full. I prefer the day before because then the sun is higher in the sky and Golden Hour light is bathing the foreground while making the moon not too bright in comparison.
For instance, the next full moon is on January 20. In Seattle, the moon rises at 4:32pm that day. The sun sets at 4:52pm. That’s just 20 minutes for the moon to get up above the Cascade Mountains and into a nice position for photos before the foreground starts to dim appreciably.
It’s better to go out shooting on Feb 19, when the moon rises at 3:23pm and the sun sets at 4:50pm. On that day you have practically a full moon in appearance and an hour and a half for the moon to get higher in the sky.
Some Resources For Planning
Let me give you a couple of websites to find full moon dates and times in your area:
You can actually get all the info from the Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) but it’s good to have the other sources as well.
I like TPE because it has a free desktop version for PC and MAC, making planning at home/office easy. You can use TPE to plan your shot. Here is a good post on how it works and how to use it.
Here’s the experiment you can run:
This shot was actually two days before a full moon.
1) If you are not familiar with shooting the moon, read my post here first. It has what you’ll need to know for this experiment.
2) Use the tools above to find out when the full moon is rising at your spot on the planet.
3) Plan to head out the day before the full moon to shoot. Use TPE to find a good location to shoot the moon and pick a place where you can find an interesting foreground. If you want some inspiration, take a gander at this post where I interviewed Michael Riffle about his wonderful Seattle moonrise photo. Luck works sometimes, but preparation gives you better odds.
4) Go out and shoot the moon!
Done!
Shooting the moon can be very fun and often frustrating. The best planning can be dashed by a badly placed cloud or fog layer. That’s another reason I propose people shoot the moon the day before the full moon; because if things don’t work out, they can still go back the next day (but note that the moonrise time changes by often more than an hour each day).
I also profess shooting the day before because in the Puget Sound, where I often shoot, we have mountains to the West that cover the sun before it actually sets on the horizon.
If your Western exposure is predominately flat, then you can have better luck shooting the day of the full moon. Plus, sometimes, the full moon is technically in the wee hours, such as 1:12am, which means the full moon rose the day before.
Things To Consider
Arrive early! I can’t stress this enough from my experience having to set up in a hurry. Give yourself at least an hour. You’ll enjoy it more if you’re relaxed.
Invite a friend, even if they don’t shoot.
Metering will not change rapidly while the sun is still up. The scene will be evenly lit, so meter before the moon comes up. This is a good time to use Manual Mode.
Make sure to not clip highlights because that’s what the moon is, one big highlight.
Lacking much else, use the Rule Of Thirds to align your shot.
Enjoy the moon and I hope you get to see the eclipse, which is a whole other ball of wax to shoot. Although, if you’ve been following the past weeks of Photography Basics – A 43 Day Adventure, you already have the knowledge you need to nail it.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
Building on previous concepts that you need to look at light differently, today’s post in the 40 Photography Experiments series is fun but challenging.
A lot of previous posts have been about thinking, looking, evaluating. Today, it’s all about doing.
Here’s the experiment you can run:
1) Go take 10 pictures of the same object. Make sure each picture is different in some way.
Done!
Simple!
Wait until you try it.
These ten images can be in different light (meaning you can move the object) or they can be from different perspectives.
The object can be small or large (got a 747 in your backyard? You will have an easy time getting ten images out of that!). The important thing here is for you to think about each shot. There is no grade for this experiment so cutting corners only hurts yourself (yes, I typed that in a second grade teacher voice). Be creative!
Some things to look for? Try adjusting your aperture to get a different depth of field. Get close and go wide angle. Zoom in for minute detail. Use the Rule Of Thirds. Or throw it out the window and place your object on the edge of the frame.
Experiment, have fun! Then post your results on the web some place (blog, Flickr, etc…) and link to it from here for us to check out. I’d love to see what you shoot!
If you need some inspiration, I took the challenge myself and grabbed an apple. By the way, I suggest not grabbing fruit, because if you want to re-shoot something you might have already eaten your subject, speaking from experience.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
Today’s topic in 40 Photography Experiments has less to do with using a camera and more to do with photography.
Set your camera down for a moment, please. You won’t need it today.
Here’s the experiment you can run:
1) Look some place other than this computer/phone screen (but memorize these easy steps first).
2) Imagine all the power goes out and the sun suddenly goes dark. Ignore the fact that the Earth would turn into an ice ball or that worldwide panic has begun.
3) Everything is pitch black. Not even star light can make it through our atmosphere.
Done!
Can you take a picture of the stuff you saw right before the lights went out?
Here’s the thing: You take pictures of light, not stuff. You may have heard me mention this before.
Let’s me type that again in a bigger font, because it is the root of all photography.
You take pictures of light, not stuff.
Sure, the light bounces off stuff and then you take a picture of that reflected light, but you don’t take pictures of stuff, just light.
It’s a hard concept for some to dial in, myself included. We’ll play around with this more in another experiment later in the series, but for now, take a look at these two images with me:
These are red chilli peppers drying in the afternoon sun in Bhutan (where I lead photo tours, hint ). The shots were taken 9 seconds apart, which was long enough for me to take the first photo, walk 10′ and then take the second.
These peppers are in exactly the same light, but look totally different. In the first one I am looking mostly toward the sun and in the second the sun is behind me. I’m not taking pictures of just chilli peppers, I’m taking pictures of light interacting with the chilli peppers.
Still don’t believe me?
Different guy in each shot, but the same light at different angles.
You’re don’t take pictures of stuff; you take pictures of light.
Here’s another experiment you can run:
1) For the rest of today, walk around without your camera.
2) Look at the difference in light from scene to scene as your day unfolds. Where is it coming from? Is it warm or harsh? Are there shadows? How does it make a subject shine or become obscured? What would happen if your subject moved into new light?
Never Done!
This experiment will continue until the day you die. Light is everywhere and as a photographer (you don’t have to be professional to be a photographer) you can’t help but notice changes. With practice, you will be seeing the subtle differences in light even when you’re camera is not with you.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
Today’s topic is one of the easier concepts to understand but one of the hardest to get just right. Thanks to digital photography though, there is plenty of room to play and practice with this one.
Panning Blur as a means to capture motion
Panning blur is simply lowering your Shutter Speed to the point where things blur as you pan the camera side to side. You need to keep pace with a moving object and be able to keep it relatively in focus, thus accentuating the feel of movement.
In practice it looks something like the hippo photo below. Program Mode, 300mm, ISO 100, f/40, 1/8 second, Partial Metering Mode and -1/3 stop Exposure Bias
By the way, hippos are dang fast.
The trick is to set the shutter speed not too slow, resulting in more blurring than desired. And then track the object as it moves and fire while still moving. Don’t take the snap and stop otherwise your odds of a good shot plummet.
Here’s another example of street scene. Shutter Priority Mode, 28mm, ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/800 second, Evaluative Metering
Hey look! A car! In the street! Boring!
Time to jazz it up a bit. Shutter Priority Mode, 40mm, ISO 100, f/20, 1/13 second, Evaluative Metering
Zowie! A moving car!
Can you see how it is helpful to give a bit of blur to the background while tracking the subject?
Some tricks:
Practice! Or just be lucky (or a really good hunter)
Experiment with shutter speed. Start at 1/10 and work around from there.
You may need to use a neutral density filter if shooting in daylight and the scene is too bright.
Drop your ISO to as low as it will go. 100 or 50 if you have it.
Realize that objects tend to seem like they are moving faster as they are closer to you and you need to adjust for that.
Shoot when objects are closer to you to exaggerate the speed.
Bring your library card.
If you can, focus on eyes as people/animals/lizards move. An entire picture can be blurry, but if the eye is crystal clear, it sells.
I’d love to see your results on this one. Please give it a whirl with anything at all and post a link in the comments section, if you will.
Keep shooting, we have many more days left!
Want to try this technique for yourself? Here’s how.
Inspiration
A few examples from around the world to help inspire you to give the technique a try.
Motion blur of fishing boat crossing Puget Sound before sunrise – USA – Washington
Police car moving on road – USA – Washington – Seattle
Monks riding on scooter – Nepal
Blurred motion of bus – India
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
Using a flash or strobe with your camera is a whole industry unto itself. I’m not going thick with this subject, just skimming the surface to let you know what’s out there.
The Many Kinds Of Flash
Strobe. Flash. Speedlight. A big pile of flash powder on a tray above the photographer.
Artificial light comes in many forms. The type we are talking about here are instant light sources, as opposed to ones that are always on.
A strobe is usually one of the items you find in a professional studio with those big reflectors and modifiers on them. We’re going to ignore those for this basics post.
Speedlights and flashes are essentially the same thing: smaller, usually battery powered units on or near your camera. They look like this:
On-Camera Flash
That image above is an on-camera flash. Just like its name implies, it’s on the camera. The flash on your phone is also on-camera. Point and shoots usually have one too.
Having the flash so close to the lens means light is often flat against the subject and can cause red eyes to show.
On-camera flashes can be pop-up units as well.
Off-Camera Flash
An off-camera flash is something like this image by Howard Stanbury:
Often connected by a cable, but more and more controlled by a remote on the camera (or by the camera itself), off-camera flashes offer more flexibility.
With an off-camera flash you can place the light just where you want. You can create interesting effects and shadows and moods. They can be a lot of fun. Also, you can make the light more ‘realistic’ in many case and not as flat as on-camera.
With these flashes in mind, what are they good for? A number of things!
Filling In
The number one thing the flash on your camera or phone is good for is filling in the dark areas. While the power of a flash (and its subsequent output) depends on its size, almost all flashes can put out enough light to fill in areas.
This is especially helpful when your subject’s eyes might be shaded or the shadows might be heavy.
Fill flash is used in conjunction with available light to complete a scene. For instance, fill flash was used to light just the foreground juniper in this sunset image of Canyonlands National Park:
And another case when fill was used to balance out the light in a portrait.
Adding Lots Of Light
Then are the times when the scene is very dark and you just need more light!
This is what most of us think of when we think of flash: something that provides most of the light, like so:
You may notice there is something in the bird’s eye. A little speck. That’s called a catchlight. It’s a natural occurrence and another thing flashes are good at adding. Think of it as a sparkle in your subject’s eye.
Bouncing
Bouncing a light involves aiming your flash straight, or almost straight, up to give the impression that the light is coming from above, like it would from the sun.
This method is helpful in making an even light, but it is important that your subject is not too close nor too far.
Here’s a very meta picture of a camera without a flash, lit by a camera with a bounce flash (off the nice white canopy you can see behind it). The bounce helped give a full light without harsh shadows to the camera.
Red-Eye
No one likes red eyes in their photos. This happens when the light source is too close to the lens. The light goes right in the eyes and BANG! bounces right back out, discolored by blood.
Freaky, I know.
The best way to rid yourself of red eyes is to either use an off-camera flash or use the red eye reduction mode on your camera. This fire the flash once right before taking a photo for real.
That pre-flash is meant to help pupils close down and not reflect so much. Thankfully there are ample computer programs available if you need to clean up those red eyes later.
Modify Your Light
There’s a whole world out there of flash modifiers. These are things you stick on your flash (or use with studio strobes) to shape, filter, flatten, lengthen, and modify your light.
I found a great post by Jim Doty on this subject that covers most of the modifiers someone starting out might be interested in.
Conclusion
Flashes are helpful tools in photography. You can’t take photos without light and sometimes the light you have isn’t the best. Learning to use a flash take a lot of practice and would frankly be a whole other series on this blog. If there is enough interest I’ll getting to writing that series as soon as I finish with this one.
YEE HAW!!
We are done with the basics! Thank you for hanging in there these past three weeks.
Coming up next we have the fun stuff for two weeks.
Block off the next 2.5 weeks (and maybe more by the time it’s done) for some creative ideas and plenty of opportunities to use them! Subscribe here to receive all the updates.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
Today we start a mini-series inside the larger 40 Photography Experiments series. Today, tomorrow, the next and the next, we will be focusing (har!) on Depth Of Field and the effects it has on images.
Depth of Field
Let’s start with a simple exercise to help get the “Ah ha!” moments going. Take a look at these two images below and think about which one you like more.
Do you notice the difference? One has a shallow depth of field (not a lot of things in focus) and the other has a large depth of field (all kinds of things in focus). Both produce different effects and both can tell a different story. So what did I change between the images?
The answer is Aperture. The main difference between the two shots is the aperture setting on my camera. I shot in Aperture Priority Mode and while my shutter speed did change, it did not result in any clear effect in the image. My ISO, focus point and framing remained the same.
As described in my post on Aperture, changing your aperture will change your depth of field and give your images a different look. Here then, is an experiment for you to run on your own to see the effect firsthand.
Here’s the experiment you can run:
An idyllic, tropical island paradise amongst the San Blas Islands of Panama sits in beautiful, turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea
1. Set up a scene on a table or find something in your surroundings that duplicates the distances listed below.
Set your camera on a steady object or ensure it stays in the same spot for this experiment. A tripod would be helpful.
Place an object 2’/.6m in front of your camera.
Set another object 2’/.6m beyond that object.
Set one last object 4’/1.2m beyond the second object. These measurements need not be exact.
2. Change your camera to Aperture Priority (it’s the little A or Av item on the control dial, likely on top).
3. Zoom in to 50mm or as close as you can get to that focal length. If you are using a point and shoot, zoom in half way from the nearest to the farthest zooms.
4. Focus on the first object but keep the other two objects in the field of view. Move the objects side to side as needed, but try not to move them front to back.
5. Lock the focus of your camera by changing it to manual. This helps your camera to not pick a new focus point during this experiment which can ruin things.
6. Set your ISO to 400 for a middle of the road setting. This is not critical to the experiment.
7. Set the aperture to the smallest number it can achieve. This is usually done by spinning one of the control wheels on your camera. Your lowest aperture may be f/2.8 or f/4 or f/5.6. It’s not too important right now what this number is.
8. Take a photo.
9. Turn the control wheel you just used, three clicks higher. This will change your aperture from something like f/4 to f/5.6. Each click on the control wheel is 1/3 of a stop, so three clicks is one full stop. Ensure you’re going the right way and that your aperture number is getting larger. That’s the goal.
10. Take another photo.
11. Change your aperture again as per #9. Another three clicks = one stop. If you were at f/5.6 before, now you’re at f/8.
The Algodones Dunes extend to the horizon where they meet the Chocolat Mountains
12. Take another photo.
13. Continue this process until you can’t go any higher with the aperture setting. Some point and shoot cameras top out at f/8. Other cameras will continue on to f/29 or so.
You’re done!
Take a look at the images on your computer (or the back of your camera screen with the zoom feature if you’re impatient). What has changed as the aperture number went up?
My images up top were shot at f/2.8 (first) and f/22 (second). Did you get the same results?
Changing your aperture setting can result in more and less depth of field. This can make objects stand out (portraits) or make sure everything is in focus (cityscape or mountain vista).
Play around with these settings some more. Walk around your house, the office, the street and take the same exact same photo twice, only changing your aperture, and see which way you like the results. There is no right or wrong, there is only your preferred result.
Tomorrow we will build on the Depth Of Field concept by changing focus points.
Questions? Pop ’em like Pez in the comments section below. or email me at peter@peterwestcarey.com.
If you enjoy the series, consider learning photography first-hand on a professionally led international photo tour in Nepal or Bhutan. More information can be found at Far Horizon Photo Tours.
Our last experiment was Panning Blur.
Wandered here from somewhere else? Check out all the 
Building on 
). The shots were taken 9 seconds apart, which was long enough for me to take the first photo, walk 10′ and then take the second.
