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INSIDE

UN WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

p h o t oDecember 2008Edi on 3

INSIDE ASSIGNMENT: SPORTThe theory of sports photographyDEADLINES: FRAMING IT

Skills for newspaper photographers

SKILL FACTOR: SHOT COUNTSHow to work to a shot count to improve your success rate

PROCESS: BURNING and DODGINGAn old school way to make your images be er

TRAVELSHOOTER: ON ASSIGNMENTCambodia: Ankor Wat

TECH NOTES: ELEMENTS 7Adobes new so ware


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TRAVELSHOOTER:ON ASSIGNMENT

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PROCESS:

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SKILL FACTOR: SHOT COUNTS

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DEADLINES: FRAMING IT

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INSIDE ASSIGNMENT: SPORTS

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PUBLISHER/EDITOR/DESIGNER/PHOTOGRAPHER/WRITER:John [email protected] Photo e-magazine is publishedby:INSIDE Photo5 Council StreetSt KildaDunedinNew ZealandPh: + 64 3 4555998www.insidephoto.infoMaterial published in INSIDE Photo is copyrighted andcannot be reproduced (or photocopied) other than forindividual personal use.

Hi guys,

This month we take a look a coupleof subjects dear to my heart - sportsphotography and snapping in Cam-bodia. I love shooting sports. Eventhough you plan your shots its notuntil you open them up later on yourlaptop that you really get to knowwhether or not you have a great shotin the bag. This months assignmentcovers what you need to know about

sports photography and ways to im-prove your skill set. We also look atframing your photos to get more im-pactful images from rather boringsubjects. There is also a brief reviewof the new Abode Photoshop Ele-ments 7 software which I use all thetime as I find it easier to use for mostphotographic situations than CS.Cambodia is one of my favourite des-tinations and I always marvel at allthe new photo ops I discover eachtime I visit there. It sad, that over the

past 8 years I have seen it grow froma backwater village into a modernday tourist hub with all the annoyingtrends you often find at places likethis, but I still love going back and ex-ploring the many different templesand sights there and yes, I think thelocal Khmer people are still some of the friendliest around, so enjoy yourtrip to the land of Ankor.On a sad note a couple of good pho-tographers who helped me indirectly

along the way have passed over andour condolences go out to the fami-lies of Dick Poole and Brian Curtis.Also I note the passing of PHOTOVIDEOi magazine, a possiblesign of the economic times, but Kathand I would like to thank all whohelped us achieve our dream of run-ning our own magazine in Singaporeover the past 6 years.Now we are back here in NewZealand and INSIDE PHOTO is goingahead in leaps and bounds with

more than 2000 people logging onlast month so we will try and keepthis new puppy going strong.All thebest to all our friends around theworld celebrating the many differentreligious festivals coming up thismonth. Keep on shooting great im-ages.

John C

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LAST FRAME:

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c o n t e n t sEdi on 3, December 2008

Sports - fun in the sun

The story behind the photos innewspapers

Working to a shot list

Burning and dodging

Cambodian Odyssey - looking atSiem Reap and Ankor Wat

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What reinforces the content of a photograph is thesense of rhythm the rela onship between shapes and

values. - Henri Car er-Bresson

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A couple of real beau es: Canons 1200mm and 600mm white lenses.

This e-zine was produced using the new QuarkXpress 8 page design so ware


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Sports Photography

Capturing all the ac onDespite perusing countless volumes on the subject of sports photography overthe years, the best advice I ever found for genera ng great sports and ac onphotos comes from S portsshooter.com founder Robert Hanashiro, a USA TODAY staff photographer and developer of the worlds best web site for sports photography.Shoot at the HIGHEST shu er speed you can ... which in turn, means you're shoot-ing at a much WIDER lens opening and cleaning up your background. So get rid of your crappy backgrounds because they ruin photos.

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While shoo ng a childrens triathlon recently, I experimented with the ow of the com-pe tors coming out of the sea on the swimming leg and then running through the show-ers before they climbed aboard their bicycles and raced away. Because there was no sunto give me any sparkling backlit shots I decided to blur out the ac on and simply heldthe camera s ll as the athletes raced through the water. Shot with a Nikon D100 set at1/30th of a second @ f16, it came out be er than I had planned and the organisers likedit because it gave them a meless marke ng shot to pitch to Osim, the sponsors.

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That eloquently sums up the difference betweena great sports photo and a record shot of some-one playing sport. Get rid of a distracting back-ground and this in turn focuses all your viewersattention on the dramatic moment you have justcaptured. A friend of mine did actually attend thefamous sports shooter academy run annually byRobert, and he told me that yes indeed Robert con-

tinually instructs attendees to get rid of their crappybackgrounds.

Sports photography is a fun way to extend yourself as a photographer because it forces you to push theboundaries of your creative limits. In auto every-thing mode any fool can shoot a cyclist riding pastbut can you do it i n a way that attracts the eye andsolicits the response Wow how did they get that? You dont have to be an ardent sports fan, you donteven have to know the intricacies of the sport youare shooting today, and all you needs is a creativeeye and a desire to shoot things in a different waythan others. It would be nice to have oneof those super fast 300 /400 / 500 / 600 / 800mmlenses but I cant justify it tothe wife. All you need to knowis what are the limits of your gearand how to use them to maximi zeyour shooting experience.

u Know your cameras limits in terms of auto-focusing speeds versus motor drive(capture rate) speeds versus shutter speeds.u Know what are the limits of your lenses interms of focusing speed and minimum exposuresand then find where the optimum sweet spots areon your lenses.

Then it is time to set up your camera to record

the action:u Consider the apertures: Do you use a short depth of field below f5.6 to blow out the background or try and in-clude everything in the frame? u Consider your shutter speeds: Fast or slow speeds toget different results? Under 250 th of a second you aregoing to get movement in your images above 1/250 th youwill freeze the action.u Consider the ISO rating: Do you use the highest your camera will give you snappy pictures of frozen momentsin time at the risk of noise or do you try and use the low-est ISO the lighting conditions allow.u Consider your capture rates: Does your camera offer

3 frames a second or does it shoot at a higher capturerate to give you a better than average chance to stop theaction.

Single shot or ten frames a second?

Today most DSLR cameras come with at least 3frames per second of capture rate (usually calledHigh-speed continuous mode), the higher the dollarvalue - the faster the capture rate and we can nowget nine or ten frames a second from either of thetwo top preferred sports shooter dream camerabodies, the Nikon D3 or the Canon EOS 1D MkIII.But what does that give us in terms of great shots?To shoot those great sports photos you have to planyour shot. If we can see the peak of action mo-ment happening in the viewfinder then we are notcapturing it as the mirror is down. What 3/5/9 or 10frames per second gives us is a varyingamount of successful hit rates oncapturing at least

a couple of strong ac-tion pho-tos from

a sequence we

are shooting.

At 3 frames asecond we

have one chance in threeof capturing the peak of action moment.

Action always workslike the arc of a ball rising up

and then descending back toearth. Ideally we want to snapthe photo when the ball is at

Get rid of your backgrounds

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the top of the arc because it pauses briefly due tothe forces of thrust/drag and gravity all working onit at the same time but at 3 frames a second wehave to plan the moment when we depress theshutter to allow it time to capture the peak actionbecause we have .33 of a second between each c ap-ture and a lot can happen in that short time.

At 5 frames a second we have about 2.5 chancesof getting a good shot. One shot as it nears the peakmoment, another at the top and maybe one moreas it descends.

At 10 frames a second we have a 60/40 chance of getting the moment. You would think that the fasterthe capture rates the better chance we have. Butwhen you become addicted to shooting at 10 FPSthen more often than not you will miss the actionbecause you are relying on the camera to shoot thepictures and you are not using your skill to capturethe moment. It is called shot gunning and believeme it only works 6 0% of the time.

Single frames require a lot of skill but offer thebest chance for results on pre-planned shots onl y.These are set-up shots where you have decided tosnap a rider or runner as they cross a particular pre-focused point on the road.

Multiple capture rates wont work here becauseyou will often snap a frame just as they arrive andthe next frame is captured when they have passedyour mark, missing the top shot.I have found many top sports shooters still rely onthe old school skill of pre-focusing and single shotwhen they plan great artistic action pictures.All high captures rates offers us is the ability to cap-ture more than one usable frame of the action.

This leads me onto an essential skill that allsports photographers must work on anddevelop - their Intuition .

Intuition comes from the right side of the brain (thecreative side) while the left side looks after all theother decision making processes. We know it morecommonly as that little voice that tells us when toshoot and when to wait a bit longer before you de-press the shutter button. Its often really frustratingthat after spending hours shooting mountain bikerszooming past, you review the results and all you seeare a whole bunch of dots in the middle of theframe. But I hear you cry They appeared big inthe viewfinder so I snapped them and yet they allcame out small what gives? Basically it happenswhen you have let the left side dictate the shootingprocess at the expense of the right side of yourbrain.

When looking through the viewfinder we are oftenonly seeing 95-97% of the total viewing area andthen this field of view is further magnified 1.6xtimes to cope with the digital sensor/lens crop fac-tor so at times it makes it hard to know when toshoot and when to wait a bit.Throw into this equation the common fact thatwhen we look naturally at a subject with our eyeswere really only looking at the centre 18 degrees of our field of vision, when you look through a cam-eras view finder you crop that field of vision in eventighter due to the lens so this often causes us to de-

press the shutter because we think the moving sub-ject is closer than it really is. So it really becomes amind over matter equation and this is where thevalue of intuition comes into play. You now knowthat the subject isnt filling the frame just yet andyou have to override the left side of the brain sayingthey are too close and wait a fraction longer beforedepressing the shutter. DSLRs are a great coachingtool for photographers and they have helped us im-prove our reaction times to capture spontaneousmoments.

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Five Frames a Second

Ten Fram es a Second

TIP

Most endurance/athletic events are usuallymultiple laps of a set track so practice on slowercompetitors and useyour rear LCD to mon-itor results so thatyou can make changesin viewing angle andtiming. Then whenthen experts race byyou are already in thegroove to shoot greatpictures.

Coaching tip - Old school trick

This can be practiced by setting the cameraonto single shot and manual focus mode. Pick apoint on the track and lock the focus down onit. Now as the athletes race past you, time yourshutter release to match them stepping overyour pre-determined mark on the track then re-view your results and make the necessary men-tal adjustments to snap it just as t heir bodyreaches the point in space directly above themark. This will teach you how to cope withyour digital cameras inherent shutter lag. Re-member this is how we used to shoot sports allthose years before Auto Focus arrived.

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The AF-Drive bu on controls the selec on of Auto Focus modes inyour camera from One Shot (focus lock on half-press), AI Focus(locks but monitors movement) or AI Servo (con nuous predic vefocus). The cool AI Focus mode on Canons ini ally locks just like OneShot mode but monitors the focused subject, if the subject movesbetween frames it will automa cally switch to an AI Servo opera-

on. The Drive mode selects Single shot or Con nuous L (3 fps,Con nuous H (6.5 fps) or the twoSelf-Timer modes available.

On most cameras there is a default sports mode in the scenic modeselc on panel or dial. It is represented by the running man logo andwhen selected it makes changes to the cameras opera on. It auto-ma cally selects Con nuous High Capture rates, AIServo Focus and defaults to Shu er priority to keepyour shu er speeds high to freeze mo on and pre-vent camera shake. It is also a good mode to shootthe kids with.

Lenses

Today the weapon of choice for a dedicated sportsshooter starts at 300mm and t hen works its way upto the 600mm or even the new 800mm lenses.For us, our choice of lenses is much smaller andranges from wide angle to 300mm and this is enoughto shoot good solid sports images, we just have tolearn to use them well.

The first part is to find our lenses sweet spot. This isthe point whereby it is focusing at its sharpest pointedge to edge. Now most of us dont own super ex-pensive glass so we have to work with the gear wecould afford. Experience (and some help from Practi-cal Photography USA) had shown that f8-f9.5 on mostlenses is the best we are ever going to get in terms of edge to edge sharpness. But in the sports arena weknow that we need to use the hi ghest shutter speedpossible to stop the action which necessitates ususing the widest lens opening available to limit thedepth of field and to give us a high shutter speed sowhere do we trade one for the other on our 75-300f5.6 lens?Its not a fast AF lens but in bright sunshine it is okay

wide open at f5.6, but when the clouds come over itstarts to get soft and to stop the action you need toincrease the ISO rating to keep the shutter speedshigh enough and then live with the resulting graini-ness of the images.Remember that intuition mode; well this is where itall comes into play. You need to plan your coverageof a game so watch and see who is making all theplays or winning and then position yourself accord-ingly so that the players are coming towards you andnot running away from you. Thi s way you can use afeature of your lens and camera that most photogra-phers dont know about. The ability to shoot a subject

On the subject of AUTO FOCUSlets talk aboutwhat are the good and bad features of it.

Todays DSLRs come packed full of electronics andone of the most appreciated is Auto-Focus. Simplypoint and shoot and you will snap a sharp frame. Insports mode you will be using High-speed continu-ous capture rate mode coupled to the AI Servo AF(Canon) or Dynamic Area AF (Nikon) or ContinuousAF (Sony) focusing mode on your camera. This is theclassic follow focus function of your lenses wherebythe camera attempts to keep the subject sharp by

predicting where it will be when the next exposureoccurs. And therein lies the first problem. Eventhough you have a good capture rate when usingthe C (continuous) button of say 3 fps, you mayoften not get exactly three frames per second eachtime you hold the shutter button down because if your cameras AF system is slow and has to hunt forthe subject then this will impact on how manyframes it shoots off continuously.

Think of it this way: In Sports Mode your camerasAF function is trying to predict where the subjectwill be in each frame so a lot of processing and bat-tery resources are allocated to this function, thennow factor in all the processing and battery re-sources needed to capture an exposed frame andmove it from the sensor through the A/D convertorand then into your cameras color engine before fi-nally depositing it onto your CF card, you can seethat on cheaper entry level cameras this means thatsomething has to be sacrificed otherwise your bat-tery will be dead in five frames and it is usually thecapture rate and the autofocus operations.

The higher the value camera the better this processworks and thats why sports shooters always try andget the best cameras to work wit h.

BUT! Knowing the limits of your cameras AF andworking around them, making them part of the cap-ture process means that any DSLR or dC ompact canshoot great sports photos; it just needs you to useyour intuition and skill to make it work.

TIPLearn how many frames you can shoot at some-one running towards you versus someone run-ning parallel to you. Find out which one isslower and remember it in your sports plan.

TIP

Always use single spot autofocus rather thangroup, as subjects outside the centre of theframe will impact on the AF causing it to Huntand miss the shot.

Coaching old school trick:

You can squeeze the maximum number of FPSfrom your camera if you switch off the AFmode, so use the manual pre-focus tip fromabove when you need to shoot heaps of framesof say an explosion or a subject that isnt mov-ing too much like a diver or basketball playerjumping up to the hoop.

coming head on towards you at a slower shutterspeed than one running past or parallel your lens atspeed. Its all down to how t he shutter works but itsafe to know that when a runner is coming towardsyou it is possible to shoot him at a slower shutter

speed well below 1/250 th of a second and still get asharp photo rather than shooting him running pastyou at an angle and all you capture is a blur.

So using that 75-300mm lens you got as an acces-sory when you brought your first DSLR you know itis possible to shoot some great sports photos aslong as you know it and your cameras limits.

The size difference is obvious between a the new C anon EF800mm f5.6 L series lens and the entry level Canon EFS 75-300mm IS f4.5-5.6 lens. Both do a great job within their limitsyet one weights 6.5kgs and the other only 400gms.

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Sports photography is all aboutcapturing the dramatic mo-ments in time and to capturethem well we must use all ourskills and intuition. The first thingwe have to always remember is toalways shoot sport in such a waythat others will marvel at our abil-ity to capture action successfullyand creatively.When you get to the match takethe time to watch and see:

u Which side is making allthe winning plays?

Now lets get down to learning howto shoot good sports photos.

u Which players are morephotogenic or more active?

u Where is the sun coming from? Think about ways to use it to cre-ate dramatic photos either with it behind you or in silhouette mode.Look to the sky for dramatic cloud formations.

u Find out what a re t he limits on access to the sides of t he field orrac e track. In any federation governed ma tch or event you usually haveaccess to about a me ter from the lines to allow the linesme n to dothe ir jo b.At a major sports event t his is usually dictated by TV coverage. O nc e Ihad to sho ot a netball international where the ph otographers couldonly shoot from a three met er lo ng box on one side.Not the bes t w ay to cover an event. So find out wh ere you can standthats not going to be in the road of spectators or officials ask some-one if you don t kn ow.

Learn what at the limits on your lenses and sectionalize the playingfield into those areas you can get a ful l length vertical and horizontalshot from. Remember dots in the mi ddle of the frame are not goodenough fill the frame . To judge how far away you can shoot, in land-scape or vertical mode its a full body shot with a bit of space top andbottom any further away and you are wasting your time. A 200mmlens will only really shoot out to 25m, a 300mm will get you to 40mand a 500mm will shoot the half way mark.

u What considerations do youhave to think about concerningyour safety and those of thecompetitors? You never want tobe injured or cause injury to any-one so ALWAYS think safety whencovering sport especially anysport that requires track basedmovement or motor vehicles.

Ask someone or watch and see where other photographers are goingto figure out access and safety considerations.

u Can you get a more dramaticshot using rear curtain sync flashmethods or is it better to shootalfresco?

u What different viewing angles can you maximize to improveyour shooting experience? And what special techniques should youuse to improve your pictures? Can you get a better shot from overthere, or by lying on the ground looking up?

u Now look around you at the local conditions:

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Visit some of the best sports websites out there and look at their galleries for i nspira on. www.photo-sport.co.nz, www.sportshooter.com, www.siphoto.com, www.reuters.com, www.washington-post.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/index.html, www.wpp.com, www.daveblackphotography.com,www.bobmar n.com/, www.manginphotography.com/.Do a search on Google for works by Tim Clayton, Chris Smith, Craig Golding to name a few of the superstarsof sports photography. Now combine all these factors into planning your coverage of the event and alwaysremember why you are doing it to have fun.

Speed can be portrayed in two ways:Frozen moments in me captured at shu er speeds over 1/250th of a second or 2: Pan Ac on photoswhere movement is visible through the use of slower shu er speeds below 125th of a second to blur thesubject. The general rule is to shoot sport at the highest shu er speed you can get depending on the light-ing condi ons.

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ways to getgreat sports

shots

SPEED

2LENSES

The choice of lens determines your unique viewpoint. Telephotos isolate the playeragainst a blurry background while Wide-angles include t he viewer in the image byshowing what else was visible.

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3ANGLES

4 eMOTION

5 rEACTIONSAlways try and view the world at a different angle to regular viewers. Crouch down, l iedown on the road, lt the camera up or down and bend the perspec ve using wideangle lenses. Use whatever tools and tricks you have in the bag to create a dis nc veview point.

Emo on: A fast shu er speed captures the emo on on the face of pl ayers as they strain and struggle withthe condi ons and the moment.Reac on to the ac on: Keep on shoo ng a er the peak moment of ac on has happened to capture whatothers reac ons to the goal being scored were.

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6 COLOUR

8ARTISTIC

7 Pan aCTIONfLASH

Colour: Think of ways of showing strong colour and then try and use all the range of colour combina ons:complementary, contras ng, monochroma c or spot.Pan ac on ash: Movement or drama c momentscan be easily captured using rear curtain sync methods with your ash. It is a great way to open up theshadows and create a dis nc ve image.

This is where you try combining all the different ways of shoo ng sport into dis nc-ve images showing a different view point/angle or colour combina ons.

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thought about how I could improvethe visual presentation. So I startedlooking at ways to frame his face,whether it is through a series of arms, or reflected in TV camera mon-itors or under the shoulders of thereporters. There are many ways toframe a subject so always walkaround your subjects, looking at

them from all angles and then planyour shots carefully. Go for theunique angle to catch the eye of theviewer.Use all the lenses you have in yourbag to come up with different view-points. When you look at wire pho-tos (or the American newspapers likethe Washington Post, they are ex-

perts at making press conferencephotos interesting) you will see thatthey always look for different anglesto make a boring news conferencemore interesting. Once you have theangles then it is simply a matter of waiting for the subjects face to turntowards you and then capturingsome emotion.

The other day I was in the familiarworld of the press pack. We werechasing our new Prime Minister JohnKey, around Dunedin as he cam-

paigned unsuccessfully for local Na-tional Party candidates in the recentelection. John Key hasnt been oneof our usual media subjects here, un-like the deposed Labour PM HelenClark, who had stormed intoDunedin many times over the pastsix months and had held several pub-lic meetings, especially with the veryvocal student population. So shoot-ing a good portrait of John Key wasgoing to be a struggle as he ap-

peared to be only speaking to theparty faithful rather than meetingand greeting the people in thestreet.

The usual suspects assembled DScene, the ODT, TV1/2/3 and 9, Fair-fax and APN, radio and then thepress pack was further enlarged withthe breathless arrival (it took themlonger than normal to get rental carsat the airport) of the Wellingtonbased Press gallery reporters andmedia handlers.So there we where, the locals andthe imports, all crowding aroundJohn Key in a tiny stairwell at the

local National Party offices trying toget a different shot. Whenever youphotograph government ministers orcelebrities you know its going to be

a struggle because there is always apress pack crowding around so youhave to think of ways to change theview point, to create unique photosthat are different than the usualpress release headshots we oftensee in the daily papers and thatswere framing comes in.As I jostled with the TV crews and re-porters all leaning over each other toget closer to John Key I shot theusual face shots then stood back and

FRAMING IT

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Step Five: take your time andcheck your progress by selecting theeye icon on Burn & Dodge layer inthe layer palette to review yourprogress with the base image. Andwhen you finish remember to savethe resulting image as either a .tiff or .psd so that you can edit it againlater. You will notice that this tech-nique is also a good way to increasesubtly the saturation of an imageespecially in areas of haze near the

horizon on a landscape.

This method of burning and dodg-ing is a very good way to lighten anddarken specific areas on an imagewithout destroying the underlyingimage data.

Technique works in both Photoshop and Elements. This lesson was prepared using ADOBE Photoshop Elements 7

In both Adobe Photoshop CS andPS Elements there has always beenmany ways to complete commontasks and it is no different with theold photography tool of burning anddodging images to define edges, con-centrate a viewers eye on a particu-lar aspect of the image or to simplyhighlight a feature.

Adobe Photoshop has beenequipped with a burning and dodg-ing tool ever since Photoshop V2.5.1was shipped in 1993. PS Elementsfollowed in 2001 and it too had theburn and dodge tool (quick key O).

It is designed to replicate the lovelyburning and dodging tricks welearned in the darkroom.

Over the years I have used the Burnand Dodge tool and was a bit disap-pointed with the results, subsequentversions addressed many different is-sues and tools in Photoshop but theB&D tool remained the same. So in2000 I sat in on a lecture by the godfather of digital newspaper photog-raphy Rob Galbraith and he showedme a wonderful way to burn anddodge pictures which left you withcomplete control over the resultingimage in terms of saturation, opacityand at the same applying non-de-structive picture editing techniquesthat preserve the original image.

Step One: Copy the layer using CTRL+Jto copy the background image.

Step Two: Create a new layer using SHIFT+CTRL+N, then change the layermode to OVERLAY and this allows you access to the check box beneath theMode selector. Check it to fill the layer with 50% gray (look to your LayersPalette to see a new layer filled with 50% gray appears).

step Three: Select a nice soft edge brush (quick key B) and lower the opacityto about 20% then hit the D key to return the foreground/background colourswatch to black and white.

Step Four: Carefully paint aroundthe picture working in Black on theedges and any areas you want todarken, then hitting the X key whichchanges it to White and you canthen lighten faces, eyes etc. Make

each brush stroke a complete strokeas the brush tool is an accumulativetool so each time you brush a sectionit is adding 20% to the underlyingstrokes so the key trick here is tofinish your entire brush stroke beforelifting your finger off the mouse. If you make a mistake simple use the Xkey again to change colour andlighten or darken the offendingstroke or if you dont like the resultsimply delete the layer and startagain.

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7

dobe Photoshop Elements 7 for MicrosoftWindows XP SP 2 or 3 and Windows Vista

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 currently only available for Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 or 3 and Windows Vista

W ell here it is, the latest version of thenumber one selling consumer photo ed-iting software in the world today that aims tomake it so simple for digital photographers todownload, organise, edit, enhance and sharetheir images in a variety of new and excitingways.Adobe has always been very honest in theirmarketing of Photoshop Elements since itslaunch in 2001. It was billed as a cheaper andeasier to use version of the worlds leading im-aging manipulation software PHOTOPSHOPCSx and to that end they are correct.

They dropped a lot of the functionalityof PHOTOSHOP to create ELEMENTS but

they have lost none of its usability.For most users Elements is very easy touse, navigate and create images with.You dont need to major in Photoshop toquickly assemble and share your cre-ations.In fact right from the get-go Adobes en-gineers made it a lot easier to use by in-cluding groups of communally usedtasks and ideas into scripts so that allyou had to do was select, click and use.

Top new features in Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Smart Brush Photomerge Scene Cleaner New Quick Fixes Toothbrush Bluer skies Black & White Paintbrush New Guided Edits Effects: Pencil Sketch, Old Fashioned, and more Ac ons: Slimming, Cropping, Cap ons, and more Adjustments: Levels, Fix Distor on Surface Blur New Web Gallery Templates Text Search box

Smart Brush

More Func onality

More tools

More Effects and Ac ons

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Okay, for those advanced photog-raphers brought up on a diet of Photoshop a step backwards intoElements is a bit like leaving thecar at home.You will miss things like Actions,major text controls, guides, LABadjustments, CMYK and coloursettings, paths and some multi-media functionality.But you will marvel at how the en-gineers thought about what aphotographer would really needto use to quickly move imagesabout and correct them and thenthey grouped these tasks togetherand made it a lot more intuitiveand accessible.In fact as the versions rolled off the production line over the pasteight years users started to noticesubtle changes whereby what ap-peared in Elements was a taste of

what would likely be appearing inthe next version of CS.But where Elements is at itsstrongest apart from the cheapcost (somewhere around $249compared with $1450+ for CS3) isits ability to group commonlyused tasks into one action or intu-itive pictogram task window al-lowing inexperienced users toquickly achieve the same results as pros.Take black and white conversions, Elements had aclick and use visual reference palette l ong before CSdid.Those using both Photoshop systems know that ba-

sically most of what they do in CS is achievable in El-ements with only some limitations.Now hitting our shelves is the latest incantation of Elements version 7 so lets see what goodies are inthe bag here.First up you will notice that they have retained thedark gray screen theme to replicate Adobe Light-room and Bridge in CS3/4 but now you can adjustthe overall brightness of the interface.

One of the features thats catching the headlines is

the new Smart Brush

Found under the Full Editmode, the new Smart Brushtool is a combination of theQuick Selection tool and ad-justment layers. Offer ing afast way to adjust, enhance,and add up to 70 effects toyour photos.

Surface Blur

The Surface Blur filter, found under the Filtermenus Blur section, specializes in softening sur-faces while keeping edges crisp and should be agreat filter for portraits.

Photomerge Scene Cleaner

Take a great group photo and there will always besomeone with their eyes closed in one frame sonow you can use the new Photomerge SceneCleaner to fix the problem while still retaining yourmain background image. You will need at least twoframes of the image and the subjects you wish tochange must be in different locations in the imagesbut its real easy to open his eyes using the scenecleaner it works great also on landscapes with an-noying people in them.

Quick Edit features.

In the Quick Edit mode you now access to a toolcalled Whiten Teeth . Simply click the tool and care-

fully paint over the teeth towhiten them. Joining the tooth-brush is a Bluer skies enhancer,which acts just like the toothbrushin that you paint over the skyareas and this increases the bluein there to give you better looking

well saturated skies. The last newtool on the Quick Edit palette isthe Black & White Paintbrush. Allthree are paint brushes whichmimic the quick selection brushand change the area you select a fun set of tools with lots of op-tions.

Guided Edit

The Guided Edit mode has a fewenhancements to existing tools,such as the ability to adjust levels,how to go about fixing KeystoneDistortion, the new Photographic

Effects and the Actions Player. InPhotographic Effects , you areable to quickly turn your photosinto works of art through somesimple, step-by-step instruc tionscovering Line Drawing, Old Fash-ioned Photo, and Saturated SlideFilm Effect. The Action Player,also found in the Automated Ac-tions section is a set of commands

or tasks that can be automatically applied to animage. While playing actions in Elements has beenpossible in the past its still not able to record yourown actions. There are a host of new animatedweb galleries with a wide choice of templates to

create richer more interactive sharing experiencesincorporating Adobe Flash technology that lets thefamily and your mates interact with your photos.Add in new custom slide show features to create anentertaining slide show complete with captions,documentary-style pan and zoom effects, cool tran-sitions, voice narration, and yes! music. To help youfind images quicker in the Organiser Adobe haveadded a new Text Search box in Photoshop Ele-ments 7 to help you find photos in a flash usingkeywords for tags, dates, and now file information.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 for Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 or 3 and Windows Vista

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Surprisingly enough this happens alot to photographers.

The whole world may be eruptingaround them in a cacophony of

Why am I here? Or how to increaseyour hit rate with a shot count listEver stood in amongst a large mass of people or on the edge of National Park and couldntfind anything to photograph?

Step one: Identify why you are there and what you are trying toachieve.

Step two: Set achievable goals or themes to shoot while you arethere.

Step three: Dont race around shooting up a storm on nothing in themisguided belief that you may snap a winner or two here or there.

Step Four: Look with your eyes and ears and find where the action ishappening.

Step Five: Start with a Shootingplan and try and stick to it eventhough you will often be dis-tracted.

Step Six: Think safety at all times.

Step seven: Answer the old WhoWhat When Were How questionshonestly.

sounds and visual effects and yetthey cant see the forest for thetrees. They tightly grasp their cam-eras and stress as they struggle tosee a single photo op.

The trick here is to immediately stopand ask yourself this one simplequestion. Why am I here?

As in most cases you should be ableto answer it then just look up and Illguarantee that you will suddenly see

The 7 steps to making your own shot count

a whole raft of exciting photo oppor-tunities.Something will catch your eye thensuddenly its like a dark shroud hasbeen lifted from your eyes and youllsee photo ops by the hundreds.It is a trick I use often as I racearound covering news and editorialassignments.It serves as an effective reboot toyour hand-eye co-ordination systemas it helps to refocus your eyes onwhat is happening right in front of you.

Try it out the next time you are outand about in crowds of people.

The same goes for when you are outwith your local camera club.Everybody is standing around chat-ting away and shooting up a stormbut you cant seem to see the photosthey are taking.

The end goal is to getenough photos to offeran effec ve coverage of an event without toomuch stress on yourpart - keep it simple

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A sample shooting plan:

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A Brief History of Ankor Wat

Its well known that following his victory in 1066 at the Battleof Hastings, William the Conqueror, granted the citizens of the small city of London special privileges to keep all 18,000of them under control. Whats hard to imagine is that whilethis future bastion of western culture was slowly risingfrom the first millennium, on the other side of the world acolossal temple city housing more than a million inhabi-tants was just reaching its full potential as a major centreof religion, culture, trade and commerce in the SouthEast Asian region. Sadly Angkor Wat (meaning templecity), would soon start to slowly succumb to the curseof generations whereby one generation builds up thewealth, the next consolidates that wealth and thethird spends or wastes it. Initially built as a significantHindu religious centre dedicated to Vishnu, it waslater converted to a Buddhist temple city.Thought to only be about 1000 sq km in size, similarin size to modern day Los Angeles, recent groundsensing radar imagery has now put the size of thecity complex at Ankor Wat at more than 3000 sq km,making it the largest pre-industrial complex of itskind. Its eventual stagnation through miss-manage-ment saw it being sacked in the mid 1400s by thekingdom of Siam before disappearing into theannuals of history where its whereabouts re-mained shrouded in myth and mystery for the

next 500 years.In 1860 French explorer Henri Mouhot lit-erarily stumbled across it and later de-scribed Ankor Wat temple in his travelnotes as A rival to that of Solomon,erected by some ancient Michelangelo thatmight take an honourable place beside ourmost beautiful buildings. It is grander than any-thing left to us by Greece or Rome. Before the ruinswere found, even the locals thought the existence of the temple city was a myth. Mouhot, other archaeolo-gists and unscrupulous western traders then wentabout systematically plundering the site for the next hun-dred years. Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, mis-takenly thought Ankor Wat was constructed around the

same time as Rome and was unable to believe that theKhmers could have built such a spectacular temple. Thetrue history of Angkor Wat was later pieced together fromstylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during thesubsequent clearing and restoration work carried out acrossthe whole Angkor site in the 20th century. Work was inter-rupted by the civil war and Khmer Rouge control of the coun-try during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little structuraldamage was done during this period other than the wholesaletheft and destruction of many thousands of Ankorian statues.Due to Siem Reaps closeness to the Thailand border theKhmer Rouge also peppered the sites with thousands of landmines which are still a problem today in more remote sites.

Surviving a short trip to Siem Reap to snap AnkorWat.

While the rest of the Cambodia slowly emergesinto the 21st centuryafter years of strife and neglect, Siem Reap has liter-ally moved ahead in leaps and bounds to becomeone of the hottest tourist destinations.

Asia has discovered Siem Reap and plane loads of Japanese, Korean and mainland Chinese touriststouchdown daily fuelling the local economy withmore than two mi llion visitors a year.But the old charm of the Khmer still prevails in SiemReap making it one of the mostphotogenic destinations you will ever visit.This breathtaking temple complex, the epitome of the highly classical style of Khmerarchitecture, has become a symbol of Cambodiaand is a source of great national pride, appearingproudly displayed on the Cambodian national flagand is the countrys prime attraction for visitors.

Ankor Wat: a land of templesBy John Cosgrove

With Images by Kath, John, Kacy and Jonathan Cosgrove

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Our two and a half day Siem Reap photoexpedition

Our arrival from Singapore at the brand new interna-tional terminal at Siem Reap in Cambodia aboard Silk AirFlight MI 633 was on a balmy Monday afternoon in Janu-ary. The cool Dry season running from November toFebruary is the best time to visit Cambodia while duringthe Wet season of June to October, monsoon rainsdrown the country in a sea of mud and flood watersmaking travel hard. Go then and youll have to plan yourday around the regular afternoon rains. But what youwill get though is stunning white clouds and deep blueskies after the daily afternoon rains finish. April throughto June its just too damn hot and dusty to make it fun.Getting through Siem Reap customs is an exercise inmodern efficiency, quite unlike some other destinationsin Asia I could name. Modern immigration terminalsmanned by pleasant and helpful staff record your detailsand take your photo after you have paid the obligatory$USD20 single-entry tourist visa charge. (Note: If travel-ling on by plane to visit Phnom Penh later, you will stillhave to pay again at their terminal).We planned our stay over a three day period to tie inwith flight schedules. Siem Reap has the full gamut of accommodations from luxury four star hotels to back-packers flop houses. Use the web to find one that bestsuits your budget.Pre-booking our accommodations at one of the betterguesthouses in Siem Reap Earthwalkers (www.earth-walkers.no) where I have stayed several times now.We booked a simple twin room with a fan and a bath-room attached which was cost us only $USD 15 a night.AC is dearer and there are also family rooms and bunkbed rooms available. This very modern European runguesthouse has a very good reputation for safety, and iscentrally located just off main Road No. 6 with easy ac-cess to the magnificent tem-ple sites of Angkor, themain city and to Siem ReapInternational Airport. LocalTuk-tuk and tourist van driv-ers all know where it is and

those few preferred driversrecommend by staff willlook after you very well.They will negotiate a goodprice for a days travel es-corting you around the tem-ple sites safe in theknowledge that they will al-ways be there waiting foryou when you get out of thetemple you are visiting.Earthwalkers and mostother reputable guest

houses and hotels also arrange pick up from the airport,all done through the web before you arrive.Plan your trip to Siem Reap and Ankor Wat well as unlikethose backpackers on an extended tour most of us onlyhave a 3 day long weekend to sample the delights of Cambodia.

Day 1 Monday Afternoon:

We finally got to Ankor Wat around 5pm after navigatingour way through the tourist police security portal --andthe crowds only to be hustled out of the site at 7pm by

guards clearing the site for a tourist pay-for-view lightshow and meal event at $USD75 per person. They hadalso closed the high steps inside Ankor Wat after a cou-ple of tourists fell down injuring themselves.

There isnt a lot to see at night after you get out of thefive block area around the Old Market area of Siem Reaptown, near the southern end of town,. The are goodstreet photo opportunities and the food is really cheap.So is the beer so sit back and enjoy a few at the RedPiano. They block all the streets off around the mainrestaurant and bar area after dark to make the placemore secure after the Bali bombings and it makes for abetter alfresco dinning and people watching experience.

Note: Once you have negotiated your day rate fromthe tuk-tuk or van drivers allow 30 minutes to getthrough the Ankor Wat security portal and pay for athree day pass $USD40 or a one week pass at$USD60. Be warned, there are guards everywhere,even in the remotest Wat, who will ask for yourpass. No pass leads to a lot of trouble so carry iteverywhere.

The tuk-tuks make for excellent photo pla orms as the drivers dontmind photographers asking them to stop all the me.

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A window serves as an effec ve frame for one of the hundreds of faces at the famous Bayon Temple. Use the windows frame tosupport your camera and dont be afraid of adding a li le ash.


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Day Two Tuesday:

Remember the sun screen, a hat and water.Your shooting day is based around visiting several differ-ent styled temples in the golden hours of early morningor late in afternoon/evening and then resting, eating andshopping during the midday because the hot tempera-tures and strong sunlight makes it too hard to exploreeven in this so called cool season. The first place you seeafter clearing the police point is the 3.5km long Moataround the Ankor Wat site. Stop and shoot the reflectionshots offered here. Then you have the choice of turning

left or right. We choose a right handed loop of the mainAnkor site to start at Pre Rup: a good place to start yourAnkor experience.Next on the list was Ta Prohm with its trees growing up

through the stone work. It is now a major tourist site soyou have to stick to the wooden walkways funnellingtourists through the site. Here on a previous trip wewere surprised to find a couple of European women con-ducting a nude shoot in amongst the crumbling stoneworks as they dodged the tourist police. They said theywere travelling the world shooting themselves nude atall the famous tourist sites. Now thanks to the film LaraCroft Tomb raider, Ta Prohm has become a mecca forsnap happy tourists and guards that dont like you wan-dering off the walkways. If you really want to see whathow Ta Prohm looked only a few years ago beforeAngelina Jolie made it famous, simply walk across the

road to the temple of Banteay Kdei which is largely unre-stored and you will fill your CF cards with spectacular im-ages of trees growing through the masonry. It is not onthe usual tourist circuit of Ankor Wat so its quiet andpeaceful and nobody annoys you. It will take you a cou-ple of hours to wander through these temples so takeyour time and enjoy it.By now the sun is up high in the sky so off through theimpressive Victory gate and start looking around insidethe walled area of Ankor Thom. There you will find thestunning Terrace of Elephants and a couple of interestingtemples, Baphuon and Phimeanakas, both of which arecurrently undergoing full restoration to return them to

Note: I hope you have a head for heights as manyof the temples have very steep sets of stairs whichyou need to climb up to get the really unique pic-tures of the surrounding areas. Take care and becareful coming down there is no shame in goingdown backwards.

38 39

The strong golden light from the early morning sun is really amaz-ing in Cambodia, giving us a bonus colour to work with as we vis-ited the Pre Rup Temple site.

Ta Prohm, a wonderful site filled with old trees growing out the temple walls,

lots of broken buildings and heaps of photo ops if you pardon the crowds.


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unique fine art style.

Around 3pm: Its time to head back to Ankor Wat tocatch the late afternoon sun and sunset around this fa-mous temple. Again, once you have navigated the hordesof trinket sellers at the gates, you are free to wanderslowly up the kilometre long walkway to the main templearea. Take your time as the golden late afternoon suncreates interesting shadows on the many walls, carvedwindows and archways in the buildings surrounding thecomplex.Expect lots of visitors and tour parties all marching to adifferent beat. Hindus constructed the temple in the12th century, with a gilded central tower representingMount Meru, mythical home of the gods and the centerof the spiritual and physical universes.Sadly over the past eight years since I started visitingAnkor Wat I have noticed that it is buckling under thepressure of millions of tourists visiting the worlds largestreligious monument.

Looking back at photos I first took in 2000 I have noticedthat there is a distinctive amount of erosion in the build-ing structures, stone carvings and finer detail. Globalwarming, the increased pollution from the millions of tourists driving up to the site each year and the pay-for-view events hosted on the site are the main causes forthe rapid erosion of this delicate sandstone structure and

already areas including the towers, the tallest at 71 me-tres high, are off-limits because the constant wear andtear has made the structures unsafe and in real dangerof collapsing.

Just before you turn at the moat to visit the Ankor Watsite is Phnom Bakheng, where each night at sunset,hordes of buses drop off hundreds of tourists who

the glory of the mighty Bayon temple with its hundredsof faces which dominates the main Ankor Thom site.

Built by Jayavarman VII, the Bayon temple stands in the

center of Angkor Thom. Its 54 towers and 216 faces of the deity Avalokiteshvara look best during the goldenhours as the sun shines on the faces. The Bayon has over1.3 Km of bas-reliefs corresponding to more than 11.000figures. Most of them depict every days life scene of theCambodia in the XII century. Photographically it is aspopular as Ankor Wat.

Guides tell unwary tourists that the hundreds of largefaces replicated all over this very large tourist site and onthe four gates are really renditions of Jayavarman VII,who wanted his subjects to know that he knew every-thing about them sort of like a medieval big brotherwatching their every move.Bayon is spectacular and I found that bending the per-spective, using different viewpoints and using a zoomlens to crop tightly made for more interesting shots. Tryframing the head shots with the many windows at thetemple and then include in some of the tourists to giveyou a size comparison.Lunch Time return to the city centre and relax in one of the many restaurants. You might even consider a visit tothe famous Foreign Correspondents Club and gallery atits new location up near the Royal residence by the SiemReap River. Check out the stunning works by local ex-patphotographer John McDermott who has been photo-graphing Southeast Asia since the early 1990s in his

Note: Use the cloudy white balance setting to keepthat lovely golden light in your images.

41

Visit Bayon during the late afternoon to get really good shadows and textures on the hundreds of faces and etchings there. The best time of the day to photograph Ankor Wat is late afternnon as the sun is behind you and casting a golden glow over the temple complex.

40

Climbing up for a better view, they are now putting up rails to help tourists togo up and down these very steep steps without falling and hurting themselves.

On the walls of the Terrace of elephants you can find wonderful light andshadow images on the bas reliefs carved into the sandstone there.


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scramble up thesteps or ride onthe backs of ele-phants to thesmall temple ontop of this smallhill to catch aglimpse of thesunset views,which I am toldare really spec-tacular. I wouldrecommend vis-iting PhnomBakheng duringthe morninghours and youwill be re-warded with a

nice, quiet and colourful temple with the odd elephantwandering around it if you are lucky. Just remember thatthis strategic hill was one of the last bastions of theKhmer Rouge and was only cleared of mines a few yearsago so dont wander off the formed tracks or steps.

7pm: Back to the guest house to cool off in the pool andwash away the road dust from travelling in the tuk-tuksbefore we head into town again for a meal and drink.

There is enough choice in the restaurant area includingFrench, Western, Indian, Khmer, Japanese, Korean, Singa-porean, Italian or Chinese so you can eat somewhere dif-ferent each meal time and you will still never sample allthe culinary delights available in Siem Reap.

Day Three Wednesday:All templed out after a full day looking at the many dif-ferent styles of temples on offer from the more than 600available in the Ankor Archaeological Park area weheaded out at 9am for the old market in Siem Reap toget some people and detail shots before heading downto the Tonle Sap lake area. The market area is complex somake sure all the members of your party know where tomeet up at what time if your get separated. On offer arethe wet and dry markets which make great photo sub-jects, just watch where you put your feet.

The massive Tonle Sap fresh water lake controls the livesof the entire Cambodian population. It is known for itsfishing and from the floating villages on its banks you cantravel by boat to and from Phnom Penh on daily serviceswhich take about 4.5 hours each way.

At its lowest during the month of May, Tonle Sap lakemeasures only about 2500 sq km and is only about ametre deep but when Himalayan meltwater and themonsoon rains arrive down the mighty Mekong River at

Phnom Penh during the wet season it reverses the flow

Note: By all means visit theroadside vendors for art works,drinks and trinkets but watchout for the kids forced to selltourist guides and postcardsand the small children used asbeggars by their parents. Whenyou buy from these kids you areencouraging their parents tokeep on using them for thesympathy sales and this keepsthem out of the many schools

specially built by foreigners inSiem Reap to give disadvan-taged children a chance at aneducation.

42 43

From the top of the hill on the way to Tonle Sap lake you can look out over the catchment area which will be flooded in the wet season.

River children spend mot of their lives hawking on the floating villages around the shores of the Tonle Sap lake district. Use a long tele-lens to isolate them from themessy backgrounds which are o ften hazy.


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of the Tonle Sap River and the lake becomes a giant floodrelief area expanding to more than 15,000 sq kms and adepth of more than 8 metres. When the waters recedethey deposit fertile mud for the planting of rice andother crops. The lake was designated by UNESCO in 1997as a Biosphere Reserve and this included the Prek Toalreserve, a sanctuary for a wide range of water birds, in-cluding three endangered species spot-billed pelicans,greater adjutant storks, and the white-winged ducks.Prek Toal lies on the northwest edge of the lake in thedry season and is easily reached from Siem Reap, al-though youll have to take an organised tour.

Tuk-tuk and air-con van drivers will always negotiate aspecial rate for driving down to Tonle Sap Lake. Why? Idont know because its about the same distance fromthe guest house to the Ankor Thom site and return as itis to the lake edge depending on the time of year. Thisyear the lakes edge was a lot closer and it was only ashort distance from the only other hill in the whole dis-trict which looks out over the Lake District. Stopping off at the picturesque village at the base of this small hill, lo-cated about 10kms down the road from Siem Reap, wewalked up it in the blazing morning sun. Our van driverhad the sense to go off for a haircut and a sleep while weclambered up the hill to view the ancient but workingmonastery at the top and shoot some landscapes out

over the water.

As I said before always take your Ankor Wat passeseverywhere you go as we were again stopped by guardsand asked to produce them. They didnt mind us shoot-ing pictures of the anti-aircraft battery pre-positioned upthere, they just wanted to make sure we had the rightpasses to be on the site.

The monastery is a working model and the old bits areover on the lake side so it was worth the climb, (again,

dont venture off the tracks mines might be there - younever know). The buildings there are really starting tocrumble under the climate conditions and may well begone in a few years if not restored. But I would say thatthey are really way down the pecking order for funds

Note: Men - always ask a local adult before photo-graphing children as recent publicity surroundinghigh profile sex tours and the child sex trade havetarnished male photographers so be prepared forbarbed comments from locals if you are seen photo-graphing children. The local government is stronglyenforcing child sex laws so be warned.

44 45

Outside the main city area there are many wonderful photo ops in the villages that line the main roads. Take your time and dont rusgh things and you will comeacross some really wonderful sights. Set the camera to AI Focus to allow you the chance to shoot moving and still subjects and dont forget to vary your angles.

(Above) One of the friendly monks at the hill top monestry, shot with a 120mm lens and small aperture to remove the background.

(Below)Everything floats on the lake even the churches take your tele-zoom to get closer to your subjects and set the AF to servo to catch the moving shots.


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stick.

Back to dry land where the boat driver and guides all hadtheir hands out with a smile on their faces, and it wasback into Siem Reap to relax with a pizza at the le tigre de

papier (the paper tiger restaurant), a drink and watch thesunset.

On the way back we stopped a few times to catch imagesof kids playing in the river and out on the paddy fields.

Day Four Thursday:Depart Siem Reap (via Phnom Penh) MI 622, departing at1040 and arriving at 1520

Allowing the usual 2 hours to get through check in andcustoms etc at the small but busy Siem Reap airport. Youcan book a tuk-tuk from the guest house to the airportbut because they only use the best and safest drivers itscommon to use the same driver each day you are thereand he will often be the one taking you back out to the

airport. The average Khmer is a very kind and respectfulperson, always cheerful and eager to please, its just thelure of the tourist dollar has started to encroach on theirusual pleasant spirit and manners so watch out for thosefew that can ruin your stay.

If your flight leaves later in the day I would recommendvisiting the war museum they have built nearby which isfilled with rusting mine damaged vehicles and war para-phernalia graphically showing the damage caused bymines in the area. The most sobering part is a map show-ing just how densely mined the province of Siem Reapwas mined before the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge latein the 90s.

The bottom line

Siem Reap and Ankor Wat are very beautiful places andextremely photogenic. You cant see everything so takeyour time and plan to see a cross section of different tem-ple styles in the time you have there. Consider the heatand the amazing light they get there in the golden hours.Ar kun (thank you in Khmer)

compared to main Ankor Wat area.

Back down on the flat and a short ride to the boat areaand this is where things started to go a bit pear shaped.We had booked a small tour as it offered us a chance toride by boat out onto the lake area for a couple of hours,looking at the floating villages and shooting some photosthere.Once we were underway with our guides who wehadnt asked for, another boat suddenly pulled up along-side and a young woman leapt aboard loaded down withsoft drinks. Targeting the children first she started hand-ing them opened cans of Coke and Fanta to drink thenthrew the boat driver and the two guides a can of beereach, before finishing up looking at me and holding outher hand for payment - all in the space of just 30 sec-onds. I had to pay for drinks at an exorbitant price beforeshe leapt aboard the circling jet boat and speed off. Shetried the same trick on the return journey but this time Iadvised her about the prospect of sex and travel andpushed her craft away before she could leap aboard ourboat.

The voyage continued along the river and we marvelledat how entire communities lived, worked and played onthe muddy river banks. There were homes, bars and

restaurants, schools, commercial business, churches,

medical centres and even a basketball court, all floatingalong on colourful boats.As we neared the lake proper we were taken to a floatingrestaurant for a meal along with a number of othertourist boats laden down with European tourists, (yes!you know the drivers were getting kickbacks from theowner for bringing customers there but what can youdo).No sooner had we boarded it, a number of smaller boatsappeared alongside filled with children and womenhawking live snakes, drinks and other tourist junk. Theywere Vietnamese river people our guides advised us andnot to be trusted.They also started demanding payment when they saw ustaking a photo of two cute kids in one of those iconicAsian circular boats. Not one to miss a photo op I simplychanged to a longer tele-zoom and shot from furtheraway so they didnt see me.Snakes seem to be the common tourist photo-op aroundhere and they (the Vietnamese river people) had a nastyhabit of coming alongside and throwing the snakesaboard then demanding money.Escaping from the restaurant we next visited a houseboat with an alligator pen attached and it wasnt worththe money to watch a few smelly alligators trashingaround in a tiny cage as the owners prodded them with a

Note: Buy the colourful Cambodian scarves, theymake good barriers to the road dust as you travel inthe tuk-tuks and are also good sun screens if youforget your hat.

46 47

The old and the new: a buddist monk walks past one of the many construction sites in Siem Reap which employ hundreds of young workers.

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48 49

Shot list for Siem Reap

Because you can become templed out very quicklyhere it is advisable to make a shot list and try andachieve most of it each day. This will expand your se-lection of photos from just shooting tourist snapshots.

n The road side from the tuk-tuk as you drivearound arrange with your driver before hand and

make sure he understands that you will be stoppingoften. If hes good then tip him and he will be backtomorrow ready to stop for everything, adding a sec-ond set of eyes.

n Look for buildings, odd sights, animals and chil-dren playing in the rivers.

n Try shooting other travellers also riding on tuk-tuks or bicycles.Plan your temple circuit each day to do certain tem-ples in the morning and then break for lunch beforevisiting afternoon temples such as Ankor Wat, Bayonand any west facing temple. This will allow you tocapture a good cross section of the many styles anddesigns used in the 600 years of construction.

n Look for scenics showing how flat Cambodia isand then seek out hilltops for aerial views.Frame your shots look for windows, doorways orarch ways to frame temple sights.

n Vary your angles and think low for tall - high forsmall.

n Spend one day just shooting using your tele-zoom and close cropping subjects and carvings.

n Shoot outside only in the golden hours whichare sunrise until about 9.30am and from 3pm tilldusk in Cambodia its very dusty thats the clue asto the long hours of golden light found here.

n Spend one afternoon just shooting highlightsversus shadows (set your camera to matrix exposuremode and the camera will default to highlights leav-ing the shadows black) cool.

n Shoot faces but ask first.

n Experiment with light and shadow on the plentyof rocks and statues lying around at the manyrestoration sites.


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50 51

Spring has arrived down in the deep south and it isa good me to get out and shoot the colourfulblossoms and tulips. Use your tele-zoom to isolategood looking blooms and shoot with a shallow(under f5.6) aperture to blur out the background.


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inside photo edition 3

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