photo insights - january 2014

8/11/2019 Photo Insights - January 2014

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P H O T O I N S I G H T SJim Zuckermans

January 2014

Exposing for snow Birds in ight Creative blurs Creating a stareld Student showcase

Photo tours


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T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s

4. Exposing for snow

9. Birds in ight

14. Creating a starfeld17. Creative blurs

22. Whats w rong with this picture?

24. Short and sweet

26. Ask jim

29. Student showcase

33. Back issues

Table of Contents


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Even though the Christmas season is over, I wanted to share with you a thought Ihave about gi giving. While it is certainly true that a gi given with kindness and/or love is something to cherish, there is a lot to be said for giving yourself a gi.Whether it be for Christmas, a birthday, or just because you want to treat yourself tosomething special, its a great way to make yourself feel good. And there is no bettergi than a camera or some other piece of photographic equipment for this reason:

Photography helps you document special moments in your life.

At the end of our lives, what we hang on to dearly are our memories. When you in-tently focus your attention, your creativity, and your artistry on capturing an eventin your life, that memory stays with you on two levels. Youve got the visual record,and the emotions that are attached to that picture are more poignant, more clear,and more memorable than millions of other moments in our lives that fade awaybecause we didnt take the time to take a picture.

So, photography is much more than simply capturing pretty pictures. It helps keep

alive cherished moments that otherwise would diminish or be lost entirely. atswhy when there is a house re, aer people and pets are rescued, its the picturesthat come next.

Give yourself a gi soon -- something that will enhance your photographic abilitiesso you can continue to preserve the memories of your life.

[email protected]

3

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope your NewYear will be lled with good health, happiness, and lots

of great photo opportunities.


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Exposing forS n o w

If you dont know how exposure meters work, snow photography is a problem-atic and mysterious endeavor. Normally, without any comensation or adjust-ments, snow pictures turn out dark and disappointing. e snow looks gray

and muddy, and if you include people, animals, or other objects in the picture, they lookdecidedly underexposed.

First, let me explain how light meters work for those of you who are not quite sure. Alllight meters are programmed to give you a correct light reading when they detect middle

gray (i.e. middle toned) subjects, such as the tree bark in the Sequoia trees, below. Ex-amples of middle toned subjects or middle toned areas of pictures are a blue sky, bluejeans, green grass, neutral colored rocks, and mousy brown hair.

e key to getting consistently good exposures, with or without snow, is to be able toidentify middle toned portions of your images. You then take a light reading from this


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ios? Obviously, it cant.

My approach is much more user friendly, andyou get what you see. I suggest you take oneshot using any of your exposure modes (aper-ture priority, shutter priority, and Program arefaster than manual) and then examine it on theLCD monitor on the back of the camera. Fromthere, use the exposure compensation featureto tweak the exposure in 1/3 f/stop incrementsuntil you like the exposure.

Its that simple.

If you arent familiar with the exposure com-pensation feature in your camera, learn how

to use it. Study your manual or do a searchon youtube for an explanatory video. It is oneof the most important tools you have to workwith; it is a guarantor for consistently perfectexposures. Not necessarily with the rst shot,but denitely with the second or third shot.


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UPCOMING PHOO WORKSHOPS

Winter Wildlife WorkshopHinckley, MinnesotaJan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2014

Baby WildlifeWorkshopHinckley, MinnesotaJune 13 - 15, 2014

Baby wolves, skunks, bobcats, lynx, foxes,bears, and more

Frog & Reptile WorkshopClose-up encounters with poison dartfrogs and exotic reptiles in St. Louis, MO.

Jan. 25-26, 2014

e Pantanal, Brazil:

Jaguars at the rivers edge plus caiman,

giant anteaters, monkeys, pink dolphins,and unbelievable birds.

November 8-20, 2014

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Strategies for ShootingBirds in Flight

If you feel frustrated when you try to take pictures of birds in ight, join the crowd.We all do. In my opinion, it is the single most dicult thing to shoot in naturephotography.

Here is the problem: You want to ll the frame to a certain degree so the bird looks impres-sive without too much cropping, but by doing that with a long lens, depth of eld becomesminimal. e bird is moving fast, and keeping the bird in focus is a daunting challenge.With the reduced depth of eld, its tough to get a winning picture. Doable, but tough.

Compounding the challenge is exposure. If the bird is ying against a bright sky or thepatchy lighting of tree branches against the sky like the macaw, below, taken on my CostaRica photo tour, or against middle toned marsh grass, the background aects the exposuresignicantly. You can feel defeated at the outset simply because the obstacles to getting a


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good picture seem insurmountable.

Expect to trash a lot of pictures as you look for afew good ones. is is a given.

Te Solutions

Here are the strategies I use to get pictures of birdsin ight. Other photography instructors andpros may have dierent methods, but these haveworked for me.

1. I always use a relatively high ISO. 100 or 200are never a good idea for bird photgraphy, andcertainly not for birds in ight beause a fast shut-ter speed is required to freeze the action. Sure, you

can do blurs with slow shutter speeds, and thatsne. I do that, too. But the real accomplishmentis to get the bird sharp. erefore, I recommenda minimum of 400 ISO, and sometimes youllhave to go much higher. e noise problem can

be mitigated with post-processing sowaresuch as Nik Dne 2.0 or the new Luminanceslider thats part of Adobe Camera RAW withPhotoshop CC. In the meantime, though, usea shutter speed fast enough to freeze actionHow fast is that?

2. For slow moving birds, such as the Africanwhite pelican, below, coming in for a landing1/320th of a second is about the minimum Iwould use. ats what I used for this imageFor birds that soar, like vultures and eaglesyou can use 1/250th of a second or faster.

For birds that ap their wings at a fairly fastpace, such as the goliath heron from Ethio-

pia and the roseate spoonbill from Floridaboth on the next page, I prefer to use shutterspeeds in the 1/1000 to 1/2000 range. isguarantees that every feather will be sharpIf the light is low, such as on an overcast day


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or at sunrise and sunset, the ISO may have tobe 1600 or more to get a very fast shutter speed.What about the lens aperture?

3. When shooting birds in ight, depth of eldis a luxury. In my opinion, a fast shutter speed

is more important. Assuming you are shootingwith a long lens -- 400mm or more -- the dier-ence between f/5.6 and f/8 is negligible, but dou-bling the shutter from, say, 1/500th to 1/1000th

can make a big dierent in rendering the birdin ight sharp. erefore, I almost always shoot


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wide open. in other words, if the maximumaperture of the lens is f/4, thats what I use. Iput the lens on aperture priority at f/4, and thisgives me the fastest shutter speed possible giv-en the ISO and the ambient light.

Focus

e real challenge, of course, is focus. Howdo you keep a ying bird sharply focused asyou shoot? is is the single most challengingthing to attempt in nature photography. epictures you see in this article are sharp, butwhat I am not showing you are the thousandsof ying bird pictures Ive trashed because theywerent sharp (or because the wings were not

spread out nicely). ats just the nature of thebeast, so to speak. Expect to throw away mostof your images in the hope that youll have oneor two outstanding images that just happen to

be tack sharp.

I use several techniques that help me get sharppictures of birds. ey dont always work, ofcourse, but they are the only methods weve got

1. Turn all of the autofocus points on. As thebird ies, the wing spread is likely to be pickedup by some of the points. is helps the lenslock onto the bird. I usually only use the centerfocus point for most subjects, but with birds itsessential to use all of them.

2. Use a gimballed tripod head such as the Wim-berly Head (inset photo below) when shootingwith a long lens. Super telephoto lenses are

heavy, and when used with a normal ballheadthey wont have the smooth action you need tofollow ying birds. In addition, when you loos-en the ball the lens wants to lean over. You will


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spend time trying to re-orient the lens and nd

the bird in the sky, and in those few momentsthe pictures will be lost.

3. Use autofocus tracking in an attempt for thecamera to continually focus on the bird. isworks well if the birds are ying across yourvision, such as the amingos, above, and fora bird that ies relatively slowly. When birdsy toward the camera, autofocus tracking can

work sometimes, depending on the camera, thespeed of the bird, and how large the bird is inthe frame. e closer the bird is to the camera,the faster it seems to move and the less likelyyoull be able to maintain good focus on it.

4. For birds ying directly at the camera, tryto predict the ight path (sometimes this ispossible by studying the way it is perched on

a branch). Pre-focus on a point a few feet in

front of it. Set the frame rate on your camerato the fastest possible (such as 6 frames per sec-ond), and when the bird approaches that pointin ight, press the shutter and keep it depresseduntil the bird is past that point. Hopefully oneor two pictures will be sharp. is is the tech-nique I used for the macaw in ight on page 9.


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CREATING A STARFIELD

If you dont live in an area where shoot-ing a real stareld is feasible, or if youjust havent taken the time to do it,

you can create a would-be stareld at home. It

doesnt look exactly like the real thing, but forspecial eects purposes where you combine itwith other elements, it gives the allusion of re-ality

To do this, go to a drug store or a local crasstore and buy some glitter. It comes in dier-ent colors, and I recommend getting small vi-als or jars of silver, gold, blue, and red.

Next, get a piece of black velvet. One half yardof fabric is ne. Sprinkle the silver glitter on the

velvet, and then add a little of the other colorsStars are seen through telescopes exhibit vari-ous colors depending on the stage of their lifecycle, such as blue giants, red dwarfs, and yellow

dwarfs. ats what these colors represent.

To photograph the glitter, use a star lter placedover the lens so each of the bright pieces of glit-ter produces that radiating light eect. If youfeel thats too much, you can simply photographthe glitter without a lter.

Light the glitter with either an o-camera ash

or a photoood light source placed to the sideUse a tripod and f/11 and make sure the back othe camera is parallel with the stareld. is willinsure you have maximum depth of eld.


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E-books to help you take better

picturesClick on any ebook to see inside

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C r e a t i v e

B L U R S

One of the rst techniques we learned in photography when we got our rst camera washow to blur moving subjects with a slow shutter speed. What is unique about this tech-nique is that we cant ever see this abstraction of reality with our eyes. Only a camera can

capture it.

So oen we get so focused on getting pictures sharp (which is what we want most of the time, ofcourse) that we forget to think outside of the box and try something . . . dierent, fun, unorthodoxWhen you rst tried bluring moving subjects, you probably tried a passing car or a child runningin a park, and thats ne. But the technique can be applied to so many more compelling subjectsthat I encourage you, from time to time, to experiment with creative blurs because a lot of greatimages can result.

Shutter speed choice

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Which shutter speed you decide to use de-pends on several factors:

1. How much abstraction you want. Gener-ally, I use shutter speeds between 1/30th of asecond and one full second. e faster shutterspeeds obviously show more detail in the sub-ject, while long exposures abstract the imagemore. Dont abstract your subject so much thatit is completely unrecognizable. Completelyabstracted color is ne, but thats really a verydierent technique than what Im suggestingyou try here.

2. Te focal length of the lens. Long lensesmake moving subjects appear to move faster.

erefore when using a telephoto lens to blurmotion, the shutter speeds that have given methe best results are between 1/10th and 1/30thof a second. e picture of carnival in Rio deJaneiro, right, and the galloping white horseof the Camargue in France, below, were both


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taken at 1/15th.

3. Whether or not you pan with the moving sub-

ject. e relative speed between a subject and acamera is lessened if you pan. If the camera isstationary and the subject runs or ies past thelens, the apparent speed will be much faster.erefore, you should do some tests if possiblebeforehand to determine what shutter is nec-essary for the eect you want.

For the African white pelican above, I panned

with the bird. My settings were 1/30, f/18,200 ISO, 500mm lens plus a 1.4x teleconverterequalling 700mm of focal length.

4. If the subject is stationary and the cameramoves. If you shoot owers, models in colorfulcostumes, and other subjects that arent mov-ing, you can shake or rotate the camera dur-ing the exposure and create a blur. Or, you can

change the focal length of a zoom lens during

the long exposure as I did in the portrait of aparticipant in the Venetian carnival, above. Inthese scenarios, its important to give yourselfenough time to make the camera or lens move-ments. I recommend shutter speeds in the 1/2second to 1/8th of a second, again dependingon how much abstraction you want. For thisportrait i Venice, I used 1/2 second at f/32 with100 ISO.


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NewOnLine Course: LEARNING TO SEE

by Jim Zuckerman

20

Te ability to see photographically, to really

grasp how your camera and lenses capture

a subject or scene (which is different than

how we see with our eyes) underlies success-

ful picture taking. It is the bottom line that

youve been looking for to take that quantum

leap forward in your photography.

When you register for this new course, you

will be given download links to eight easy-

to-understand lessons that look like beauti-

ful mini ebooks. At your convenience, you

can study the material and then upload your

photos for a professional critique by Jim. In-

cluded in the course is a phone call once a

week to discuss your submissions or any oth-

er aspect of photography you want -- what

new equipment to buy, advice about airline

travel, problems with flash, or anything else.

Tis course can be purchased directly from

Jims website by clickingRIGH HERE.

Te great thing about online courses is that

they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in

the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the

time you can submit your work for his cri-

tiques.
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LEARNING TO SEEonline course

e 8 lessons that comprise this course are: Graphic design, Backgrounds, Depth offield, Patterns, Natural light, Color, Composition, andMotion. ese lessons arebeautifully illustrated and full of concrete steps to dramatically improve your photography.

21


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Whats wrong with this picture?

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Had this been the only picture I was able to take of this summer tanager inCosta Rica, I would be thrilled with it simply because its such a beauti-ful subject. But when the bird came to the feeding station of papaya and

bananas at the lodge I was using, it posed for at least 20 minutes, giving me a lot ofphoto opportunities.

I took this picture with on-camera ash, and even though the colors in this image re-ally pop, the depth and dimension of the small bird have been diminished. It looks

at. One could say that the modeling, or the ability to see the natural contours in thebody of the bird, have been compromised. In addition, there is an articial look aboutthis picture as if it were taken in captivity -- which it wasnt. I think most photogra -phers would be very happy with this image, and in fact I saw another photo tour groupin which everyone was using ash.

e problem was that the light level was very low. Even with an ISO of 3200, myshutter speed was 1/100th of a second at f/8 with a 500mm f/4 telephoto and a 1.4Xteleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length. I was using a tripod, but this shutter


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was still too slow for the focal length. I didnt want to go above 3200 ISO, so I tooka few dozen shots hoping that some would be sharp.

I took the picture above, then, with only the natural, ambient light of the jungle.e shadings of color in the bird appear to be more natural, and the very subtleshadows that give a subject depth are visible. To me, this is better. I know there aretimes when we have no choice but to use on-camera ash, but in this case I feel thatthe diused and natural lighting is more realistic, more attractive, and it produces

a more appealing picture. You may disagree, but thats how I see it.

One interesting aspect of the ashed picture is that the background did not goblack. Had the bird been very close to the camera, say 10 or 15 feet away, theash would have turned o once it illuminated the bird and the background foliagewould have become black. Because the bird was about 35 to 40 feet away, the lightwas able to spill over to the trees.


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SHORT AND SWEET

1. When the light is at and the colors are wintry, addsome color to spice up the image. is adds a strong

focal point. If the colorful subject is large enough (thiswrought iron bike isnt), it provides a middle gray areafrom which to take an accurate light reading.

3. Consider getting an app for your iPhone or iPadthat shows you where the sun rises and sets at any

location in the world. is will give you the abilityto advance plan your shooting given the direction ofthe light. For example, the famous row of houses onSteiner Street in San Francisco is a late aernoon shot.

2. A great time to photograph owers is right aer arain when the water drops on the petals are large and

natural looking. Yes, you can spray a ower from abottle, but it doesnt look as natural as when it rainsMake sure you use a tripod for macro photography.

4. e technique of combining abstract images withfaces can produce remarkable images. In this case,

used a shot of autumn foliage with a portrait from Indo-

nesia, and then I darkened the periphery with the burntool in Photoshop. Just make sure that the texture im-age doesnt eclipse the face.

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27

Photography Tours

2014 - 2015

Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com.

BURMA (Myanmar)April, 2014

INDONESIAAugust 2014

GREENLANDJune, 2014

SOUTH INDIA

May, 2014

WHITE HORSES, FRANCEApril, 2014

KENYAAugust, 2014

JAPANFebruary, 2015

POLAR BEARSOctober 2014

THE PANTANAL, BRAZILNovomber 8-20, 2014

MOROCCOMarch, 2015

PARIS/LONDONApril, 2015

2

CARNIVAL IN VENICEFebruary, 2015
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ASK JIM Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question youd like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at [email protected].

Q: Jim ... I am currently in your online course Learning to See, and for the depth of eld assignment Itook this picture with a 300mm lens. I used the focus stacking technique to get maximum depth of eld. Ishot 23 pictures of this subject and then merged them together in post-processing. Was this too many shots?Could I have done the same thing with fewer exposures?

A: No, this is not too manyk shots. Telephoto lenses have very shallow depth of eld, and that meansthat the more images you take of the subject (as you focus from the back to the front in tiny increments), thesharper the composite will be.

e focus stacking method gives you the ability to use the sharpest aperture on the lens which is usually

considered to be f/8. At f/8, then, you can get complete depth of eld. You did everything right here. Ifyou had used fewer frames, I think you would have compromised the perfection of this image. You maynot have seen any dierence looking at the picture as you see it here, but if you enlarged the digital le inPhotoshop to 100% and examined it closely, I think you would have seen some areas that were less thansharp.

Maria Coulson


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27

Indonesia Photo our

Balinese dancers active volcanos fashion festival

August 17 - 30, 2014
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Get professional critiques of your work

with Jims online courses

Betterphoto.com

20

Getprofessional critiques of your workwith Jimsonline courses

betterphoto.com Learn composition, exposure, Photoshop, beginning fundamentals, techniques

in low light photography, flash, making money in photography, and moreat your convenience and on your schedule.

28
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29

Student ShowcaseEach month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one of his photographytours or workshops. Its really fascinating how photographers see and compose such dierent images eventhough we may go to the same place. Everyone gets great images on my trips.

Dr. Charles Curry, Orlando, Florida

India photo tour, Namibia photo tour, frog workshopAll of these images were taken with an iPhone and manipulated in-camerawith and app.

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2013 Dr. Charles Curry


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photo insights - january 2014

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