Photography Techniques

I found a few very skilled photographers here on dA and decided to interview them, so that we all can also know some of their knowledge.  I interviewed kkart, MaciejKarcz, jjuuhhaa, and Bavenmark.  These photographers (for the most part) shoot nature and the outdoors.

I asked them two questions:

1) Are there any tips/tricks you'd reccomend to other photographers?

2) Any reasons you compose things the way you do on some shots? Pick a few and tell me why you did what you did, what equipment you used, and so on.


First, kkart replied as follows.
1) If I could recommend things  for fellow photographers, it would be to study composition. And study it hard. So many shots I see here on DA lack punch and a focal point. Composition is the key between having a photograph or a piece of art. In fact, study composition through landscape painting. One of the best sites on the net I have ever found deals with this, and even has an interactive composition tutorial. "A Brush With Wildlife" is a site every photographer who wants to learn more about composition should visit.
Other things I would recommend would be not to oversaturate your photos, another thing I often see here. While it may look good to you, it often can look gaudy to everyone else and over the top. Study light, and know that the second most important piece of equipment besides your camera is a tripod. get your work out there and get it seen, when posting a deviation, ask how it can be improved. You have one of the best resources in the world here on DA, your fellow photographers....use them and ask for constructive comments.

2) There are many reasons why I compose my shots the way that I do, generally though it all has to do with the light source. As a rule of thumb you always want the light at your back (sunrise/sunsets are an exception to this naturally) and a lot of the times I actually spend a minute and survey the whole scene. I walk around and look, taking it in, trying to find the very best spot to shoot at. Also, I always take a portrait style shot and a landscape style shot of the same subject. Picture orientation can often change the whole look and atmosphere in a heartbeat.



This shot was one of the hardest shots I have ever had to compose. I also took a portrait style of this shot, but it didn't work, or else you would see it here. I wanted to really try and capture the overall essence and atmosphere of the scene and the light was fading really fast. I chose to include the tree because the color happened to almost match the sky in areas, it also hints at the time of year it is. I had to crop it in camera with zooming in some because of man made objects being in the way at the bottom of the tree. I also wanted to show the lake and have it fade to the right, thus leading the viewers eye. The shoreline in the left side was a key element I was determined to capture.



This is a rare compositional photo for me, generally as a rule of thumb I try to avoid things like powerlines like the black plague.....I NEVER want them in my shots and sometimes I will take them out in postwork. In fact, this may be one of the rare occurrences where one of my photos actually has them in it. However they are in it for a reason. I did actually start taking them out, but when I did, I noticed that the composition started to lack and wasn't at strong, let alone,, having the presence of a telephone pole with nothing going to it or coming from it. The way the lines flow with the angle and perspective of the water tower, grain silo, and smokestack, leads the viewers eye and lets it flow smoothly. In this rare instance, I felt they actually lent perspective, depth, and scale to the image.
  For the cars, I shot  low, often for cars I do, and I always try to include elements of sky in there. It adds to the scene and makes it more dramatic. Shooting low also lends to a better vantage point and one can really work the angles. In this instance, it allowed for some nice perspective.



On this one I actually do also have a landscape oriented shot that did come out, but I feel this is the better of the two. I really wanted some foreground in this shot, and I thought that I would try a color-layered approach here...black naturally makes objects appear farther away than color objects, and with that in mind, I studied the scene and chose what I felt was the best location for to shoot. I really wanted a perspective that would lend to the atmosphere and I wanted contrasting color and angles...I chose to focus on the height of the mountain peak itself and the opposing slope of the foothill below it. Contrasting color, contrasting angles. I needed foreground though and I felt that having a nice area of scrub brush and trees would work wonders, offsetting the color of the snow. So snap I went!


Here's what MaciejKarcz had to say.
1) I don't think there's just one important "tip" to consider in photography.  I think you become better with practice, knowledge and technique.  Most important I think is exposure to a variety of great artists.  There are many here on dA that do fantastic work and I look to them for inspiration.  I also like to study some of the really fantastic pieces and try to understand what makes them different and if I can assimilate anything I learn from them.  I also own some books on photography from people like Bryan Peterson and Peter Watson and others.  You'll find that all the photos by people like them have one major thing in common, the photographers have a great understanding of light.  It's something so fundamental that it's often overlooked, but light can make or break any photograph.  If the light is great then composition becomes secondary I think.  All the books will tell you there are two golden hours to take pictures: the early morning during and right after sunrise, and the late evening during sunset.  I'm not a morning person so I usually do evening shots.

2) I also go out during the day but never on a clear blue sky, the light is harsh and the sky is dull.  I look for overcast skies and then use my graduated neutral density filter to give the skies some oomph like in and . Storms are great for this

My favorite style is nature and landscape, and half of any landscape is the sky and the light.  I love great skies like and :thumb49514691:.

Sometimes you have to adjust your technique to capture what you have in mind.  For this I rely on HDR (high dynamic range) photos.  That is, I take 3 or 5 photos at different shutter speeds, this is called bracketing.  This way each photo captures a slightly different amount of detail.  Usually I'm happy with taking 2 underexposed photos and 2 overexposed photos along with 1 photo in the middle.  Sometimes the situation is a bit more complicated and I use the histogram on the middle photo (which is metered exactly as the camera suggests) and from that decide if I want to bias the bracketed shots toward the underexposed end or the overexposed end.  I have a fairly consistent workflow for my HDRs.  For a given HDR, I open all the original photos in Adobe Camera Raw and disable all the auto settings (like auto exposure, auto shadows, etc) and make sure they all have identical settings.  Then I save them as .psd files and open them in Photomatix Pro where I combine them into an HDR image.  Then I apply tone mapping to bring the 32-bit HDR image down to a 16-bit Tiff file for final editing in photoshop.  There are many ways to post process the HDR and tonemapped files, I tend to prefer ones which closely resemble what I see with my eye but with some added extras  :thumb43242484: and :thumb49609700:

I currently use a Nikon D200 DSLR camera and the lens I use most is the Sigma 10-20mm EX HSM for landscapes.  I own other lenses but they're more suited for other purposes.  For maximum depth of field in landscapes I shoot at f/20 or f/22.  Anything smaller than that aperture loses a lot of sharpness.  With such a small aperture a good, sturdy tripod is a must.  I use a Manfrotto tripod with a grip action ball head which allows for great flexibility in composition over the usual pan/tilt heads I think.  When I arrive at a spot I usually spend some walking around and getting to know it.  I usually bring some emotion with me to the place and I try to put that into the mood of the shot and I keep that in mind when I post process a photo.  For example, .

Third, jjuuhhaa replied as follows.
1) I am not sure if I have any tips or tricks to make photographs better, because one needs always to be prepared well. Surprises and unexcpected things happen when out photographing, but the more prepared one is to meet these, the more successful pictures he can expect. Checking the time of the sunrise/sunset from the newspaper is not a bad idea and one shouldn't ever leave the extra lenses or the tripod home. Conditions can change quickly or Inspiration can strike any moment

2) I actually shot this tree the day earlier, but I was not entirely happy with the composition. I wanted to leave some open space on the right to show the bogland and also the shapes of the clouds affected where I wanted to put that tree within the frame. Also I had to lay very low on the ground, because in the picture I shot the day earlier the treeline intersected the tree and in my eyes it looked horrible. I used a circular polarizer to bring out the blues in the sky.

In this picture I used a focal length of 18mm and a Cokin P121 neutral density graduated filter. Of course it was shot from a tripod using a remote shutter release. Although the composition places the horizon almost in the middle of the frame, I am happy how it turned out. My emphasis in the composition was on that curved shoreline and the edge of the ice. I also wanted to include those clouds with the hint of the red colour in the picture. While my lens was already at its widest setting, putting the horizon at one of the thirds would have excluded them. Sometimes composition is about choosing the lesser of two evils


Last but not least we have Bavenmark.
1) Plan your day and shots in advance, the time & lighting is the most important thing to a photographer. Warmth, depth, texture, contrast, and color are all affected by the sunlight and the time of the day. Shooting at early or late hours is often the best choice, becouse then the light is at it's best when the sun is low, the light is gold and orange giving your shots the warmth and the "magical" tones that you want.

2) Composition, the act of composing the image is a visual process of organizing the elements and individual details of a scene into a balanced and pleasing arrangement. Because what one person finds pleasing, someone else will not, composition is largely a matter of personal taste and how the photographer approaches his subject.


In this landscape shot of mine that's taken last summer, I scouted the beach in the day looking for spots that I find intresting and that had potential and marked them out, so I would quickly find the spots later in the evening when the sun were starting to set. I composed this shot with the flowers in the foreground to make this the starting point for the eye to slowly make it's way out to the beautiful colours in the horizon. When taking sunset shots it's very important to use a tripod, becouse the light is very soft and you often need between 1/2 - 30 seconds of exposure and there's no way you can hold a camera still for that long without shaking it, so a tripod is a must have.

For this shot I used:
Canon EOS 20D
Sigma 15-30mm f/3.5-4.5 EX DG
Cokin X120, X121 Graduated Grey X filters 120 & 121
Tripod
1/2 second
f/22.0
ISO Speed: 100


In this portrait capture of my friend I wanted to get the "vogue" feel and cropped it tightly not showing whos hands is on his face. I also focused on his eyes and mouth and asked him to tilt his head a little bit to give it a more intresting look.  
The biggest mistake many photographers make is to try to shoot a person's whole body, head to toe. Don't attempt doing this unless clothes are important, try to put the focus on the face. The eyes and mouth are the most important features, don't be afraid to crop tightly. If you shoot people outdoors try to always use a fill-flash to add light to the face to fill in shadows. Try to relax your subjects by a conversation or try to make them laugh or smile.

For this shot I used:
Canon EOS 20D
Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8 Macro XR Di
1/125 second
f/7.1
ISO100
two Bowens studio light/flash softboxes.


I hope you learned something from these artists!  I did, that's for sure! I will try to make another issue of this sort of thing somewhat soon.