By Patrick Arseneau

Let’s see what we can do to make your landscape pictures a little more interesting.

Composition

Before you take a picture, think about what you want in your picture. There should be one or two main subjects; i.e. a mountain, a tree, the sun. Then ask yourself what makes that subject so interesting and why do you want to take a picture of it? Why do you find a certain tree interesting enough to take a picture of it? Is it because it’s bigger than the other trees that surround it? If that’s the case, you should include the other trees in the frame to put its size into perspective.

If you come upon a really nice mountain view that takes your breath away, you’re gonna take a picture of it. Most people will instinctively frame the highest mountain top and maybe even zoom in on it to get a closer shot. That’s a mistake that will make them say “you had to be there to really appreciate it”. What makes the mountain so beautiful is it’s size and natural position among the rest of the natural beauties (trees, water, sky, clouds). To get a good capture of a mountain you should get as much of the surroundings as possible. Usually it’s best at the widest lens angle or even multiple wide angle shots (multiple panoramic shots stitched together).

Not good:

Good:

Foreground

Now for the real magic. Once you learn how to properly compose landscape pictures, you can also add a little bit of spice to it and make the picture a little more interesting. Adding a foreground subject to a landscape picture adds perspective and life. The best way to explain it is to show you a picture with and without a foreground subject.

This is a nice picture of the morning sun over the Varadero beach in Cuba. The composition is ok but there’s nothing special about the picture:

By putting a foreground subject in the same environment, the same picture becomes much more interesting:

Adding a foreground subject to your landscape pictures will make them stand out and make people say “WOW”. Try it! It’s not as hard as it sounds. Good composition is the key.

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot.

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Not only this – but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the shot – using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

In addition to the above picture of the bee where the bee’s eye becomes the point of focus here are some of examples:

In this image I’ve purposely placed the head of my subject on one of the intersecting points – especially his eyes which are a natural point of focus for a portrait. His tie and flower also take up a secondary point of interest.

In this shot I’ve placed the subject along a whole line which means she is considerably off center and therefore creating an additional point of interest. Placing her right in the center of the frame could have resulted in an ‘awkward’ shot.

In a similar way a good technique for landscape shots is to position horizons along one of the horizontal lines also as I’ve done with the following shot (I’ll let you imagine the lines).

Using the Rule of Thirds comes naturally to some photographers but for many of us takes a little time and practice for it to become second nature.

In learning how to use the rule of thirds (and then to break it) the most important questions to be asking of yourself are:

• What are the points of interest in this shot?
• Where am I intentionally placing them?

Once again – remember that breaking the rule can result in some striking shots – so once you’ve learnt it experiment with purposely breaking it to see what you discover.

Lastly – keep the rule of thirds in mind as you edit your photos later on. Post production editing tools today have good tools for cropping and reframing images so that they fit within the rules. Experiment with some of your old shots to see what impact it might have on your photos.

One method of delving into macro photography is to use adapter rings.

These rings have threads on both sides, one end is screwed onto your present camera lens like any filter and a second lens is attached in reverse onto the other end of the ring. So two lenses can be attached front to front using the adapter rings filter threads. You can buy these adapters or you can make them yourself by taking filters matching the thread sizes of the lenses being used and removing the glass and epoxying the rings together with the threads sticking out on both ends.

Don’t destroy any of your valued filters, however. You may find filters in the clearance bins at some of the larger photography stores. I have, and sometimes for as little as one dollar. For those who would like to make their own adapters the instructions with accompanying photo’s follow.

Please be careful and wear eye protection and gloves.

The Tools

1) plastic bag, 2) safety glasses, 3) gloves, 4) pliers, 5) file, 6) hammer, 7) epoxy and mixing materials, 2 filters

Removing The Glass

Put the filters in a heavy plastic bag and, wearing safety glasses, tap
the class in both filters with the hammer until it is free from the
filters. Then remove the filters from the bag and clean any excess
glass from the inside of the filters using a file or pliers.

Be careful
not to damage the filter threads. It would be a good idea to inspect
the filters thoroughly before proceeding.

Assembling The Rings

The rings shown back to back and being prepared for the epoxy. I used a
5 minute epoxy however I thought it might be wise to let the epoxy
settle over night so the adapter would be able to hold the weight of
the reversed lens.

Sample rings Three adapter rings made by the author:

The Final Product

The final product used to join the two lenses:

Some good news is that the lens mounted as the reversed lens doesn’t have to match the camera body being used; it can be for a completely different manufacturer of camera.

The only thing that has to match are the filter sizes. This leaves you the flexibility of using any lens you might have lying around or you may be able to buy one for very little!

The magnification attained will be relative to the ratio of the focal length of the two lenses being used. The magnification (X) is equal to the focal length of the forward lens divided by the focal length of the reversed lens, X=focal length of the forward lens/focal length of the reversed lens. So we can achieve:

• 0.5X=50mm (forward lens) / 100mm (reversed lens)
• 1X=50mm (forward lens) / 50mm (reversed lens)
• 2X=100mm (forward lens) / 50mm (reversed lens)
• 4X=200mm (forward lens) / 50mm (reversed lens) and so on.

Now some would argue that anything less than life size, 1:1 is not macro but no matter what you call it we can experiment, learn and have fun!/

By Patrick Arseneau

It didn’t take long to find out it wasn’t a horse. It was a young moose. Apparently it’s not unusual for mooses to wander in urban areas to escape mosquitoes this time of the year. Not sure how it managed to walk through the residential area and traffic to end up here but it seemed pretty content and happy to be there.

I learned from other people in the neighborhood that the moose had been there all afternoon and it didn’t seem to want to leave. There was a report about it on the radio this morning: “People be advised that if you encounter a moose please be careful, don’t get too close, and do NOT alert the animal or try to scare it.”

See more pictures (larger version) here

By Patrick Arseneau

Social Websites

Back in February of 2009, Facebook changed it’s terms and conditions (yes, they have the right to do that) and they stated that all images posted on the site would become Facebook’s property forever even after the pictures are removed by the users. This change triggered a lot of angry users to protest and Facebook decided shortly after to make a few changes. Nonetheless, every facebook user should read the terms before posting their pictures:

Date of Last Revision: May 1, 2009

1. Sharing Your Content and InformationYou own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:
   1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).
   2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
   3. We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).

Don’t panic just yet. That doesn’t mean all your pictures are being sold to magazine companies in Europe. Besides, the pictures posted on Facebook are reduced to a very small resolution and they are barely printable.

Photo Contests

All photo contests have a terms section that is available to the users. Most of them will state that the user retains full creative rights with some minor freedom for the contest organizer (usually something small for simple contest promotion).

In 2006, Nikon was put in the spotlight and made headline news for sponsoring a “rights-grabbing” competition. The contest terms asked photographers to submit they pictures with full license and no expiry. Nikon didn’t expect to have so much negative attention and decided to modify the terms to match those of popular contests who use the images only for promoting the competition.

Small Prints

Don’t feel bad for not reading the terms and conditions every time you sign up to something. Personally I only read a very small percentage of them. Even when I do, I just look for key points. What I recommend is to weight the value of your work and compare it with the reward you get from posting the picture. If you think your picture could be worth a couple hundred dollars in a frame, or maybe it could be sold numerous times on stock photography sites, then maybe it’s not worth posting on a social contest for bragging rights.

Pro Imaging (www.pro-imaging.org) is a site that looks at the terms and conditions of various competitions in depth, rating them as good or bad. They also have a ton of information about photographer rights.

By Alexx Henry from alexxhenry.com

Living One Sheets: Final Versions after the jump:

Living Movie Poster – Teacher’s Pet from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

By Patrick Arseneau

Sometimes, if you’re creative enough, the shadow itself can be the subject. You just have to think outside the box and see how you can use the shadow for an interesting subject. See a few examples below.

When I was doing a photoshoot for a local band, I positioned them so I could have the light behind them work as “hair light” and I used my flash for fill light in front. I took a few pictures with different compositions and nothing seemed to work. The lighting was good, the exposure was ok but there was something wrong with the composition. After a few tries I used both eyes; one in the view finder and one looking directly at the subjects. HA! I included their shadow in the frame and voila!

I put together 15 stunning pictures that explains what I’m trying to say. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. All these pictures were taken from the photo sharing site flickr.com.

Taken by Lightchaser

Taken by proserphina

Taken by Don3rdSE

Taken by pbredow

Taken by FlappinMothra

Taken by Tobi_2008

Taken by Marsup

Taken by James Tensuan

Taken by Gilles Pinault

Taken by cosmicsailor

Taken by Stellar

Taken by Peter Hasselbom

All these pictures were found on the photo sharing site flickr.com. If your picture appears here and you wish to have it removed from the blog, don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll have it removed immediately.

Patrick Arseneau

]]> http://dslrgeek.com/15-amazing-shadow-photographs/feed/ 0 http://dslrgeek.com/photographing-children/ http://dslrgeek.com/photographing-children/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:14:33 +0000 Patrick Arseneau http://dslrgeek.com/?p=238 By Patrick Arseneau - Children are probably the most popular subject in photography. I think the reason is because they grow up so fast and we all want to freeze them in time. They make great models because they don’t worry about anything. They look completely natural. They don’t care about how their hair looks, if they blink or not, what they wear, etc. It’s a pure capture of how they feel in the present moment. Even if they don’t want to have their picture taken, take it anyway and see how their expression ‘talks’ to you through the picture.

Baby Pictures

Every parent wants to get good pictures of their babies. Who wouldn’t? And the nice thing about that is they have all the patience in the world for you to take that ‘perfect shot’. The only problem is that the baby may not have that precious patience. My advice to you is to ‘go with the flow’. When photographing babies, it’s hard to visualize a picture in your head and then try to do it. Babies can’t follow your directions and their mood will often change every 2 minutes.

That’s why I say go with the flow. Let the baby be the director and you be the camera man following orders. If the baby wants to reach for the camera while your taking pictures, don’t stop him. Take a picture! If the baby doesn’t smile when you wiggle your keys in front of his face, that’s ok. Take a picture anyway! You’ll be surprised at the results. Don’t try to position the baby exactly the way you want him. I mean yes, you can set him down under the lights, but if he doesn’t want to sit down and stay still, just work with it. You’ll get a lot of missed shots but, the good shots are gonna be natural. I guarantee you that the parents will be happy to see a pure natural expression in the pictures.

Stay Low To The Ground

You’ll get better results if you get down to the same level as the children. The pictures will be much more dynamic. Looking at a those pictures will almost feel like you’re right there playing with the children. It’s not always easy to crouch down and follow children around while they’re playing. What I like to do is turn the auto focus on, turn the lens to a wide angle (less than 20mm) and without looking through the viewfinder I follow the children with the camera almost on the ground and I take multiple pictures using the ‘burst’ mode.

Another reason I do this for a better facial expression. If your subject is looking up at the camera, his eye brows might be come up and he could be squinting from the sun light. Or, the child may not even look at the camera and if you’re higher you don’t have a good view of the eye expression.

Always get down to the same level as your subject. This goes for animals too. This little tip could make a huge difference in you photo collection.

Be Creative!

This is a great opportunity and to try new and different things. Children are always willing to try things. Tell the children you want to play a game with them. Give them a “challenge” and tell them you’re wondering if they can do it. Something like “I wonder if you can catch a ball with your baseball glove”. They’ll jump right into action show you what they can do so be ready with your camera.

Get them to do something entertaining for them and their facial expression will be priceless. That’s why I enjoy photographing kids so much. You rarely have to give them directions. You never have to give tell them to smile or tell them where to look or what to do. They are natural models.

As long as the kids are having as much fun as you are, you’ll get the result that you are looking for.

Patrick Arseneau

But what about in-camera techniques for more creative and artistic shots?

Here are twelve fun in-camera hacks to experiment with to get more abstract and artistic shots – the results are only limited by your imagination!

1. Move your Camera

Photo by El Ray

Every good photography course drums into it’s participants the importance of keeping your camera absolutely still while shooting to ensure fantastically sharp images.

Of course sharp isn’t always what you’re after and one way to add motion into your shots is to experiment with moving your camera while shooting. Here are a few ways to experiment with:

• panning – a technique often used in sports photography.
• rotate – ever whirled a child around you? why not do it with your camera and take a shot mid whirl.
• camera throwing – not for the faint hearted – this technique involves a long shutter speed, setting the self timer, throwing your camera in the air just before the shutter is released and a safe pair of hands. It’s ‘extreme photography’ and can result in stunning shots (like the one to the right which was a camera throw shot in front of a computer screen) – as well as the need for a new camera.

2. Zooming While Shooting

Photo by Raminder pal Singh

Another way of getting a sense of movement into your images is to keep the camera still but to zoom in or out with your zoom lens while actually taking the shot.

While panning (above) injects a vertical movement into shots – zooming gives your shots a dynamic 3D look and feel.

Combine this with slow sync flash (see below) and you can achieve some pretty special results. Read more about the Zoom Effect.

3. Creative Focusing

Photo by peskymac

One of the most common problems that I see in readers photos is poor focusing with photographers either focusing slightly in front or behind of the part of the image that needs to be sharp.

Why not take your focusing problems and make them worse by some creative focussing where you don’t just get it slightly wrong – but make your shots obviously out of focus.

This technique is especially effective when you either have a plain background which means nothing in your shot is in focus – or when there’s a secondary element of the image that you leave in focus with the main focal point out of focus enough for it to be obvious but in focus enough to still know what it is.

4. Shoot from your Boots

Photo by asmundur

Putting your camera on the ground and taking shots of your subject from that low angle introduces a completely new and often random point of view for your shots.

You (and the viewers of your images) will see the world from a new perspective, add interesting foregrounds to shots and even capture a few surprising subjects along the way.

This might mean you need to get down low (and get a little dirty) to frame your shots – or you might want to be a little more random than that and introduce luck into the equation and just hold your camera low and see what you get.

5. Over expose your shots

Photo by brianschulman

Experiment with different exposure levels.

Bump up your exposure compensation to the max and you’ll end up with brightly burnt out images.

This can be particularly effective if you’re photographing brightly colorful objects as you can end up with them on a background of bright burnt out parts of the scene.

Check out these examples of Overexposure for a little more inspiration.

6. Slow Sync Flash

Image by smokingmonkey

This is a great technique for lower light shooting conditions where there is ambient light that you want to capture in addition to a subject that you’d like to light up with a flash.

Experiment with front or rear curtain flash for different impacts.

Learn more about Slow Sync Flash in our previous tutorials – Slow Sync Flash and An Explanation of 2nd Curtain Sync Flash. Also check out these amazing Slow Sync Flash images.

7. Get Up High – Monopod extenders and Kite Aerial Photography

Image by Ric e Ette

On the other end of the spectrum to getting down low (above) is to get your camera up high and shoot down on situations. One fun way to do this is to attach your camera to an extended monopod (or a tripod), a long shutter release cable (or a wireless one if you have one) and start shooting.

This will help you to both photograph things up high (street signs for example) as well as to help you shoot down on scenes that you’d never have been able to see from above before.

This is particularly fun with a wide angle lens (a fish eye can be even more fun)!

Another more extreme technique is one called Kite Aerial Photography where you attach a camera to a kite and take shots from up high. The beach image to the right was taken with this technique!

8. Multiple Exposures

I used to love experimenting with multiple exposures on the same frame with my old film SLR. Many digital cameras don’t have the ability to do it – but if you’re lucky enough to have one that does you can achieve some fun results.

One way to do it is to take pictures of the same scene at different focal lengths or holding the camera on a slightly different angle. I find this is particularly effective on shots with a repeating pattern.

If you don’t have the ability for multiple exposures on your digital camera you can always get similar results in Photoshop using layers.

9. Go Grainy

Photo by paulie~

There’s something about shots with lots of grain that adds an element of mood into an image.

Override your cameras ISO settings by boosting them right up to the maximum number available. The higher you go the more noise or grain you’ll get.

This can be particularly effective in black and white shots – especially when you blow them up for display.

10. White Balance

Experimenting with different white balance settings on your camera can inject different color casts into your images.

White balance settings are meant to be used to help you compensate for different types of lights (each type of light gives off different subtle colors). However, if you know what you’re doing you can really warm up or cool down an image quite a bit and get some lovely and creative images.

11. Master the Bulb Setting

At the slow end of many digital camera’s shutter speed settings is one often labeled ‘B’ or ‘Bulb’.

Photo by azem

The bulb setting allows you to keep your shutter open for as long as you hold down the shutter release. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for creativity – particularly in low light situations.

The Bulb is great for capturing light trails (moving traffic at night, a friend drawing out a message with a torch or fireworks) but to get the most of it you’ll probably want to secure your camera with a tripod (unless you want to add camera movement into your shot as well).

At the extreme end of bulb settings astro photographers will leave the shutter open for long periods of time (hours) to capture star trails. To do this you’ll need a small ISO, small aperture and should be aware that on many cameras it’ll drain your batteries significantly.

12. Infrared

Photo by zachstern

Infrared photography is an art of it’s own (it deserves it’s own tutorial – as it’s something I’ve not done much of I’d be open to someone writing me one) and can create some amazing shots (black skies, white trees, dark eyes etc).

Not all cameras can capture infra red light (although many can) but check your manual to see if yours is one of them. If you’re in luck grab yourself an IR filter which cuts out non IR light and start experimenting. Because these filters block out a lot of light you’ll need to use longer shutter speeds, probably will want to use a tripod and should select faster ISO settings.

The start and end of the day is a great time to shoot in IR.

By Patrick Arseneau – One my favorite special effects in photography is light trails. More specifically traffic trails. The main key is to set your shutter speed to a long exposure (min 15 seconds). There are 2 good ways to get moving light stream in your picture; 1- capture moving cars while staying still, or 2- stay still in a moving car while capturing outside light. Either way, your camera has to stay really still during the exposure.

To do this, you need a decent DSLR camera (you don’t need a high end camera) and a good sturdy tripod.

When I first tried to take traffic trail pictures I noticed a challenge. Where there’s traffic, there’s also city lights. City lights illuminate the surrounding which is great,  but it also illuminates the road where the traffic light is. The problem is that it washes out the traffic stream light and it becomes barely visible. An experienced photographer can find the best exposure to avoid this problem, but it’s best to learn in a darker part of town.

Here’s my attempt at a “light speed” effect with the camera attached to the passenger seat:

I put the tripod behind the passenger seat and wrapped the seat belt behind the seat and around the tripod to keep it sturdy. I removed the head rest for a better vantage view for the camera. At 17mm the angle is wide enough to see the whole dash and windshield.

It all sounds pretty simple but it’s not as easy as it looks. While slow shutter speed allows the light streams, you still have to come up with the proper exposure for the rest of the frame. In the above attempt, the picture is a little too dark.

Here are a 20 GREAT results from photographers who seem to have mastered the technique:

Taken by Mike Hanlon

Taken by darren1978

Taken by weallsearch

Taken by Boccalupo

By Drew Wilson

By Drew Wilson

By teejaybee81

Taken by Julia Lee

Taken by Rudy M Photography

Taken by kantryla

Taken by kantryla

Taken by Amar Raavi

Taken by DarkestIvy

Taken by pbo31

Taken by pbo31

Taken by Samuel Monson

Taken by pbo31

Taken by John OBerry

Taken by hydrosound

Taken by Alex Duffner

All these pictures were found on the photo sharing site flickr.com. If your picture appears here and you wish to have it removed from the blog, don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll have it removed immediately.

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