There is definitely a personal history with this particular location. My friends from Albuquerque will recognize this area as ‘The Volcanoes’. It is a place where my friends and I would go at night to drink beer, listen to music, and raise hell. It is also a great place to get a fantastic photographic perspective on the city of Albuquerque and the stunning Sandia mountains. Ordinarily, the Sandias would be un-obscured by clouds. But on this day a rare, late winter rain storm rushed across the West mesa and settled on the peaks as the sun set. As I approached the parking area, the rain was falling hard and I had the feeling that the sunset might be a washout. Undaunted, I gathered my gear (making sure the waterproof camera bag was zipped up tight), and headed towards the trail head. My persistence paid off as the rain cell moved east, providing a dramatic sky. The clouds hugged the 10k ft Sandias and the sun glinted off the buildings of Albuquerque. I had to hustle to reach a good vantage point, so by the time I had to press the shutter release my breath was heavy from the mad scramble up the hill. After a few deep breaths I was able to settle and shoot.
I was equipped with my standard rig: Nikon D300, 3 lenses, and Garmin eTrex GPS. I arrived at the location with rain falling at 630 pm, allowing approximately 30 minutes to hike and shoot.
Santa Fe is unlike any other place on earth. Anyone that has spent more than a few minutes walking the winding roads of this old city understands the indescribable life and power the town possesses. I took an afternoon recently to explore the Palace Road and Canyon Road areas of the city. Palace Road is a residential area roughly 1/2 mile East of the main plaza, the homes are offset from the road and many are buffered by adobe and stucco walls. The doors on these walls are often old and very colorful. Canyon Road is one mile Southeast of the main plaza and is famous for its numerous art galleries and wonderful location.
I was equipped with my standard rig: Nikon D300, 3 lenses, Garmin eTrex GPS. I arrived at roughly 5pm, allowing approximately 2 hours of walking and shooting. The weather was clear with scattered clouds, no wind and mild temps. It was Sunday afternoon in early March, the throngs of tourists that usually crowd the streets are still three months away. I parked at the PERA building and walked to the plaza. From the plaza, I headed east into the neighborhood adjacent to the downtown area. My goal was to photograph as many interesting textures as possible, I was thinking mostly about windows and doors. After a nice walk and plenty of strong images on my CF cards, I left Santa Fe. It was a fantastic afternoon.
The Paint Mines are located East of Colorado Springs and South of Kiowa, about 100 miles Southeast of Denver. The nearest town is Calhan. The Paint Mines are among my favorite places to take landscape photos, I am drawn to the smooth, wind whipped rock formations. This was the first visit that had good weather and good light, my previous visits were socked in with low clouds. I arrived at 4pm, allowing 90 minutes to shoot. It was cool and the wind was light, making the two mile hike very pleasant. The sunlight was slightly diffused by a thin scud of clouds, softening shadows without fading the color. I was equipped with a Nikon D300, three lenses (12-24,24-70,telephoto 400), and a Garmin eTrex GPS
(for geotagging the images). I shot RAW at 14bits. Geoencoding of the images is accomplished by synchronizing the GPS unit and the camera. I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 with Jeffrey Friedl’s GPS Support plugin to fuse the .gpx file from the GPS to the metadata of the image files. The geocoded files are mapped automatically on my Flickr page, and get placed (eventually) on Google Earth through Panaramio.
This weekend I shot a beautiful wedding in the Colorado foothills. I’ve always enjoyed photographing weddings because happy people make for better photos.
Gear
Nikon D300 and Nikon D200. Sigma 12-24mm, and Nikkor 18-70mm. Twin Speedlight SB-800 flash units. 32″ Gold reflector. Edited in Aperture 2 with Tiffen Filtering.
Contact me if you need a photographer for weddings, parties or any kind of event.
North facing structures are notoriously hard to photograph. A beautiful home can look like a mash of very dark shadows and harsh angles if it faces north. This home in Westminster, Colorado has fantastic curb appeal, but it’s north facing front door and large garage doors make it a challenge to convey the drama contained inside.
Properly exposed north facing exterior
Exposure settings chosen by camera
Quick tips
Don’t worry about blowing out the sky, adjust the exposure until you can just barely begin to make out detail on the front of the building. You can boost the levels (slightly) in Adobe Photoshop or Apple Aperture 2 later.
Use your free hand to block the sun. Compose the shot until the sun is just barely out of frame. Look through the eyepiece while simultaneously moving your hand above the camera until your hand blocks the lens flare. Take the photo once the lens flare is obscured by your hand.
Stand in the shade of a tree or other structure. Even the shadow cast by a narrow light pole is enough to keep the lens in the shade.
Adding Artificial light to show detail:
Compose the shot so the sun is barely out of frame. Or, if you choose to have the sun in the frame, make sure it is fully in the scene.
Set your flash to sync with the shutter at 1/250 (the fastest flash sync speed for many cameras), adjust the aperture to accommodate lighting conditions. It’s not unusual to have aperture settings of 11 or higher. Note: the smaller the aperture, the more light required by your flash to compensate. The trick is to find the right balance.
Set your flash unit to Manual mode and fire at full strength (1/1) to start, then adjust down from there.
Most of the time the automatic exposure setting on your Digital SLR will produce fine images. The camera’s brain along with the lens’ impressive array of sensors can usually figure out the best balance between shadow and highlight and provide a decent image. A perfect record of a moment in time. To me, photographers are the ultimate historians, but that is for another time.
Historical photography theories aside, there are times when you want to convey more than just a moment in time. Perhaps you want to add more light to a sunny country garden scene to give it a misty impression. Or maybe you want a portrait to have a dark, brooding feeling. Automatic settings will capture the moment in time, but to express yourself you need to be able to twist and bend the light like a sculptor does with clay.
As with any tool, the quality of work it produces depends entirely on the competence of the user. The tool itself is merely the apparatus your mind uses to create a physical object from the neural info stored in your brain. A Digital SLR (DSLR or any manual camera) is designed to be intuitive. The basics are simple, and the learning curve is short, if you practice. Take your camera everywhere, shoot everything on manual mode. Erase nothing. Keep track of your settings, figure out what works best.
I will show you how to use the manual mode on your camera, my bet is that you will never use automatic settings again after a little training.
Three Main Components
Shutter Speed
Aperture (fstop)
ISO (film speed)
Shutter Speed
The shutter is the mechanism on the camera that opens for a predetermined period to expose the CCD sensor to the light from the lens. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is allowed to fall onto the sensor. Shutter speeds are measured in fractions of seconds. Shutter speed is generally adjusted by the thumb wheel with the right hand.
Example: A shutter speed of 1/2sec is open 50 times longer than 1/100sec. A shutter speed of 1/100sec is open 50 times longer than 1/5000sec.
In general, slower shutter speeds means a higher chance for blurry pictures. Since the shutter is open for a longer period, any movement will show in the photos. When taking photos of moving objects, always use the fastest shutter speed possible.
Aperture (fstop)
The aperture in a camera works very much like the iris in your eye. It’s main function is to regulate the amount of light allowed into the eye, or in this case, the camera. As with the eye, the iris is also critical in focusing and depth of field. Instead of tiny muscles contracting and expanding according to lighting conditions, the aperture has several petals that overlap to make a circle in the middle where the light passes through. A ring on the lens, or a servo motor in the camera is turned by the photographer to adjust the diameter of the aperture.
Designation: A large aperture opening has small numerical designation. A small aperture opening has a large numerical designation.
Example: An aperture setting of 4.5 is larger (more light) than an aperture setting of 22 (very small opening, less light).
Depth of field: If you want to have foreground and background objects in focus in a photo, you will need to use a smaller aperture opening. A smaller opening compresses the image in the lens, and a byproduct of that is the depth of field is much greater. This means that more objects will be in focus in the photo, regardless of distance from the camera. Many sports photographers use large depths of field to show the crowd reaction AND the action on the field in one shot. Many nature photographers prefer to blur the background to isolate the animal or flower they are shooting. Having control of depth of field is critical in expressing emotion in photography.
ISO
The ISO setting is simply an expression of how sensitive you want the image sensor to be. Choosing ISO speed is the same as choosing film speed in the old days.
The larger the ISO setting, the more sensitive the sensor. You might ask why isn’t the camera always set to the most sensitive setting at all times? The answer is because that higher ISO speeds produce very ugly noise on the images. In fact, the lower you can keep your ISO setting the sharper, crisper the images will be. Low light situations will call for higher ISO’s, but always use the lowest setting possible for the situation. Don’t forget to shoot in manual mode!
Built in Exposure meter
Use the meter in the eyepiece as a guide, learn to read it and it will help fine tune your shots.
Summary
Used together with manual mode, these three components provide countless exposure combinations. As you shoot and become more comfortable with the relationships between the components, the relationship between the components and you, and your relationship between you and your own personal creativity, you will develop the most important part of being a successful photographer, a unique style.
Here are a few things you can do to make expressing yourself with photos easier.:
Must you stand so close?It doesn’t matter if you are taking a photo of a person or a landscape, it is important that you get as close to the subject as you can. Our brain interprets distance and size differently than the camera does. In other words, be aware of how much of the frame is occupied by what you think is interesting. If the interesting part of your photo is a mountain in the distance, and it only takes up 5% of the frame, no one will ‘get it’ because they don’t know what to look at. The same thing goes when photographing people. Viewers will be distracted by all of the other things in the scene and wont see what you are trying to get across. The subject should take up most of the frame.
Hey pal, you got the time?A common mistake is trying to capture dramatic nature shots when the light is not right for the scene. Pay close attention to the time of day. Generally, the light 2 hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset has more color and warmer tones than mid day sunlight. If you are forced to shoot during the day, do your best to keep the sun behind you.
Nature wins.Deal with it. It is extremely frustrating to drive for hours to a location only to find conditions completely unsuitable. That isn’t to say that you cannot get good shots during bad weather, but the shot you came for simply isn’t going to happen. How does this tip help you take better photos? I will ask the questions around here, if you don’t mind. Since you asked, it’s not so much about taking better photos, it’s about not letting bad photos get out. If you present a shot that isn’t exactly like you want it, people will ONLY see that version in their minds from now on, regardless of how awesome subsequent shots are. Ask yourself, would your favorite musical artist release a song before it’s ready?
The low down. Everyone pretty much sees the same view of the world, between 5′ and 6′ above the ground. In order to take people out of the regular world mindset, it sometimes helps to lower your perspective. Literally. Don’t be afraid to bend, sit, lay, kneel, squat, jump, twist to get a different view. A different perspective on a common item is a very popular subject.
Courage. When I was first starting out, I would see great photos and be too intimidated by the conspicuousness of photography. People are curious about what you find so interesting and they will look at you. Don’t be like me, take the shots. One more note, be aware of photographing areas that might be sensitive, like bridges, important buildings, airports, you might attract more attention than you really want. Also, it is perfectly fine to ask someone if you can take their photo. Most people will agree (some will say no, just thank them and walk away), but have no idea what you see in them. Do not photograph people without permission, it is very rude.
Composition and exposure are the two major elements in creating a pleasing photo. Getting a good exposure is a technical skill. After all, there are only so many combinations of shutter and aperture that you can use on a specific shot. Composition is a different matter entirely. Composition cannot be defined, there are no rules to explain how to convey what you see in your head into a sequence of steps that end up with an image that moves people. There are no standard rules for composition, but there is a nifty little rule that will turn a standard snapshot into a photograph. This is the rule of thirds.
It is really simple. Imagine the scene with lines drawn horizontally and vertically at each third of the image. You end up with what looks like a tic tac toe board. The intersections of these lines is where you want to put the interesting part of your photograph. Many of today’s DSLR’s have a ‘grid’ setting for their viewfinder, this will place the lines automatically in the viewfinder. Very handy.
There are many situations when a photographer needs to convey interior AND exterior details in the same image. Since exposure values are so different between inside and outside, it is impossible to show detail in both areas in one shot. You have to choose whether to blow out the windows entirely to show the interior, or underexpose the scene to look through a window. There are ways to get usable images out of those two options, but nothing beats achieving the desired results in a single image. The way to do that is to add light to the interior to match the brightness outside. It is a great skill to develop, but be patient. There are infinite variations in lighting, window issues, time of year, etc.. A method that works in one circumstance may not work in a dozen others, and sometimes you get a perfect balance without any effort at all. It is a fantastic challenge. That being said, a few basic technical tips will get you started. We will be using a single strobe to achieve these results (adding more strobes will make better shots, but it’s not always practical to spend 3 hours shooting a 2000 sqft house).
The location of the space in relation to the sun is going to have a lot to do with how you approach a scene. I will address the most difficult situation: A room in a regular house (not a mansion) with only north side windows, dark walls, dark floors, and mixed lighting (incand and indirect sun).
Shadows are hard to kill in this type of room, you will have to learn how to work with them. The approach is to apply only enough light to add highlights to the surfaces that will accept it. This type of room is dark and shadowy, the perfect photo will convey the darker vibe without the scene drowning in shadow. I happen to like a shadowy house (the photo is of my office), so don’t be afraid to let a space speak for itself.
Here is the rig: Nikon D300, Sigma 12-24mm, SB-800 on a short tripod tethered at the hot shoe with one of those springy cords.
The pics:
Cameras matrix metering no flash
The exposure setting selected by the camera at f4.5 is 1/125(ISO400). This allows us to see through the windows, but the detail inside is non existent, and the right side of the photo is almost entirely dark. The first thing I did was to add the SB-800 set at the automatic setting (iTTL).
Flash added - SB800 with automatic settings.
This image has the same exposure settings, but an SB800 set to full automatic mode has been added. Very little detail has been added. Still an unusable photo. In order to provide the light needed, we will bypass the automatic settings used by the camera and add the amount of light needed manually.
Flash added - manual mode at 1/4th power
This image has the same exposure settings with an SB800 set to Manual mode. The amount of light applied is 1/4 of a full blast. More detail have been added to the image, but it is harsh and there are still deep shadows on the right side of the photo. By reducing the output of the flash unit, we will be able to balance the scene a little more, then finish the balancing in Photoshop.
Flash added - manual mode at 1/8th power
This image was made with the flash at 1/8th power. While the over all image is dark, it has better balance and can be edited to be just right. The key is to get a balanced exposure while on site, then trust your editing skills to bring it home.
Edited image
This image has been edited, and is the one I would use to best represent the space. There are a couple of things left to do on this image, removing the reflection from the computer monitor as well as removing the shadows cast behind it will enhance the shot.
The differences between the initial shot and the final image are dramatic. You can see that by just adding a little light to the scene, we are able to add depth and color to a very challenging scene. Here are the images together:
Initial exposure
Final image
To enhance the image further, consider putting a second SB800 on the floor on the right side of the image (around the corner). This will add a very attractive sidelight, and soften any shadows created by the main flash unit.
It’s all about trial and error from this point forward, try to balance every room in your house at different times of day, also different times of the year. Eventually, you will be able to solve almost any situation.
Now that your new images have been cataloged in the Aperture 2 library, it’s time to select, edit, and export the shots. You will need files that are versatile, good for print and web.
Excerpt from the video:
This tutorial will lead you through the selection, editing, cropping and rename-export process.
Open Aperture 2 and select the project you want to work on.
Click the Quick Preview icon to keep RAW images from loading while making selections.
Make your selections by clicking the green checkmark. This will assign 5 stars to the image.
You can isolate your favorite images by filtering the five star rated images.
You will need to disable Quick Preview in order to edit the images.
Click on the image you would like to edit. Information about the image is displayed in the adjustments tab.
Watch the following video for the rest of the tutorial.
, three lenses (12-24,24-70,telephoto 400), and a 
with 
and select the project you want to work on.