Photography Tips

Photographing the Sands of time

This month I want to discuss Sand Dune Photography. Most images that I see of dunes are done with wide angle lenses and are of the Grand Scenic type of images. The human eye sees things as a whole as a Grand Scenic since it has a field of vision of about 180 degrees. Sometimes you might what to zero in on a particular part of a scene with your lens. The only way to do this is get closer to your subject or use a long telephoto lens.

Long telephoto lenses are great for isolating the subject and works really well when photographing sand dunes. I spent a couple of days at Great Sand Dunes National Monument and did just that. I photographed some really stunning abstracts using an 800mm lens with the sun low on the horizon. At Great Sand Dunes National Monument the light is ever changing the color of the sand. From early in the morning right after the sun clears the tops of the Sangre De Cristo mountains the sand will be really rich brown with shadows as viewed from the visitor center side. As the sun rises the shadows constantly change giving you new and exciting compositions.

In late afternoon you will get deep rich shadows with brightly lit highlights that make for outstanding compositions. Photography in the afternoon can be a little hit and miss as the thunderstorms tend to build and shade the dunes making them flat and lifeless. However, don't dispare, if you stay more than a couple of days you will get a sunny afternoon.

If you have plenty of time, you can get a permit to camp on the dunes. Doing so will allow you to be right in the middle of the action at the peak lighting periods of the day. If you choose not to camp in the dunes, which can be sweltering during the middle of the day, you can walk over to them and in them at the peak times. However, it can be a long walk and climb to get to where you may want to be. Either way, your only limit is your imagination! When you are in a dune environment give both your short and long lenses a try.

Hiding your light under a bushel basket Part 2

I have been in the field for two months now which is why this installment of the POM is late. Unfortunately, I didn't have internet access so I couldn't get it out on time. I appologize to everyone and will get the August POM up in a few days and on time.

Last month I touched on difficult lighting situations and I think I will continue with that subject this month. Nesting passerines can be some of the most difficult subjects to photograph when it comes to lighting. Most photographers that I know will use a single flash mounted above the lens axis on their camera. That is certainly okay to do and many times when the action is fast, it is the only thing you can do. I was out photographing Western Tanagers early this summer and I made a few images with the flash on the lens axis with this POM/Tip in mind.

Look at the fist image of the Tanager pair on their nest. Although a very nice photograph, if you look closely at the bottom of the frame, you will notice the telltale signs of flash which mainly manifested itself as a strong front light. If this had been a "bird on a stick" type of photo the problem would have been very minimal. Some might say that I should have backed down on the flash and/or upped the ambient exposure. The problem with this is the distance to the birds and where the nest is located. I was a good 40 feet away from the birds using an 800mm lens on a digital body in this particular case and the nest had overhead cover shadowing it from above. Using no flash at all would have resulted in way overly exposed highlights on the conifer needles and limbs just to get a good exposue of the birds. From last month we know we can expose the ambient for the highlights and let the flash bring up the tone in the foreground and this is just what I did in this photo. I let the major sunlight highlights go over just a bit to keep the same visual sense that I was seeing with my eyes and I brought the flash exposure up just enough to get plenty of detail in the blacks on the Tanager male. However, the extreme foreground and nest show the signs of being front-lit by the flash and you should notice that the catchlight in the eye is directly centered from the flash. There must be a better way and indeed there is!

Lets take a look at the second photograph of the tanager nest. The female is absent in this photograph but you will still get an idea of what is happening with the ambient and flash exposure. In the second photograph I used two flash units way off camera. I metered the ambient expousre in the shade at about 1/160 at f8 which would just let the extreme highlights on the conifer needles go over and keep them as crisp as my eye was seeing them. I then mounted an sb-80 set to manual about 15 feet away from the bird at about 45 degrees camera left and did a quick GN calculation so that I could set the power value of the flash at the same exposure as the ambient. I would have liked to use a flash meter at the nest but we all know that was not possible because it is not very ethical to mess around that close to the nest. I also set up another unit to use as a fill about 20 degrees camera right. I set the power on the flash to give an exposure of 1 stop less output then the main flash. Again I did this by doing a quick GN calculation. Actually I did the calcualtions ahead of time. I observed where I could mount the flash units and took a guess about how far away they were from the nest. I then set the power on each unit, mounted and aimed them in short order so that I would cause the least amount of disturbance.

So, in the second photo, I have three lights working. The ambient from the sun which was high in the sky, a main light flash camera left and a fill light flash camera right. Notice how much better the image looks without the give away signs of a frontal flash? The image looks lightyears more natural than the first image. Notice now where the catchlight is, you can see it to the left side of the males eye being created from the mainlight flash. If you look closely you can see the small catchlight from the fill flash unit on the right side of the birds eye. On this unit I had a Lumiquest soft box to soften the fill light and give it less direction than the mainlight.

You can do the same thing with your images in certain situations. Like I said, this kind of thing would not be very practical for many wildlife situations because you would not have time to set things up. However, if you have a somewhat static situation and you can set up your flash units ahead of time, you might give it a go and get your flash units way off the camera axis and closer to where the subject is. The benifits are the flash will work more efficiently at closer distances and you will get more natural looking images. I also want to mention that I think these two photos are a bit tight in the frame. I was set up for film and I popped the D1x onto the lens to get a couple of photos for the POM/Tip while I was in the field. The problem was I never got internet access so that I could post while I was away. The D1x and it's crop factor are making the images just a tad tight in the frame. I am sure the film images are just right. However, the film is not back from processing so who knows.

Hiding your light under a bushel basket

This month's wildlife photography photo/tip is all about exposure in a difficult situation. Everybody likes to work during magic hour. The light at magic hour is soft and even, which in turn, makes exposures a snap and you get wonderful photographs. For me, and I am sure this is true for you too, there are not enough magic hours in a day. Personally, I like photography so much, I do not want to limit myself to just the magic hour time of day. There are too many good photographs to be had at other times.

Picture this. It is the middle of the day with the sun high in the sky creating high contrast lighting. You come across a subject that is in total shade. Behind the subject in the background, the full wrath of the sun is making itself known and the background is extremely bright. Your eyes can see everything clearly, even with the great contrast difference between the subject and background, yet you know your film will not see it the same way. If your subject were in the same light as the background, you could use the highly overrated ol' -1.7 flash compensation rule to get an acceptable photograph.

This situation happens to me frequently and did so just the other day while I was out doing bird photography. This Rufous Hummingbird was in total, 100%, absolute, all the way plumb, no-doubt-about-it shade while the background was smoking hot as the sun poured hot molten bolts of photons into it. Now, this subject was just too good to pass up and I wanted some photos of this bird because it was in really fine plumage. If I were to use camera only and expose at the suggested meter reading, the background would be horrible and over-bright while the subject would have almost been a silhouette. If I were to use the -1.7 flash compensation rule, the results would have been better but still similar, with a dark subject and overly bright background.The real solution to this situation is to know your equipment and exposure inside and out. From experience in the studio and outside photographing wildlife I knew how I could solve this problem. The key is to underexpose the background while on the subject, match the amount of light that is falling on the background. There are no really hard and fast rules for a couple of reasons. One, every situation is different. The shaded area may not be as dark or the background may not be as bright. Two, everyone has different equipment and it would depend on the type of metering your camera uses.

From experience with my Nikon equipment and using matrix metering, I knew that if I dialed in -2/3 to -1 exposure compensation on my camera, I would get a background exposure that would be very pleasing. Doing this, I would now have to bring up the light on the subject so that it would be properly exposed. In comes TTL which takes a lot of the pain out of the problem. I knew that I could set the flash compensation from 0 to -.5 and get a nicely lit subject. The technical particulars for the photo above are a tripod mounted Nikon 80-400 VR with 20mm of extension. Exposure was 1/100 after a -2/3 exposure compensation @ f10 so that I could keep the depth of field large enough to get a sharp bird throughout. The flash compensation was set at 0.

Get out and practice these situations with your equipment. Learn your meter and how it will expose in difficult situations. The next time you are out and you subject is under that bushel basket, you will be able to take care of the problem. It will make you a better photographer and open up more doors, allowing you to work during non-favorable lighting situations.

The "Three Tenors"



Composite photographs are something I very rarely do. However, that is just what this image is. I call this image "The Three Tenors" because there are three singing Barn Swallows. I was out photographing birds one afternoon when I happened onto a large number of swallows sitting on a fence doing their thing. I put up my tripod and sat back and relaxed. Every once in awhile one of the swallows would do something interesting such as stretch their wings or open their mouth and I would jump on the chance to expose another image.

After reviewing the images, I noticed I had a bunch where one of the birds had their mouth open. Each of the images was full frame taken with a Sigma 800mm lens. I had the tv going and a commercial came on trying to sell "The Three Tenors" CDs. Well that commercial and the images of the open mouth swallows all fell into place and I created this composite image from three separate swallow images using Photoshop.

I would never get an image with three swallows with their mouths open at the same time in a million years. I think there is nothing wrong with composite wildlife images as long as the fact is stated. When looking through your own images, use your imagination as you never know what unique thing you might come up with.