PART I - THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SEQUENCE [665 words – 3.2 min]
When I was working on a reportage in the Regent Street in London I saw this sentence: “Eat, Drink, Relax.” that had been strategically written at the entrance of a small alley dedicated to the leisure of the visitors and workers who spent the day in this commercial and centric street in London. I thought that it was a good opportunity to relate a mass of commuters in a centric street of a big city like London with the goals they chase everyday.
If there is a misused capacity of the medium of photography nowadays is its ability to make us think, to raise ideas about our everyday life, our behavior and the consequences of our acts.
The message written in the wall: “Eat, Drink, Relax.” in a place where thousands of people (who do not even care about it) pass next to everyday, made me think if that was a conclusive goal in life and how far we could to get it. In addition, it made me think how unmindful we commute and behave in our everyday environment, and thought that this series could make think others about it.
If there is a misused capacity of the medium of photography nowadays is its ability to make us think, to raise ideas about our everyday life, our behavior and the consequences of our acts.
Before explaining how I planned and executed this Series, I would like to talk about three concepts in photography that go hand in hand regarding the number of pictures used to transmit an idea in photographs: the Decisive Moment, the Reportage and the Sequence.
PART II - TIPS TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE PHOTOGRAPHIC SEQUENCE [965 words – 4 min]
a) Make sure that your camera does not move between the frames.
This Series: “The Happy Ones?” is an example of Action Sequence. There were two foes to fight against when I was shooting these images:
b) Vibrations that blur the images
Every action can be dissected in smaller ones that altogether define the complete activity, but some of them have more meaning, are more evocative related to the general significance of the complete action. Choose those special moments and your sequence will improve.
c) Movement of the Camera
d) Choose the Defining Moments of the action you are registering.
e) Composition: Set your camera in the exact position
5. Always be open to any idea that may arise when you are shooting, even if it is not directly related with the subject you are photographing.
You can see the four images of the series at my site:
The Happy Ones?, Photography Series 1/4 | Regent Street London, UK.
The Happy Ones?, Photography Series 2/4 | Regent Street London, UK.
The Happy Ones?, Photography Series 3/4 | Regent Street London, UK.
The Happy Ones?, Photography Series 4/4 | Regent Street London, UK.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 20mm 2.8 AF
SETTINGS: Aperture: f5 | Shutter Speed: 1/30 second | ISO: 250
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: Manfrotto 055 Pro with Gitzo 1372M Head
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
I would like to read about your ideas and opinions. Have you taken any similar series? If so, have you planned it the same way? Please comment my images and tell me about your experience while taking Photographic Series.
]]>[766 Words | Estimated Reading Time: 3 min 50 seconds]
I visited during some days the beach of Reinysfjara under different light conditions. Most days I went around 6:00 AM (this image is taken around 7:30 AM) because during the afternoons it was too crowded. The basalt columns located in this area are one of the most photographed natural formations you can find on the internet. I went so early to avoid all the footsteps in the sand and other problems that erase the sensation of a pristine environment that anyone can experience in this remote corner of Europe. I was completely alone on the beach when I shot this image.
The sea was calmed (waves were not the impressive size they use to be in this beach). As I walked under the cliffs I realized that the waves were leaving a big amount of natural foam caused by the huge movements the water experiment due to the strong winds, while receding back the ocean and thought I could use it to balance the sharp-edged shapes of the peaks that arose from the Sea. The whiteness of the foam looked great over the black sand, so I thought about making of it the main character of my picture.
Most of the compositions that have been taken in this beach give predominance to the peaks. Their shape and size make them look impressive, but I thought about only suggesting them, placing them small in the frame. However, I needed something in the foreground that added ‘softness’ to compensate the roughness of the rock. With that idea in my mind, I got my camera, mounted a wide angle and begun to try compositions giving predominance to the white shapes of the foam and the breaking waves. The elegant curved lines the waves left before disappearing in the sand created a very useful way to direct the eye of the viewer to the rock pinnacles in the background.
"I needed something in the foreground that added ‘softness’ to compensate the roughness of the rock."
WIDE ANGLE PERSPECTIVE The lens that gave me the best perspective was (as many other times) my Nikon 24mm f2.8 AF. The 20mm would have left the rocks too small in the frame, while the 24mm gave predominance to the white shapes in the foreground while giving an appropriate size to the peaks, even when they look in the image smaller than they are in reality.
FOCUS When the subject is at a short distance of the lens, the scene has a lot of depth, and you need everything to be in focus, the use of the hyperfocal distance is very useful. It is a pity that the ‘Depth of Field’ scale has been suppressed in the design of most actual lenses, in special zooms. I used the Hyperfocal Distance of my Nikon 24mm AF to maximize the focus. I will explain the use of hyperfocal distance in future posts, it would be too long to write about it here.
"When the subject is at a short distance of the lens, the scene has a lot of depth, and you need everything to be in focus, the use of the hyperfocal distance is very useful."
THE MOMENT The instant you choose to press the shutter is critical with this type of subjects. Waves are continuously moving and their shape changes randomly. The instant you select to press the shutter is critical to fix the composition as some of the traces of the water transmit the rhythm of the waves, and others don’t. It took some time for me to realize that the best shapes happened to be when the waves were receding back to the Sea.
LIGHTING The day was cloudy and it rained sparingly. The overcast light that came from the cloud cover produced soft lighting that matched perfectly the mood of the landscape I had in front of me. Harsh shadows would not have worked with this photograph.
"The instant you select to press the shutter is critical to fix the composition as some of the traces of the water transmit the rhythm of the waves, and others don’t."
Soft overcast lighting is the best for the peaks in the distance, as they are rendered small in the frame, without detail, getting out of the sea. In addition, it is also great for the foam, as it marks the bubbles of water and the whitish texture but it does not create shadows.
BLACK AND WHITE The black and white version is far superior to the color one, which is very monochromatic. The color of this particular image does not contribute much to its meaning, so it is better to remove it completely and give prominence to the contrast of shapes and textures of the foam and clouds.
With this photograph I close the series of landscapes of this amazing place called Iceland. I took many more images and I believe that I will upload (and comment) new landscapes in future posts, but now it is time to move on to other subjects. Getting pigeonholed into a single subject is one of the worst (and most boring thing) we can do as photographers.
It has been great to share with all of you the followers of ‘The Last Footprint’ and ‘National Geographic Your Shot’ my photographs and comments.
I have more pictures about Hanoi, London, Hamburg and other destinations to share. It is time to move on. Hope you like the images and my comments are useful for you!
Please do not forget to LIKE, COMMENT and SHARE the images. It is always encouraging to read new comments and to know that my work inspires others. I would like to especially thank all the ones who have liked, commented and shared the images at National Geographic Your Shot. This community of photographers rocks! THANKS!
RELATED IMAGES:
Ice formations, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
Woman under Skogafoss Waterfall, Iceland.
Breaking Wave Detail, Reynisfjara, Iceland.
EXIF DATA
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 24mm f2.8 AF prime lens.
SETTINGS: Aperture: f14 | Shutter Speed: 1/30 | ISO: 400
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy Head on Manfrotto 055 Pro legs.
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
Filter: B+W 77mm GRAD ND (702M) 2 stops Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter, 2 points, very soft transition.
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This print is available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click here to visit the shop.
]]>Small detail may be elusive when you have in front of your eyes the grandeur of huge masses of water that create waterfalls or when you are witnessing elegant clouds passing at high speed on the horizon. When traveling in Iceland you can get stunned by the great landscape and forget the detail. In fact, it took some time for me to be aware of this small boulder of reddish lava that was being dragged by the tide back to the ocean and to realize that it could produce an effective picture.
]]>You can buy this Fine Art Print here.
I arrived at Vik after driving all day from Keflavik Airport. I checked-in in my hotel and rested a bit. I was tired and did not want to get on the car again. The nearby photo locations I had to explore could wait for the next day, so just got my backpack and tripod, and went to the beach of Vikurfjara to get my first contact with Icelandic landscape. It was just some hundreds of meters away from my hotel and I could reach them in a short walk.
Vik itself is not among the heavyweights among the touristic destinations of Iceland because of its inherent natural beauties, but it is a wonderful base to explore the surroundings (Reynisfjara, Dyorhaley, DC-10 wreck…) as it has the biggest supermarket for many miles around, some gas stations, and many hotels to spend a night. It is the big town in the area.
I have to say that during all the days I stayed in Vik and went to the beach to photograph landscapes, I was nearly or completely alone on the beach. It is true that I went late in the afternoon and I was on the shoulder season (April/May), but the human presence in this beach (compared to Reynisfjara, which is some kilometers away) is small… and it helps to concentrate on the landscape when you are not in a crowded environment.
The white foam of the waves and the black sand created a contrast much bigger than the one you can see in a typical beach, where the sand is bright brown or yellow. That is why Iceland sea landscapes are unique in the world and make of this island in the middle of the Atlantic a great destination for any landscape photographer on Earth.
I arrived at Vikurfjara Beach during a cloudy colorless sunset and I saw the waves when the tide was receding. I took some images of a couple silhouetted against the bright part of the sky who was walking near the water. The white foam of the waves and the black sand created a contrast much bigger than the one you can see in a typical beach, where the sand is bright brown or yellow. That is why Iceland sea landscapes are unique in the world and make of this island in the middle of the Atlantic a great destination for any landscape photographer on Earth.
After some time I walked near the shore and became aware of some pebbles half sunken in the sand dragged by the waves. The tide was taking them back to the ocean little by little. Some of the waves passed over them, others surrounded them and a few ones were strong enough to move them.
The brown-reddish color of the lava rock created a beautiful color contrast against the monochromatic whites of the foam and the dark grays of the volcanic sand. It made the pebble stand out from the background.
The first lens I tried was the Nikon 20mm f2 AF, but too much of the sea in the distance was included in the frame, stealing attention from my main character, the rock. I wanted to focus on the boulder itself and the white silky trails that the waves were leaving while receding back to the ocean. I preferred to simplify the composition, so I changed to my Nikon 24mm f2.8 AF, which is my favorite lens for landscape photography. The angle of view is great (20mm is a bit too wide for my taste, 28mm or 35mm a bit too closed), and being a prime lens (fixed focal length) the sharpness is amazing, in special when stopped down a bit. It is small and light and the filter size (52mm) is very handy. It is ALWAYS in my backpack.
The key was to put the lens at a short distance from the rock. This way the boulder looks big enough in the frame and big part of it gets covered by the trails of receding water.
I mounted my Nikon D800 with the 24mm on my Manfrotto 055 Pro Tripod with the three sections completely closed. I needed a detail and I was using a wide lens, something that may look contradictory. Someone may ask: “If you wanted a detail, why didn’t you change to the 50 or 80mm?” The answer is because with a longer lens I could have a great image of the rock, but the closed angle of view did not give the impression of the pebble being immersed in the waves, and these were as important in the composition as is the boulder itself. It is the contrast between the heavy static feel and the rugged texture of the rock with the silky whitish blurred trails of foam what creates this picture.
The key was to put the lens at a short distance from the rock. This way the boulder looks big enough in the frame and big part of it gets covered by the trails of receding water. Learning to employ real wide angles (not a 28mm), but a 24mm or an 18mm is a tricky matter for any photographer who is not used to their perspective, which is different from the one of human eyes, and it takes some time and a few experiments to assimilate how to utilize them effectively for creative purposes.
Once set the composition (vertical looked better than horizontal, by the way), the hardest part to get this image was to wait for an appropriate wave. Some of them were not strong enough and did not reach the rock, while others were too strong and passed over it. Some of them even moved the position of the pebble, so I had to begin from scratch and recompose and level the camera for a few times, which was a bit disheartening. Only a few waves reached the rock and touched it a bit leaving a photogenic trail of white foam before losing in the green ocean.
The lack of color buries chromatically the rock in the water. It is the brown-red color of the pebble what makes it stand out from the white foam, so I have chosen the color version. Color contrast is needed to separate shapes.
Due to the strong wind, the tide had a noticeable lateral component. Waves did not break at ninety degrees against the shore but came from the left side. This fact produced a very interesting effect on the final image.
The wave you can see in the photograph is coming from my left, covering the rock partially (see the translucent part over the reds at the base of the pebble), and surrounds it to go back cleanly creating an elegant curved shape of white foam before joining the new wave that is beginning to break (you can see it on the top of the frame).
TECHNICAL TIPS
FOCUS, SHUTTER SPEED AND APERTURE Focus has to be on the rock, the only part of the image that has sharp detail. The wave is a moving blurred subject. No focus is needed on it. That’s why I didn’t close more the aperture of the lens. f13 gave me enough focus even at the small distance between the lens and the subject.
It was more important to get the appropriate exposure time (around 1 second) and low ISO (200) to avoid digital noise.
FOCAL LENGTH
A photographer from National Geographic ‘Your Shot’ has made a very interesting comment under one of the photos of this Iceland series: although wide angles are said to be the most used and recommended focal lengths to shoot landscapes, during my trip to Iceland the one that I used in most situations was the Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF, usually between 80 and 140mm. I have to say that I am the first surprised by this reality. As I have said some lines before, the lens I use more often for landscape photography is the 24mm. Have to say there is no reason for this. I simply go out there with all the lenses that fit in my backpack and change them to suit the composition I have in front of my eyes, taking care only that all the natural components are as balanced as possible in the frame.
FILTER: B+W 77MM GRAD ND (702M) 2 STOPS
On landscape photography, the upper part of the frame is a bit lighter than the lower one (overcast light comes from above on a cloudy day). The unnoticeable, very soft transition, of this filter reduces the general contrast of the picture. It is great for nearly all landscapes situations.
BLACK AND WHITE
I made a black and white version of this photograph, but it happened that this was one of the three images from the series that did not look better in black and white than in color.
The other two images are:
Warning Plate and Mountains, Iceland.
Ice formations, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
The lack of color buries chromatically the rock in the water. It is the brown-red color of the pebble what makes it stand out from the white foam, so I have chosen the color version. Color contrast is needed to separate shapes.
This is definitely a location I had not planned to visit when I was preparing my trip to Iceland, but one that gave me a few effective pictures, and this beach will be for sure in the list of ‘Locations to go back’ when I visit once again this special island.
RELATED IMAGES:
Ice block and Surf, Diamond Beach, Jokulsralon, Iceland.
Breaking Wave Detail, Reinisfjara, Iceland.
EXIF DATA
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 24mm f2.8 AF prime lens.
SETTINGS: Aperture: f13 | Shutter Speed: 1 second | ISO: 200
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy Head on Manfrotto 055 Pro legs.
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
Filter: B+W 77mm GRAD ND (702M) 2 stops Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter, 2 points, very soft transition.
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Reynisdrangar from Reynisfjara Beach, Iceland.
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This print is available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click here to visit the shop.
]]>The lunar landscape around is stunning. The sensation of vastness you get when you walk in these solitary lava fields is impressive, but if there was something that made the difference the day I shot this photograph, were the clouds. They moved fast and changed dramatically the photographic possibilities of this location. They look even better in black and white (as most of the landscapes I shot in Iceland).
]]>You can buy this Fine Art Print here.
The hike from the parking where the car is left and the remains of the plane takes about one hour. A signaled dirty road has been built on the lava so the path is perfectly marked, but the weather is capricious and care must be taken not to lose the way.
It was sunny the day I took this image, but very windy. Storm clouds passed over the horizon. In fact, I was able to shoot two of my favorite pictures I took during the photographic trip I took of clouds above Petursey: A panoramic composition, and this one with a more usual ratio.
The lunar landscape around is stunning. The sensation of vastness you get when you walk in these solitary lava fields is impressive, but if there was something that made the difference the day I shot this photograph, were the clouds. They moved fast and changed dramatically the photographic possibilities of this location. They look even better in black and white (as most of the landscapes I shot in Iceland).
The lunar landscape around is stunning. The sensation of vastness you get when you walk in these solitary lava fields is impressive, but if there was something that made the difference the day I shot this photograph, were the clouds.
I used my Nikkor 80-200 2.8 because it gave me a better perspective of the plane and allowed me to create a composition that isolated the plane against the background of dark boulders. I tried first a wide angle-angle lens, but distorted the shape of the airplane and made the people more predominant in the composition so changed to my Tele, and moved farther away from the place to search for new compositions.
I set a nearly open aperture to isolate my subject, the plane against the background, on Aperture Priority mode, low ISO (100) and the Shutter Speed fell on 1/3200 of a second (the amount of light was very high).
The camera was handheld. I shot kneeling because the gusty wind was very strong and moved my big Tele in my hands.
I did not have time during this journey to visit this location under different weather conditions, but I believe that impressive images can be taken with this subject.
It is a pending job for the day I come back to this beautiful Island.
TECHNICAL TIPS:
FILTER: I used a B+W 702M - 77mm Graduated Neutral Density 0.6 (2 stops) filter to make the get the high values of the white clouds nearer to the dark values of the lava boulders.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 145mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f3.2 | Shutter Speed: 1/3200 seconds | ISO: 100
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Lava rock and surf, Vikurfjara Beach, Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland.
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[1478 Words | Reading time: 7 min 20 seconds]
I would like first to make a distinction. There are two types of sequences:
We were used to sequences in the past in magazines and newspapers (called photo-essays), and nowadays can be seen on web galleries in digital media and photographer sites. However, I do not remember having seen many in photography forums like ‘National Geographic Your Shot’, where skilled photographers try their best doing good photography and presenting good work every-day. I suppose that one of the reasons is that it takes more work to prepare a complete series of related pictures than single images, or maybe that it is not the first possibility we photographers think about when we plan our photography work.
The series I present here is an example of the second case: the Action Sequence. The keys to creating an effective Action Sequence are:
My ‘Visual Zero’ image, in this case, is the first of the series, maybe the dullest of all, but the one that gives the eye something to compare with, the one that shows the bare lava rock without any wave breaking on it, the one that reveals the texture of the dark volcanic rock of Iceland coast. This photograph looks relatively ‘quiet’, although has strips of foam and water falling over it coming from the last wave that hit the rock some seconds before, and the sea around is everything but peaceful. But if we compare it with the next ones, we can describe it definitely as ‘quiet’.
"Select the key moments, set a 'Visual Zero', a picture to compare the rest of the images with, choose a perspective and fix it for the whole series."
Once you have set the ‘visual zero’, the viewer will be able to compare the curtains of white foam falling from the wave after breaking on the rocks with this ‘empty’ picture.
The other scenes I have selected for this series represent the moment when the water gets bounced back to the sea after hitting the volcanic rocks of the coast. I chose three views representing this moment as the main body of the sequence. The fifth and last photograph is a special moment when a wave that was very high (but not very powerful) spread upwards in a curtain of white foam. I selected it because it is a different moment than the three previous ones and gave a different view of the same process.
SHUTTER SPEED: My ‘limiting factor’ when shooting this scene was shutter speed. Silky threads of water look great for many landscape situations, but in my honest opinion, when the concept you want to transmit in your photographs is power, a fast shutter speed that freezes moving water is more effective. It was very late (after 21:00) when I shot these images, and there was not much light coming from the cloudy sky.
The sunset and dusk periods in Nordic Countries like Iceland are very long in summer, much longer than in lower latitudes. The light intensity decreases very slowly, and even the night is not completely dark.
I shot this image during dusk. The photometer (Matrix mode) gave me a reading of ISO 2000, an aperture of f2.8 and 1/500 of a second. Had I had more light I would have moved my settings to 1/1000 of a second and f4 (in this order) but would have had to use 8000 ISO, which is too noisy for my taste. When you make big prints you have to take care of the digital noise that looks awful when is seen at big reproduction sizes.
ISO SETTING: The advent of digital photography has brought us, photographers, some improvements in our cameras. Lens optic sharpness has not improved much during the last two decades, but autofocus and the ability of sensors to register an image in low light conditions are light-years away from what they were two decades ago.
Working with high ISO film (3200 ISO) was everything but satisfying some years ago. The results were so grainy and the colors so muddy and unsaturated that it was difficult not to get disappointed with the results, but nowadays high ISO quality images are available for most camera bodies, even the cheapest ones.
"The personal limit I have set to myself with my actual camera, the Nikon D800, at this moment is 1600 ISO, maybe 3200 ISO stretching the things to the limit."
The sensor quality and the taste of the photographer set the upper ISO limit to use under low light conditions. I have to say that my Nikon D800 sensor is a wonder, not only because it registers 36Mpx files (great for big prints!), but also because it can produce finely detailed big size reproductions when used even at high ISO settings. The personal limit I have set to myself with my actual camera, the Nikon D800, at this moment is 1600 ISO, maybe 3200 ISO stretching the things to the limit. I produce fine art prints (many of them at giant sizes) and do not like noisy prints (although sometimes I like grainy ones).
Two decades ago these images would have been impossible to take with enough quality.
PRINTING: The printing process for this series is not easy. A lot of care is needed to maintain detail in the lightest parts of the foam while adding a bit of contrast.
I prefer by far the black and white version of this series. Color adds little to this image. What is important in this photograph is the texture of the rocks and foam.
TRIPOD: No way around about this: to shoot a series like this you need one, and not a toy-size one. Other landscapes I took during my trip in beautiful Iceland could have been taken with a handheld camera, a tripod was a tool to improve my efficiency, but this series is absolutely impossible without a heavy and sturdy one because of two reasons:
If you want to shoot landscapes buy a heavy tripod like the combination I use: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy Head on Manfrotto 055 Pro legs. A light tripod would not be very useful under strong wind conditions.
I even ballasted the tripod with a three kilograms sandbag I usually carry when I travel by car and expect adverse weather conditions to avoid movement. Sometimes the camera plus tripod weight is not heavy enough for the set to maintain a fixed position and reduce the vibrations the wind may cause.
"I ballasted the tripod with a three kilograms sandbag I usually carry when I travel by car and expect adverse weather conditions to avoid movement."
SECURITY: Tie your camera to anything you have at hand. I always carry a rope with two climbing karabiners in the backpack so that I can secure my camera body, tripod, backpack (or all of them) to anything. In this case, I was shooting next to a fence, so I secured my LowePro Backpack and the rest of my gear to it.
FILTER: I used a B+W 702M - 77mm Graduated Neutral Density 0.6 (2 stops) filter.
My highlights were in the foam on top of the frame, and the lower values of this scene were in the rocks located at the bottom of the picture, so using a two-stop ND Graduated Filter allowed me to reduce the general contrast of the image and retain detail on both extremes of the tonal scale: highlights and shadows.
For a landscape like this, you need a filter with a very soft transition. B+W transition is so soft and progressive that makes the use of the filter impossible to notice.
"Using a two-stop ND Graduated Filter allowed me to reduce the general contrast of the image and retain detail on both extremes of the tonal scale."
Most of the filters I use are B+W because the optical quality is stunning and the construction is great. It is ‘heavy’ when held on your hand because it is well made, and it lasts and lasts…
Next time you go out here to shoot a moving subject think about the possibility of dissecting the whole action in different parts, choose the most representative one and try to capture them. It usually takes more work, but it can show you new ways to see your every-day subjects and discover new creative instruments to tell the same story to your viewers. It can be a rewarding experience.
Related Series: EAT, DRINK, RELAX, London, United Kingdom.
Here you can see another series I took some years ago in London. I hope I can share some tips soon in this blog about how I took it and its conceptual meaning.
Eat, Drink, Relax, 1/4
Eat, Drink, Relax, 2/4
Eat, Drink, Relax, 3/4
Eat, Drink, Relax, 4/4
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 120mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f2.8 | Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds | ISO: 2000
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: DC10-Airplane, Wreck, near Vik, Iceland.
These prints are available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click the links to see them at my site.
Breaking Wave, Dyorhaley, Iceland. Fine Art Print Series 1/5
Breaking Wave, Dyorhaley, Iceland. Fine Art Print Series 2/5
Breaking Wave, Dyorhaley, Iceland. Fine Art Print Series 3/5
Breaking Wave, Dyorhaley, Iceland. Fine Art Print Series 4/5
Breaking Wave, Dyorhaley, Iceland. Fine Art Print Series 5/5
[995 Words | Reading time: 4 min 45 seconds]
The main difference between outdoor and studio photography is CONTROL. In a studio you have control over your models, lighting, costumes, make-up and so on. All this control is great, but in my honest opinion, it has an advantage and a drawback:
Outdoor Photography is, on the other hand, unpredictable. It depends on too many factors: the weather, the location, time of the day or Season. This unpredictability can sometimes be discouraging, but also can take your photography to a higher level. It is a matter of taking advantage of the unplanned possibilities.
When I woke up the day I took this image, the idea I had in mind was to take these two shots at Jokulsárlón:
Ice Formations, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
When I parked my rented car at the Parking area next to Jokulsárlón I saw these beautiful clouds with the sun lighting them from a proper position. Sunrise had finished two hours before, but the sun in Iceland is low on the horizon for many hours in spring and produces a soft light that differentiates the white shapes and textures of the clouds. The sky I had in front of me had a big tonal range and depth thanks to the position of the sun. I took a reading to take care that the highlights (the holes in the clouds that allowed the sunlight to pass) were not blocked. Detail-less highlights look awful in print.
Clouds configured a wonderful background, but I needed an actor. Clouds alone were too abstract. After spending some time with my camera in hand a lonely seagull appeared and begun to fly in circles. I did not mount the Nikon D800 body on the tripod as it would have made too difficult to focus on the bird. The head I use, the Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy is a three-axis one. You can adjust each axis independently, which is great for landscape, but not for photographing fast moving objects. A ball head is more useful for this use. You have less control, it is more difficult to get the camera body perfectly leveled, but you can move all the camera-lens set fast with just one movement of your hand. So I simply changed my shutter speed to 1/300 and shot handheld.
The black shilouette of the seagull adds meaning to the image and sets the scale of the whole photograph. Without it, the clouds look too empty.
Tone and shape of the clouds have meaning themselves. If we compare the clouds in this image with the ones of my previous post we can see that these are ‘inoffensive’ clouds. They do not announce a storm that is coming. In fact, the sun emerged and pieces of deep blue sky could be seen among the clouds a bit later, while I was searching for appealing iceberg shapes to photograph. But the dark clouds of my previous post tell us that the relatively quiet situation I was in was not going to last long. A big storm fell some minutes later everywhere around.
I always have a plan and try to anticipate what I am going to find in advance, in special when I am the first time in a new location, but being open to new possibilities that were un-planed have given me many images I did not think I was going to get.
Good opportunities do not arise every-day, so I try to be ready to catch what I may find.
Related Images: Other completely unplanned photographs I have shot throughout the years…
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 80mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f16 | Shutter Speed: 1/320 seconds | ISO: 100
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: None, handheld.
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W 77mm Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter 2 points, soft transition
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Breaking Waves in Gale. Series of Five Photographs.
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]]>[840 Words | Reading time: 4 min 10 seconds]
I saw these dark clouds moving on the horizon and I concluded that the combination of plain terrain, mountains, and clouds was worth a photograph, so I decided to stop the car. I went out of the road at the first place I found. I had to park at the beginning of a dirt road, not far away from the touristic lagoon glacier of Jokulsárlón.
All the clouds you see in this scene come from the Sea, which is out of the frame on the left part of the image. Strong winds move them at high speed to the mountains and glaciers that conform the range of volcanic rock and ice in the center of the Island.
"The most important aspect of this image is the shape of the clouds above the car: dark on the left and bright an open on the right, mirroring the shape of the terrain, acting like an arch that closes the top of the scene."
The key to this image is choosing the moment of convergence of the position and shape of the clouds and the small car. I needed this last item to set the scale of the image, so I waited a bit for a car to appear on the road (traffic is not very constant in this part of Iceland at this time as most people is having dinner). The most important aspect of this image is the shape of the clouds above the car: dark on the left and bright an open on the right, mirroring the shape of the terrain, acting like an arch that closes the top of the scene.
I cannot recall if I shot on a tripod, but looking at the EXIF data of the image, I believe I did not. Had I had the time to set my tripod I would have done it for sure, but had the premonition that I was going to miss the shot if I spent my time setting it on the lava ashes (I have lost so many beautiful moments for not being fast enough to take the camera out of the backpack). This composition needed a long lens, so I mounted my 80-200 as fast as possible and went out of the car under a light rain. The metadata of the picture say I shot at 1/500 of a second at f7 ISO 200. I can infer that I shot hand holding the Nikon D800, maybe leaning my torso on the side of the car to get more stability.
"Clouds are the main character of the image. The car and mountains are needed, but just as supporting actors."
The blackness of the clouds, their size and shape, and the low height they travel over the horizon make of them a graphic symbol of Icelandic weather. The clouds are the main character of the image (the car and road, the mountains were just companions to create contrast with them), so I gave the clouds most of the frame. The car and mountains are needed, but just as supporting actors with a minimum presence on the corners of the frame. They set the scale and ‘anchor the scene’ to the ground. Without them, the scene is simply too abstract. You have to give the eye of your viewers something to compare the clouds with.
"Your viewer is not going to send you a Whatsapp message to ask you. BE CLEAR. Make him easy to perceive the meaning of your image."
Please let me give you an advice: If your sky is powerful enough to sustain your photograph, give it as much frame as you can. Forget the rule of thirds. Following it will take you to a meaningless, powerless and vacuous composition. In photography, you have to be clear in your statements. The viewer has to see directly why you stopped a car, went out to the cold, mounted a lens and shot an image. Remember: he is not going to send you a Whatsapp message to ask you, he has too many things more important than your photograph to think about. BE CLEAR. Make him easy to perceive the meaning of your image.
One minute after I shot this image the clouds you see had gone to the right and the whole horizon was completely dark, full of a curtain of shapeless black clouds. The composition had disappeared: the road was empty, the scene was plain, and the luminosity of the scene in front of me had diminished to the minimum. There was nothing left to photograph. The combination I had captured had lasted for less than a minute. Landscapes based on weather phenomena are usually ephemeral. Think and shoot fast.
It was time to dry the camera, turn the heating of the car on (heated seats seem to have been invented for landscape photographers), and go back to make my dinner at the guest house.
"Remember: Landscapes based on weather phenomena are usually ephemeral. Think and shoot fast."
Related Images: Other cloud photographs I have shot throughout the years…
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EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 86mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f7 | Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds | ISO: 200
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: None, handheld (I believe).
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W 77mm Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter 2 points, soft transition
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Seagull and clouds, near Jokulsárlón, Iceland.
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]]>[950 Words | Reading time: 4 min 45 seconds]
It is a special sensation to set your tripod in a place like this, from a high vantage point you can see impressive rock formations, vertical cliffs, puffins nesting and flying around and if you are lucky (or patient) enough, a gale with waves many meters high that can produce dramatic landscapes.
I will soon share and analyze a series of images taken some meters away from the point where I took this image from of huge gale waves breaking against the volcanic coast. This is an example of the upcoming series.
"The key is trying to imagine ahead how will the different objects in the frame look if you change your shutter speed dial."
The only decision I had to make to take this image is about shutter speed. You usually have a mixture of still and moving subjects in the frame: in this case, we have rocks and waves. The key is trying to imagine ahead how will the different objects in the frame look if you change your shutter speed dial. The rocks are still and will not be affected by the shutter speed setting of the camera, but the waves are moving subjects and have a different appearance depending on how long do you get your shutter open. To obtain the image I had pre-visualized, I used a slow shutter speed of two seconds and waited for the moment when the waves beyond the rock were receding, leaving a trace of white foam behind that I knew was going to look great against the BLACK volcanic sand of the beach.
A tripod is an absolute must if you want to get the most of a situation like this: it will allow you to play with the shutter speed to capture the best effect on the water, to fix the composition and to get REALLY SHARP detail in the rocks. The sharpness you get when shooting on a tripod is always better than the one you obtain shooting handheld.
Have to say I am someway tripod addicted, even when I shoot in cities. I always carry my five kilograms huge tripod when I travel on location. I carry it most of the days (although have to admit that some days I get bored and tired of holding the weight during so many hours), but the fact is that I hate the sensation of losing a picture that I would have been able to take if I had taken my tripod with me. It simply gives me more possibilities, in special to shoot at dusk and to nail nice compositions with my telephoto lenses, even nowadays, when high ISO settings are more usable than ever before. Now I can use up to 1600 ISO on my D800 getting acceptable digital noise, but nothing can compare to the cleanliness of an image taken at 50 or 200 ISO, the silky look of running water, or the sense of perfection a balanced composition where every object occupies its own place. It is a tool that gives you creative possibilities, and the more choices you have at hand, the better your photographs will be.
"I hate the sensation of losing a picture that I would have been able to take if I had taken my tripod with me."
When I go on mountain trips and I have to carry all my personal and photographic gear in my backpack, when the weight I can load is limited, I carry my small and venerable Gitzo 01 which weighs less than one kilogram. I cannot use long telephoto lenses (the head of this tripod is tiny) but it is perfectly usable with average size wide angles and normal lenses up to 80mm.
There is no excuse for not to take your tripod on this location and others in Iceland. It is so near to the car, the viewpoint you can shoot from is so high, and the landscape of the coast is so scenic that gives you a wonderful view of the landscapes around. Ninety percent of the landscapes I took during my trip in this country were shot with my Nikon D800 mounted on my combo Manfrotto 055 Pro with a Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy head.
Did I want to save weight I would carry smaller legs, not a smaller head, even when the final tripod combination looks weird and big-headed. Experience has taught me that a big and sturdy head is more important to reduce vibrations than the legs, which only give more flexibility to choose a height to shoot from.
"Did I want to save weight I would carry smaller legs, not a smaller head, even when the final tripod combination looks weird and big-headed."
Another ‘tripod trick’ I use to reduce vibrations is to shoot in “Exposure Delay Mode”, (d4 on the menu of the Nikon D800) which works this way:
Using Delay Mode will allow you to reduce mirror slap, especially when shooting at slower shutter speed. By the way, I usually choose three seconds delay.
The drawback of this mode is that you have to anticipate the position of your moving subjects (waves) three seconds in advance. This is nearly impossible with fast-moving subjects and difficult with slow-moving ones.
If you get blurry pictures when taking photos on a tripod you can also use ‘Mirror Up’ mode to reduce mirror-induced camera shake.
Using a ‘Remote Shutter Release’ is another possibility. The camera will not vibrate due to your hand manipulation, but the mirror may move the camera a bit at the time of shooting. New mirror-less models do not have this problem as they lack mirror and the only vibration that can be produced is the one produced by the minimum movement of the tiny blades of the shutter closing down. Nothing comparable at all.
Once again the blue toned black and white version of this image looks great as it does in nearly all the photographs I took during this trip. The biggest problem of the printing process is getting detail in the highlights, located on the waves at the right part of the image. I took a lot of care checking the exposure histogram when I shot this image so that I did not lose detail in these areas. I have toned them down a bit in the printing process to ensure the maximum detail.
To conclude I would like to give you the most useful ‘Tripod Trick’ I can: set up your tripod in the best possible location you have at hand and go there when the worst possible weather conditions you may have. Stunning locations and bad weather are a killer combination to get great images.
Related Image: Ice block and surf, Diamond Beach, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
Related Image: Reynisdrangar from Reynisfjara Beach, Iceland.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 92mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f4 | Shutter Speed: 2 seconds | ISO: 50
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: Hoya Skylight 77mm
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Car under storm clouds, near Vik, Iceland.
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]]>837 Words | Reading time: 4 min 10 seconds]
All the landscape the National Ring-road 1 is built on is conformed of volcanic gravel and rock. Cars that go off-road use huge size tires (like American Big Foots) with a special damping system that allows them to go into the volcanic gravel. You can see many of these ‘beasts’ — most of them destined for tourist transportation — when you are driving this road that surrounds all the island.
Composition & Lens Selection
It took some time for me to find a stretch of road that formed a line that was able to carry the look of the viewer from the foreground to the background, and represented the typical path full of ups and downs the road runs in the plains of Iceland.
The telephoto seemed the most logical choice of lens to use as it allowed me to focus in a relatively distant road section.
At first I thought about including some sky above, but thought that it did not add any of value to this image and opened the composition, so l turned a bit the ring of my Nikon 80-200 zoom from 100mm (my initial setting) to 135mm, to remove the white and leave a raw of rocky cliffs in the upper part of the image.
The absence of natural trees is complete in Iceland — winter is too harsh and it seems to be too windy all the year around for them to grow — but have to say I did not miss them. It is the essence of the landscape, and if you feel the landscape is a bit dreary at any moment, you can just take a look at the beautiful ever-changing skies above. Clouds are continuously passing above at high speed leaving rain, hail, and snow (early in the morning) interrupted by long periods of sunny blue skies.
Tripod Tips
To get an accurate composition in an image like this one, a tripod is an absolute necessity. You have to compose the image checking the borders and trying to get the cars in the position that tells the story in the best possible way. There are two types of head for still photography: Three-axis head (the one I use) which allow you to move each axis independently, and ‘Ball’ head (which allows you to move and block all axis with one movement). The only genre of photography I would recommend a ball head is fast photography (sports) where speed is the difference between getting the picture or missing it.
The best choice I have found in the three-axis head segment is the Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy head. It is not the cheapest option available, but it is sturdy and very well manufactured. The possibility of moving and blocking each axis independently allows you to get maximum precision on each composition, at the expense of making the process of selecting the final composition a bit slower. Gitzo has the best mechanization system I have ever tested on a tripod. Threads go smooth and when you tighten a screw, it gets perfectly blocked. The lack of vibrations is incredible for the amount of metal they use —this head is slimmer and smaller than others designed to bear the same weight — and the capacity to withstand a heavy lens is amazing. If you plan to use a telephoto lens on a tripod, it is a possibility you should think of.
Bits of Advice for a Road Trip in Iceland
Renting a car is the best way to enjoy Iceland with freedom, as it allows you to stop wherever you want. Here are some recommendations if you are planning a road trip in Iceland:
This is maybe the most representative image of the ‘Road Trip’ I took during my stay in Iceland, the one that resumes in the best possible way a road journey in a location surrounded by some of the most beautiful and unique landscapes you may find in Europe.
Hope you like it and that the information I am sharing is useful for you!
Related Image: Another image taken on the same journey: Storm clouds, Ring-Road #1, Iceland.
Related Image: Clouds above Petursey.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 135mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f5.6 | Shutter Speed 1/500 | ISO 200
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: No filter.
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Dyrholaey Cliffs and Beach, Iceland.
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This image is available as a Fine Art Print. Click here to see possible surfaces,
The fastest shutter speed we can use in any current camera (even the cheapest one) can go down to 1/1000 of a second. That’s enough to freeze most natural actions on earth, and most of these camera bodies can go even further down to 1/8000 of a second. If we are able to combine this ability of our electronic gadgets with our capacity to choose the appropriate moment to press the shutter, we will improve our skill to convey a meaning in our fast photography.
Not all the moments any action can be divided into are equally representative of the whole of it. Some of them are more meaningful and are best related to the general sense than others. If we analyze this image taken in the black volcanic beaches of the rough coast of beautiful Iceland, of a breaking wave we can conclude that the most significant moment is for this ephemeral subject when the wave is about to fall when it has bent over herself but the water still has not begun to fall. This instant represents the maximum amount of ‘contained energy’ just before the wave is going to lose its natural shape and is going to break transforming herself in an abstract and chaotic shapeless mass of white foam that progressively will lose its energy until it finally dies in the shore.
In this image, the superior border of the wave is beginning to separate from the main mass of water, getting transformed in drops of foam. The wave is about to disintegrate, you can read from its shape what is going to happen next.
One of the most meaningful moments you may choose in your photograph can be the one that shows the “climax” of the action, or the one that happens just before, the one that shows the “the relish or agony of the inevitable”.
During my trip to Iceland, I visited Reynisfiara Beach at different times, under heavy rain and under quiet cloudy skies. Most of the days the wind was always present and the waves were huge, and violently broke against the volcanic rocks in the shore. The spectacle they always produced was impressive, but this image represents the essence of a breaking wave in a more subtle way, to my mind at least. When I shot this particular scene the wind was nearly non-existent and the waves were not violent, so their shape was better defined, more elegant, more subtle. They hit the shore in a ‘clean’ way.
Related Image: Breaking Wave, Reynisfiara, Iceland.
Related Image: Sea Gale, Breaking Waves, Dyorhaley, Iceland. 2/5
Related Image: Ice block and surf, Diamond Beach, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 135mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f4 | Shutter Speed 1/800 | ISO 800
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: No filter.
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Road curve, Southern Iceland.
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This image is available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click here to see a full size version of it.
]]>This image is available as a giant print in sizes up to six meters long.
You can see a full-size version of this image at my site…
I took this image when I was hiking to one of the main touristic attractions around Vik: the DC-10 airplane wreck that had to make an emergency landing on 1973. The airplane fell in an uninhabited beach and local inhabitants were not able (or were smart enough) to avoid moving the remains away, so it became another pilgrimage place around Vik, in addition to the cliffs at Dyrholaey and the basalt columns located in the nearby Reynisfjara Beach, where tourists go to enjoy the landscape.
The day was windy, very windy, one of those sunny but unpleasant days you need a good reason to go out of the car. Fast clouds were passing over the horizon from the sea to the mountains and glaciers of the interior. I had seen most of the possible weather phenomena a driver can see during my twenty minutes short trip by road from Vik to the parking area where the car has to be left to begin the hike to the airplane: hail, snow, and heavy rain, all interrupted by short periods of bright sun. This combination of elements is very difficult to see outside very windy islands. The other location I have witnessed so fast-changing conditions is the Pampa landscape in Tierra de Fuego (Chile, Argentina).
On my outward journey to the plane, there were few clouds over the horizon. They passed above the mountains and went away, they did not accumulate creating a boring sky, so I did not take many pictures. I just went hiking to see the airplane (it is about one hour trip from the car), but on my return trip from the plane to the car, the clouds began to accumulate above Petursey (a curious mountain that emerges alone in the plains surrounded by volcanic boulders). I liked its shape and thought it could make a good earthly (dark) shape to counteract the “light” and whitish clouds above.
A big mass of cumulus on the left of Petursey was the best configuration of clouds I saw, so I set the mountain on the right part of the frame taking up a small size of the frame. The real main characters of the picture were the clouds, so I gave them preeminence. I used my Nikon 28-80 at 34mm to get the huge size of the clouds inside the frame.
The huge horizontal extension of clouds asked for a panorama, so I set my Manfrotto-Gitzo tripod (I took nearly all my landscapes in Iceland with my camera mounted on it), leveled it and shot a complete panorama that retains detail even when printed at huge sizes.
Ensuring that the camera body is totally horizontal is mandatory for panorama creation, so having a head, legs, or both that have a bubble level is very useful, if not a must. My Manfrotto 055-Pro legs have a built-in level and use it very often. In addition, I use another small bubble three axis level that can be attached to the flash hot shoe to get my camera leveled.
One of the reasons I love my Nikon D800 is the sensor of 36Mpx that produces a big file size that can be printed with great quality at some meters long prints.
Clouds look much better in black and white than in color, maybe due to the fact that they are inherently a monochromatic subject. The brownish-black lava landscape under them was also mainly monochromatic, but in darker tones, so used them to create a base for the whole image that counteracted the light nature of clouds.
The rays of sun that passed through the clouds created stains of light in the image which I did not like, hence I had to wait for a moment when all the field of view was evenly lighted by the sun.
The world is not organized in 1x1.5 or 4x5 ratio rectangles, while our camera frame is. This is a limitation all landscape photographers have to overcome and have to say that digital photography has made our life much easier. It is impressive to see how fast photography is evolving for some years now. Some time ago the only possibility to shoot high size quality panoramas was a panoramic camera. The Linhof Technorama with a 35mm lens (a wide angle in medium format film) was the queen of landscape photography, although other photographers used a Large Format Camera with a wide angle and then cropped the plate to a panoramic ratio.
Nowadays photo-stitching has become a really inexpensive alternative to these techniques and have given way to more controllable possibilities if executed properly. This is a treasure we all who love landscape photography are able to grab, another useful tool we have at hand to expand the possibilities of our preferred activity.
This is another version I took some time before:
Petursey under huge storm clouds, Vik, Iceland.
Other cloudscapes:
Seagull and clouds, Jokulsarlon, Iceland.
Cloudscape over the Atlantic, Iceland.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6G
SETTINGS:Aperture: f8 | Shutter Speed: 1/800| ISO 100
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod:[Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W Skylight KR 1.5
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Breaking wave, Reynisfjara, Iceland.
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]]>You can see a full-size version of this image at my site…
[Length: 768 Words | Reading time: 3 min 45 seconds]
This glacier lagoon is formed when glacier Breidamerkurjökull, which collects the snow that falls in the center of Iceland, approaches to the sea where the temperature is lower and begins to melt, breaking into ice blocks that separate from the main mass of ice. These icebergs are dragged by the current to the open sea, but the tide sends them back to earth placing on the black volcanic sand of ‘Diamond Beach’. Once there, the ice is dragged back and forth over the sand by the waves, until the chunk melts definitively.
As a photographer I can say that the show is amazing: shiny shapes of ice that glitter over the contrasting black sand. They simply look impressive in a photograph. A subject any landscape photographer would love to photograph.
For this image I chose a closed minimalist composition with only three subjects: the ice in the middle, a receding wave, and black volcanic sand.
Related Images: Pictures taken during winter conditions
It was cloudy the day I took this image. It was raining and hailing intermittently and the ice block was backlighted by a cloudy sky with a soft illumination that produced no shadows, but made glitter the shapes over the sand.
I tried some lenses to arrange a composition: the Nikon 50mm f1.8 AF (the framing was ‘too closed’), the Nikon 20mm f2.8 AF (the angle of view was too open, too much of the surroundings could be seen around the ice chunk), but the best composition was produced by my Nikon 24mm f2.8.
This is maybe my favorite lens: it is so small, light, easy to use, its depth of field is so wide, its sharpness is incredible, and the angle of view is my favorite to shoot landscapes. 20mm is a bit too open, 28mm a bit too closed for my taste. Did I have to choose only one lens to carry with me it would be by far this tiny optical wonder.
I chose a slow shutter speed that produced a silky look in the waves and closed down to f11 to have plenty of depth of field (out of focus objects would have added nothing to this photograph). With those settings (1.3 seconds; f11) I needed an ISO setting of 200. I could have pushed up the ISO even more, to 400 or even 800 with the sensor of my Nikon D800, one of the best ones in the market to shoot under low light conditions even having regard to its age, 6 years, which can be considered an eon when talking about technology.
Needless to say a tripod is an absolute must in this type of photographs. There are two main reasons:
My sturdy Manfrotto 055 Pro with a Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy Head is heavy enough to maintain a fixed position even with waves touching the lower parts of the legs, and sometimes moving them. The force of the waves is very variable in Iceland. Some of them barely touch the legs, while others may move it or make it fall to the ground. Working with your tripod legs inside the sea is, to say the least, tricky; I will write soon a post about it.
I take the opportunity to say that I miss very few of the features that the last models of cameras (mirror-less included) marketers are proud to shout to the four winds. The Nikon D800 is perfectly usable and a wonderful camera to buy even today at a fraction of the original price. In fact, it is much cheaper than the newer models D810, D850 and Z7, which do not add, at least for me, many features that can make a real difference.
Related Images: Volcanic landscapes taken in the nearby Faroe Islands
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 24mm AF-D
SETTINGS: Aperture: f11 | Shutter Speed: 1.3 seconds | ISO 200
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Clouds over Petursey, Vik, Iceland.
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This image is available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click here to visit the shop.
[600 Words | Reading time: 3 min 00 seconds]
The key to beautiful aerial landscape photography is to sit in a place with a relatively clean and not very scratched window. As we do not know in advance what airplane we are going to fly in, this is a difficult task, even if we choose a ‘window seat’ when we book the airplane ticket on internet. Once on board, if you see that your airplane is far from full you may be able to choose a new one after taking off and take a chance from a better position.
[Related Picture: Clouds in the Faroe Islands]
Use a zoom. Your subject this time is too huge and you cannot choose your position in relation to the clouds. Changing the perspective of your photographs is out of reach so, at least, it is useful to be able to change the framing. For this landscape I used the black version of a Nikon 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6G (I have never understood other colors different from black or white on a lens). This lens is not robust, not luminous, but it is cheap, cheap, cheap and sharp, sharp, sharp. Not very well finished in light plastic it will not withstand the toughest treatment, but that is not a huge problem when it is cheaper that many filters I own. I am amazed at the optical quality of this old discontinued lens I bought second hand long time ago. I can add that this lens is especially useful when you have to use it under the rain or in hard weather conditions when it hurts to take out of the backpack a 1500€ Nikon prime lens.
[Related Picture: Clouds in Tierra de Fuego]
To photograph clouds you have to be vigilant in looking through your window to the landscape that passes in front of you, and wait for the beautiful cloud shapes that will produce the composition you want.
The shapes I present today are cumulus (those with great vertical development that announce a wonderful storm for the ones who look at them from below). I balanced a beautiful high cumulus on the right with cotton like textured shapes on the left. The cotton texture is extremely appealing when printed in black and white. Love it!
[Related Picture: Storm clouds in Piccadilly (London)]
Take advantage when the airplane is not flying very high or when the clouds are high. When there is a big difference between your position and clouds, the details are lost and the landscape looks dull. An immense plane extension of clouds is not the best image you can strive to get.
The cloudscapes will look more impressive in locations where big storms form. I was going to Iceland where strong weather is expected, so I knew in advance that this trip would be a great opportunity to shoot clouds.
[Related Picture: Clouds in the Faroe Islands]
The black and white version works great for this subject with delicate tonalities and hues of whites and grays. It simplifies the scene and allows the viewer to enjoy the detail, the delicate shapes and the soft gray textures.
The last factor you will need in these images is LUCK. Sometimes beautiful clouds will pass in front of you outside your window, and others you will not be able to enjoy other images than endless boring cloud extensions. You can spend much time looking for the best landscapes but this genre of photography will always have an inherent nature of unpredictability. In these cases, the most useful thing you can do is to sleep right through all your trip.
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[1112 Words | Reading time: 5 min 40 seconds]
All photographers have experienced at some moment of their lives the powerlessness of being in front of an impressive natural spectacle and fail to transmit the grandeur of the event in her photograph. How many times are we disappointed when we see our pictures on the screen and think: “It looked wonderful, but the pictures I took are boring and fail to apprehend what I felt at that moment” Well, it may be a matter of SENSES. We use five to experience the world, but we as photographers can rely only in one of them to convey a feeling to our audience: SIGHT.
I had seen many images of Skogafoss before I began my photographic trip to Iceland, and had read that was the cascade with the biggest flow of water in Europe. Have to admit that when I got there and was next to the pond shore, under the amazing flow of water, with my jacket completely soaked, I was really impressed by the height, wideness of the sheet of water, and the huge volume of water that flows in this river. Being near the pool where the water gets collected makes you feel small. The roaring of the water falling, the wetness in the ambient (all the stones around you are soaked even tens of meters away from the base), the spray that rises some meters from the base of the water level, the deafening of the huge amount of water falling from a height of sixty meters. It is in fact one of the most impressive waterfalls on Earth. And what impresses the photographer sometimes is difficult to be captured in a photograph.
When we photographers begin taking seriously our hobby (photography), we sometimes witness natural events and situations that are inherently impressive, and we take photographs thinking we are going to be able to transmit the shock we feel, but the reality is that we have to accept disappointed that the images usually are not very impressive. Simply stated: we have failed, and it is not always easy to know why.
The reason is that when we are witnessing an event, we are using our FIVE SENSES, but when we use our camera we are translating the reality of the world into a two dimensional visual object called photograph. Something that is by nature two dimensional, static and cannot transmit sounds, smells, tactile feelings…
Well thought it is not as bad as it might seem. If photography has survived the attacks of video and cinema during decades is because a good photograph is able to condense an action and transmit its essence thanks to this ability to SIMPLIFY REALITY. The drawback is that we can only count on VISUAL ASPECTS of reality to transmit our impression of them, and the trick to do our best as photographers is to maximize them.
Let us review the senses we use when we are experiencing the mighty Skogafoss.
Related Post: Set the Scale of your Images
Now let us check some of the VISUAL STRATEGY to capture in our sensor the beauty of this scene:
A tripod is a must in these situations. The image would not be blurred at the shutter speed I used (1/250s), but my arms would have got really tired holding the Nikon D800 (1kg) plus Nikon 80-200 AF 2.8 (1.3kg). A big and sturdy head like my Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy is needed to shoot this heavy combination. Big legs like the ones from my Manfrotto 055 Pro completed the tripod set.
I got there at around 5:30 and, completely alone, began shooting the shapes of water. When the first visitors arrived around 7:00 to the location, I included them in couples or individual shapes under the cascade. Between 8:00 and 9:00 groups of tourists appeared and, after 9:00, an army of visitors who came in buses disembarked in the area. Another D-Day had begun at Skogafoss.
Related Image: 9/11 Memorial, Manhattan, New York.
This waterfall is rightly one of the most visited spots in this Nordic island. I am sure that most of the 2.2 Million travelers that go on holiday there every year go to this point. It is located just a few hours by car away from Reykjavik, the access from the road is immediate and the show is, to say the least, impressive. These ingredients are a great hook for the multitudes that visit the Iceland every year, so the best is to go there early in the morning so that you can get a more personal experience of this wonder of nature.
After nine the best thing you can do is to leave and look for one of the many beautiful solitary, unique and unforgettable landscapes the Land of Ice has to offer.
Related Post: Add a Trigger to you Photographs.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 80mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f4 | Shutter Speed 1/250 | ISO 200
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W 77mm Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter 2 points, soft transition
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Cloudscape, Cumulus over the Atlantic Ocean, near Iceland.
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]]>[960 Words | Reading time: 4 min 30 seconds]
The main problem of photographing the most famous spot of a country or city (like the Ice Formations of the glacier lagoon Jokulsarlon) is to avoid falling on the ‘cliché’, not to photograph once again what has been photographed endlessly by the thousands of photographers who have visited the location before you attracted by the inherent beauty of the place. It is a difficult, sometimes impossible task.
Related Image: Tram in Aleksandergatan, Helsinki, Finland.
In these situations a photographer has two possibilities:
Henri Cartier Bresson said that the only way to take a real COMPLETE reportage of a place is living there. The TIME you spend exploring your subject, trying new photographic possibilities and taking pictures is the key factor for a great reportage. However, we cannot all go to live to Jokulsarlon, but we can spend more time than the average photographer, or at least more time than the average tourist who travel in a bus and have only a couple of hours in this stunning location. That is why I planned my trip from the beginning on a rented car, outside the general bus tours organized for tourists, and saved some unplanned time at the end of my trip. The final third of my trip would have to be decided after I knew first hand the locations and was aware of which places gave better photographic possibilities.
Tourist canned circuits are oriented to people who wants to know as many locations as possible in a short period of time, but have too tight schedules and are not aware of the photographic possibilities each place has to offer. In addition, at sunrise and sunset the average person is usually sleeping or having dinner, and that is a luxury that a landscape photographer simply cannot afford.
I can say that in my trip I spent nearly three days at Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon and the (also impressive!) near Diamond Beach. I worked mostly at sunrise, at around 5:30, with no people, just ice shapes, black volcanic sand and the sea. With my D800 always on my Gitzo/Manfrotto tripod, playing with different shutter speeds to try to get different relations of the surf moving around the shapes of ice. During the day, when the first visitors appeared, I tried to shoot images with human figures among the ice shapes or in the shore to add human factor to the scenes.
I shot this image on a gelid morning, just after sunrise, under the soft light of an overcast sky. It had been snowing during the night and all ice shapes had a beautiful thin snow cover that made the ice shapes look even more pristine than the previous day. Melting ice and old snow may have a grayish tonality that does not look as beautiful as the blue-cyan-whitish new one. I took many pictures of the ice formations when I went all over the shore, but this one is one of my favorites. This ice “tree” shaped formation looked great. The soft light from the overcast sky marked the shapes without creating shadows, which would have looked nasty if they were too dark, hiding the detail in parts of the ice.
Ice formations are continuously arriving to the lagoon detaching from the huge masses of ice glaciers that break in this huge mass of water. The currents move them inside the lake and deposit them in the sea. In addition the above zero temperatures of the Icelandic Spring make the ice crunch and melt. All these conditions create a landscape that is slowly, but continuously changing. The more time you spend with the camera in this place, the better pictures you make, no way around about this.
Related Post: LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
Related Landscape I took in Vietnam: Fog entering the valley, Bac Ha, Vietnam
I have not visited the Northern part of the Island, or the volcanic landscapes of the interior (all the roads were still closed in the early spring), but have to say that in my honest opinion, If there is a place that makes a difference, that is unique in the world among all the landscapes of Iceland, it is Jokulsarlon and the nearby Diamond Beach.
I will soon upload some more images of the ice shapes melting in the surf in this black volcanic sand beach.
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 145mm
SETTINGS: Aperture: f16 | Shutter Speed 1/250 | ISO 100
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W 77mm Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter 2 points, soft transition
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
NEXT SCHEDULED POST: Skogafoss, Iceland. Coming soon...
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This image is available as an Open Edition Fine Art Print. Click here to visit the shop.
]]>[1300 Words – 6.5 minutes]
Last Spring I took a photographic road trip to Iceland. The landscapes of this impressive Island were a pending subject for me. The pictures of the volcanic scenery I had seen before my trip were impressive, so I rented a car and spent nine days moving through the Southern part of the ring-road that goes around the Island. I could also have visited the North part of the country, but I have learnt that, when photographing landscapes, it is preferable to be able to go back to the most impressive locations you find during the first days of your trip, looking for more suitable light.
In fact, when I was planning this trip at home, I left my last five days open (I did not book any hotel room or make any plan in advance); the final days had to be decided once I had visited all the locations and knew which ones had more potential for landscape photography.
Related Post: Landscape Photography
I travelled there in spring. I had some reasons to choose this season: the number of visitors is not as high as in the Summer (which allows you to leave the last part of our trip open; during the Icelandic Summer you have to book well in advance) and the days are long enough to give you many hours of light to shoot landscapes. Winter is the season to photograph Auroras and ice caves, but not much more, due to the absence of day-light, and the most important reason: WEATHER IS BAD ENOUGH (yes BAD ENOUGH!), which is not the best for the photographer and the photo gear (mine suffered a lot: volcanic sand, hail, snow, rain…), but the combination of outstanding empty spaces and passing clouds is the best to shoot beautiful landscapes.
Now let us talk about this image, the first of my Icelandic series, which represents a Wildlife Warning Plate against a background of blurred (out of focus) mountains. I “saw” it while I was driving.
The composition is based in the CONTRAST of:
Related Post: Six Tips to Improve your Compositions
This image is easy to take. The only technical aspect to care about is focus: I shot at f4 (f2.8 would have given me better bokeh on the mountains, but lenses are sharper when shot stopped down), so my personal preference is to shoot at f4 if possible.
I set my ISO to 100 and Shutter Speed fell at 1/3200” which is very fast (so fast!) It seems that days are luminous indeed in Iceland Spring!
It took some time for me to set the tripod at the correct location so that I was able to get the composition I wanted, with the mountains under the plate, and I had to wait for a moment when the plate was lighted by the sun to saturate the colors and mark its shapes even more. In addition, this circumstance accentuated the contrast between the road sign and the background.
In these situations a tripod is not absolutely needed, but absolutely recommendable. Composing with a tele (where the minimum movement of the camera produces a huge movement of the frame) can exasperate the most patient photographer. In addition you have to wait for the clouds that are covering the sun to pass away and allow the sun to illuminate the warning sign. When you camera-lens combo you have decided to use weights more than 2kg, chances are that your arms get tired of holding the weight before everything (clouds, sun position, maybe a passing car…) is in place.
I used a big Gitzo Head G1372M in this trip to support the weight of the huge Nikon 80-200 2.8 (1.3kg!), one of those bulky teles that need a collar to screw the camera in, otherwise the center of gravity of the set camera + lens is moved forwards creating an unbalanced situation that a normal size head is not able to stand. The legs are my standard Manfrotto 055 Pro, also big and heavy. I was very happy to carry this big combination to Iceland, as I shot under very windy circumstances that moved all the photo gear and created vibrations. This combo was sturdy enough to allow me to work in the difficult circumstances of the harsh spring in Iceland.
I have chosen this image to open this series because, at least in my honest opinion, is more creative (I am sure I have not been the first to try this idea, but at least it is not an over-photographed cliché of this island) and because on the symbolic level, this image represents the essence of my trip: road and nature. The impressive Icelandic nature barely touched by humans. What took my attention when I was editing all the images back at home in front of the computer screen, is the iconic nature of the image: its idea is easy to get digested by the brain.
There are few other places on Earth you can take a road trip surrounded by the outstanding vastness of nature, an Iceland is maybe the easiest to reach. Another location that meets these conditions, but is more remote and difficult to reach is ‘Tierra de Fuego’, the uninhabited Southern part of Argentina and Chile.
SAFETY WARNING: Don’t drive and shoot at the same time!
I would like to make a safety warning about photographing while driving. I have to say I am addicted to landscape photography. Whenever I am driving in open spaces my eyes move (themselves) to look for landscapes. They turn to any unusual shape in the clouds, a dark storm that approaches on the horizon, any rock formation near the road… and this is a huge problem if you are driving a car in a scenic location as is Iceland.
I have read that some photographers shoot while driving. They are able to shoot a DSLR with one hand while driving. I am sure they are skilled drivers and that they have everything under control, but have to admit that I am not a skilled driver, so it is something I personally would not try. No landscape, no matter how impressive it is, no matter how unrepeatable is the light you have in front of you, is worth a car accident, not to say a head-on collision.
So I have learnt to throw fast looks to the sky above me or to the horizon and always go back to check the road. I ALWAYS STOP THE CAR if it is possible at a proper position. In rural zones of Iceland the traffic is light and, every few kilometers, there are rest zones or places you can park the road outside the road platform. Hence, if I have seen something that is really worth a second look, I stop, turn the car around and go back to the spot I want to take the picture on.
Resuming: I NEVER EVER SHOOT WHILE DRIVING.
EXIF DATA
Camera Model: Nikon D800
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF used at 155mm
Settings: Aperture: f4 | Shutter Speed 1/3200 | ISO 100
LIST OF USED GEAR
Tripod: [Legs: Manfrotto 055 Pro] & [Head: Gitzo 1372M Magnesium Alloy]
Backpack: LowePro with rain cover (absolutely needed in Iceland)
Filter: B+W 77mm Graduated 0.6 Neutral Density Filter 2 points, soft transition
Memory Card: Sandisk SD Extreme 64Gb
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The key to this picture of an Indian woman dressed with traditional clothes is lighting. Although not completely seen in the picture, there are two sources of light, as if we were in a photography studio. The main light comes from the window in front of the woman and the fill light comes from her back, from another window that is hidden in the picture. The light from this window fills the shadows located at the back of the woman making the black shadows disappear and diminishing the contrast. With this combination of two lights plus the fill of the walls I can say I was lucky to have very nice lighting conditions.
The relaxed and natural position of the woman, with the hand softly leaning on the wall, and the delicate light that remarks even the smallest details of the cloth, are the strong points of this photograph.
To measure the light of this scene I measured inside the balcony, allowing the scene outside the window to be without detail and completely white. It was better to ensure the detail in the sharee (traditional Indian dress) of the woman. It would have been impossible to get detail both inside the building and the sky outside the window. Did I have to shoot the picture with the Matrix metering of an actual camera (like my Nikon D800) I would have to overexpose the reading, maybe compensate +2/3 or even +1, to get an accurate reading. The fact is that very bright sources of light (like this window) mislead the photometer, tricking it to think there is more light than really is.
The keys to this image are the relaxed and natural position of the woman, with the hand softly leaning on the wall, and the delicate light that remarks even the smallest details of the cloth.
If I was asked why do I like so much photographing in India, I would be able to give some arguments. One of them would be that most women even nowadays wear the traditional and colorful sharee that looks wonderful in a photograph. The clothes are so colorful and stylish that are a wonderful help in a photograph; they add a sense of old ambient, something you feel when you are travelling around in the country, but that is not always easy to transmit in a photograph, which is in the end, an excerpt, a simplification of the world we have in front of us when we are travelling. If we photographers are something, it is people who “SELECT” the most meaningful visual aspects of the scene we see and are able technically to register those meaningful aspects of a place or event, and only them. We have to center on them and forget the rest. The most effective pictures are the simplest ones, but it takes time and effort to be able to develop a mental model to discern what can be registered with a camera and what can be transmitted in a meaningful way to a spectator.
Today’s prime lenses are no better than they were in the year 2000, but zooms (variable focal length lenses) have improved optically a lot, and are cheaper.
Did I have to shoot this image today, I would use a zoom instead of a prime lens (single focal lens), maybe the Nikon AF-S FX NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED, or the smaller and cheaper Nikon AF-S FX 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED (both are great performers!). Broadly speaking, lens sharpness has improved very little during the last two decades (when the ‘digital’ has changed dramatically the game of photography). Today’s prime lenses are not sharper than they were in the year 2000, but zooms (variable focal length lenses) have improved optically a lot, and are cheaper. Zooms built in the nineties were by far not as sharp as prime lenses unless they were really expensive. Today you can buy for 600$-1200$ an outstanding zoom like the two Nikons I have already mentioned that are optically a wonder.
However, other facts than those regarding lens quality, as are composition, subject selection, exposure reading, f-stop have changed nothing during the last decades. This image shot on film with my venerable Nikon FM2 has the same validity today than it had when it was taken nearly two decades ago, when 4Mpx prehistoric digital cameras cost 7000$ and a half Gb capacity Memory Card some hundred bucks. Being photography a technically dependent activity, we can say that some aspects of it evolve as the decades pass by, but others do not.
EXIF DATA:
Fuji Velvia 100 ISO, f5.6, speed 1/30.
GEAR LIST:
Camera Body: Nikon FM2
Lens: Nikkor 24mm AF (love this lens!)
Filter: B+W 52mm Skylight 1A Multi Coated (2C) Glass (KR1.5)
Film: Fuji Velvia ISO100
What is your experience with zoom and prime lenses? Do you also use both of them? Have you travelled in the Rajasthan to take pictures? Have you had also the opportunity to photograph a person next to a window and have managed with a extreme contrast situation like this one? I would like to know your opinions and experiences. Please comment below…
I shot this image soon after the black and white picture of the Roller Coaster one, also at noon in Belmont Park. The light was too harsh at that time of the day, but didn’t have much time to wait for a softer light.
Why do I like this image? Because it is, let’s say ‘evocative’. Analyzed from a photojournalistic point of view it simply does not work, at least if we talk in the narrow sense of the word photojournalism. The intent of this picture was not to ‘tell a story’, but to be evocative. It evokes a lot (at least to me, a foreigner) through the use of symbols. Although American citizens who are more used to the symbols present in this image might find it more boring…
“The intent of this picture was not to ‘tell a story’, but to be evocative. It evokes a lot (at least to me, a foreigner) through the use of symbols.”
What can be inferred from this image? Sometimes it is useful to make a mental exercise: imagine we have not seen the caption (that usually adds information from what the image says), trying to separate what information the image (and only the image) gives us. First of all, I’m in California as the colorful car plate proudly estates. I’m also in the US (look at the bars and stripes flag in the reflection) in a place where some people are really fond of cars, fond enough to restore and collect some pieces whose production was discontinued decades ago (some people in the United States have a special relation, some form of idolatry with cars that has always impressed me). I’m also in a beautiful holiday place, under a blue sky surrounded by huge palm trees, maybe in spring or summer…
“Sometimes it is useful to make a mental exercise: imagine we have not seen the caption (that usually adds information from what the image says), trying to separate what information the image (and only the image) gives us.”
We can add that the dominant color of the picture (that greenish-blue turquoise color that fills most of the frame) can be an added value. It’s a beautiful color indeed.
This picture, one of my favorite of the trip to the West Coast of the US, has never been published. Photographers are said to be awful editors of their own work, but have to say that had I been the editor of my reportage, I’d have chosen it to close it, because it’s not direct, it tells indirectly and can be a good closing that can provide a good piece of thought about the place I am in.
One of the biggest disappointments in my career as a photographer has been to discover that most of the times my best images were never published. Most editors always went to the ‘easy’ and direct photography. I can recall a ‘director’ of a magazine who always said: “Bring me beautiful women!!!” as if that was the final aim of Travel Photography.
“One of the biggest disappointments in my career as a photographer has been to discover that most of the times my best images were never published.”
That’s why we all who love photography enjoy so much reading National Geographic issues, one of the few publications whose main concern still is the quality of the photography they publish. If those publications that have already closed down had bet for a quality photography that made people think, they would have hold the internet era on. Although questionable, this is my personal opinion… I’d like to hear yours… you can comment the picture if you have some free time…
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| EXIF DATA: Nikon D800 | Lens: Nikon 24mm 2.8 AF-D| 1/125s f5.6 ISO 200 |
This image: Reflections on Mercury spare wheel, San Diego, California is available for sale as an Open Edition Fine Art Print on sizes up to 50x73 inches (120x180 cm). Buy it here.
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I went to the Desert when I knew I was going to have full moon. My first idea was to photograph the desert by night and I did, but the best pictures did not come under full Moon light. I woke up at the hour I had looked on internet that the moon was rising for that night (I believe it was somewhere around 23:00, sunset was around 18:00) and shot many images with my wide angle and my D200 on a ‘Manfrotto 055 Pro’ tripod. The resulting images were nice, but the best was yet to come. Before I went into my sleeping bag, I set my alarm at 4:00 (sunrise was going to be around 5:00) and begun to take pictures when it was still by night, with the rocks lighted just with the Moon light.
Dusk began thirty or forty minutes before sunrise. The sunlight appeared on the horizon as a bright red-yellowish clarity.
From one part of the planet the dark bluish light of the night mixes with the yellowish light of the new day creating on the sky a line of colors that rise on the horizon and give very soft but directional light that creates marked but very soft shadows.
The light that comes from the dark part of the planet has suffered many rebounds on Earth surface and the atmosphere, hence the wave lengths are biased to blue (it is said that it is transmitted light), while the light that comes directly from the sun comes directly from the Sun to the Earth, in red and yellow colors. That is why if you look to the photograph, you can see the Moon and the upper part of the sky in red/magenta (warm) colors, while the lower part of the sky and the horizontal ground are in blue/cyan (cold) colors. The rock itself is beginning to be illuminated by the Sun, hence it is in Yellow colors.
The two lights produce a gradation, and the line in the sky where they mix is called ‘the light wedge’. During day hours the light that comes directly from the Sun is much more powerful than the one that comes from the dark part of the planet, and vice versa, by night the scattered light that comes from the darker part of the planet is more powerful and overwhelms the other type of light. It is only at dusk when there is a balance of intensity between both, and the light produced (if you are in an open space under a clear cloudless sky, as usually happens in the desert), is very special for landscape photography.
Dusk light is maybe the most delicate of all day. For landscape photographers it is a jewel. It is the time of the day when two opposed lights collide.
The eroded shapes of the rock formation gives the picture and abstract sense that is counterbalanced by the rounded shape of the moon, but I believe that the most interesting character in this picture is the soft light itself, so revealing.
It is not very common that the Moon sets exactly at sunrise. It does not happen during all the year around, so you cannot count on it unless you look for it. Check some astronomy or astrophotography web sites to look for the coincidence.
NOTES ABOUT GEAR:
The lens used was the Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF (used at 200mm) with a 2x Duplicator. A 200mm is converted to a 300mm in an APS sensor size (the one of the Nikon D200 I was using) which has a multiplying factor of 1.5. With the Duplicator the real focal length I was using was a 600mm f5.6.
When you are using a focal length of 600mm a sturdy and heavy tripod is an absolute must. Forget any small, short legged, toy tripods. If you want to shoot by night and use a telephoto, buy a REAL tripod.
EXIF DATA
Shooting Prameters: ¼ second; f8; ISO 100
GEAR LIST:
Camera Body: Nikon D200;
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF D used at 200; Duplicator 2x;
Real resulting focal length used: 600mm
Filter: B+W 77mm Skylight 1A Multi Coated (2C) Glass (KR1.5)
Memory Card: Sandisk Extreme 16Gb
Tripod Legs: Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 3 Sections;
Head: Gitzo G1372M Magnesium Alloy 3-Way Head
The light was harsh (you can see no shadows in this image), but tried to find a composition that could alone support a photograph. I was walking the shore and saw the dark lines that the waves were leaving on the sand while the tide was receding. These lines led my eye to three bathers in the distance who were walking in the same direction as me. They were clearly defined, small in the frame and the lines led the eye to the background while pointing at them.
These lines led my eye to three bathers in the distance who were walking in the same direction as me. They were clearly defined, small in the frame and the lines led the eye to the background
The 50mm I had already mounted on my D800 gave me a good perspective, and allowed me to compose the image giving most of the frame surface to the lines on the sand, so I shot a few frames without thinking, trusting that the matrix metering and a small amount of underexposure would work. And it did… nearly perfectly.
The biggest problem you have when you are shooting in a beach when the sun is near its highest position is that you run the risk of getting your image overexposed. The sun is a small, hard and too bright source of light at that time of the day. To make the matters even worse, the sand reflects a huge amount of light, that’s why I always set my compensation at -.7 (2/3 of a point, underexposure) when I shoot in very bright lighting conditions to protect the detail in the highlights.
If there’s an essence of outdoor photography it is the fact that you always gain at the expense of losing something.
If there’s an essence of outdoor photography it is the fact that you always gain at the expense of losing something. You usually gain in accuracy in exposure at the price of losing balance in your compositions, or you may gain focus in your subject, but losing a genuine expression. You cannot fight against the odds, that’s the way thing are. That’s why it takes so much effort to get a picture where everything (composition, lighting, expressions and gestures of your subjects…) falls into place. Even in studio photography, where you have everything under control (lights, a model that stands where you need, the lens you want, and plenty of time to think everything you need) you lose the authenticity of the moment… pictures lose the feeling of reality and begin to look what they are: something arranged, prepared or, as it is said in the ad industry, ‘produced’.
This image shouted for a black and white version since the first time I saw it on my screen.
Just let me make one final comment. This image shouted for a black and white version since the first time I saw it on my screen. I believe that the color version, although perfectly usable, lacks a bit of strength in contrast, something that can be improved in the monochromatic version you can see here.
Hope you like it and find these ideas useful and interesting and give a piece of thought to other photographers… your comments are always welcome. Please let me know if you have had similar experiences while shooting your own images…
EXIF DATA: Body: Nikon D800 | Lens: Nikkor 50mm AF 1.8 | ISO: 100 | Aperture: f4 | Shutter: 1/500 | Exposure Compensation: -0.7
I went from Torrey Pines Gliding Center to the top of the cliffs over Blacks Beach looking for a panoramic viewpoint to photograph the beautiful extensions of inhabited sand that is located North of San Diego. In fact I was looking to shoot a photograph parallel to the coastline, with the breaking creating a pattern that waves converged in the distance, but I found unexpectedly this couple entering the sea just below the cliff I was standing on, and changed my mind. I thought about using their shilouettes to counterbalance the shapes of the waves breaking in the coastline.
So I set myself facing the ocean, and waited a bit for them to be in the right position in relation to the waves. This couple allowed me to SET THE SCALE OF THE IMAGE (without the human size reference, the image becomes an abstract picture of water and foam) and ADD DRAMATISM to the scene BY COMPARISON allowing me to emphasize the FRAGILITIY and SMALLNESS of human beings against the force of Nature (The Pacific Ocean).
COMPOSITION
The natural foam of the breaking waves creates a beautiful white texture that makes the dark figures stand out.
The couple is located in the lower third of the image, looking at the Ocean. Its size and relative position to the waves are the most important facts regarding composition. The fact that they are located in the middle of a big surface of foam confronting the hugeness of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by a wave they have already jumped over, and facing a new one that comes in the distance, makes them look ‘involved’ in the situation they’re in.
The natural foam of the breaking waves creates a beautiful white texture that makes the dark figures stand out. The fact that the waves are not parallel to the frame borders is important form the composition point of view. They add dynamism to the composition, creating two crosswise lines that add tension to the image.
SIZE OF THE HUMAN FIGURES
Having a zoom is key in these situations where you cannot move (you’re on top of a cliff) and you have no control over your subjects (as it usually happens in photojournalism).
To emphasize the comparison of man-Ocean, I made the human shapes in the frame as small as possible, setting my zoom to its longest position (200mm) to avoid including any portion of land which would have weakened the composition. I wanted to include sea, and only sea in this picture.
Having a zoom is key in these situations where you cannot move (you’re on top of a cliff) and you have no control over your subjects (as it usually happens in photojournalism).
IMPORTANCE OF TIME IN THIS SHOT
I had to wait some time until the swimmers were in the right position and the texture and waves created the beautiful balanced pattern that creates this image, when they were inside the water, but still standing on their feet. Had I waited for them to begin to swim, they would have become two heads (two small black points) floating over the surface, too small to stand out from the turmoil of foam around them to achieve the meaning I was trying to communicate. They had to be big enough to be recognizable as human beings. I waited for them to be also between two waves, which increased the sense that they were being surrounded by the hugeness of the Pacific Ocean.
THE POWER OF HUMAN FIGURE IN GRAPHIC TERMS
The human figure, graphically speaking, used even at very small sizes can balance much bigger textures and shapes.
The human figure, graphically speaking, used even at very small sizes can balance much bigger textures and shapes. Let’s say it’s a ‘powerful shape’ when it is employed as a symbol, so it can be used effectively to counterbalance huge buildings and natural shapes like these waves.
When you are able as a photographer to resume your picture in a word (for this image I’d choose ‘Smallness’ or ‘Fragility’), it means that you’ve succeeded in adding layers of meaning to a visual composition, and that you have created a symbol… and that is one of the most powerful capacities of photography. Thanks for reading.
Thanks to all ‘Your Shot’ users who are asking for new pictures. I’m preparing some new ones to upload. Thanks for the ‘likes’ and for your patience!!!
EXIF DATA: Nikon D800 | Lens: Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF-D used at 200mm | 1/1000s f8 ISO 200 |
This image Swimmers in Blacks Beach, San Diego, California is available for sale as an Open Edition Fine Art Print on sizes up to 50x73 inches (120x180 cm). Buy it here.
Portrait of worried woman portrait, Bhaktapur, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.
Published on 2016/02/03 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint. [624 Words]
I remember I was next to a big pond located at East extreme of the town where buffaloes were taken daily to drink. It was an open space, buildings around were not high and were not present next to the pond, so dark shadows were not still casted by the hard sun that lights Kathmandu Valley at noon . In addition, the sun had just risen and lit the scene from a very low angle, producing a very appealing soft yellowish light that can be seen in the tanned face of this woman.
I saw her coming in the distance dressed in the traditional red share, the colorful traditional dress nearly all women wear in India and Nepal. For any reason I ignore most men have lost the traditional way of dressing, but women continue using traditional clothes, which is great for photographs. She was walking lost in thought, looking to the ground, so I didn’t notice her expression in the distance. When she passed next to me I asked permit to take a picture; she lifted her face looking at me and saw the expression you can see on the picture, she was frowning, she looked really sad. However she nodded without saying a word. Still surprised had time to take one picture, only one, and without saying a word, she went away walking at a fast pace. Those were the times of film when shot film had to be developed when we were back at home some weeks or months later. Most actual digital camera users haven’t experienced the sensation of not looking to the screen on the back of the camera to see the last picture they’ve taken, and most of us who lived the ending of that era, have forgotten it. [pullquote]It would also have been out of place to ask anything… being one way or another, she gave me one of my favorite street photographs ever.[/pullquote] [dropcap]The[/dropcap] expression that was registered on that piece of film has always dramatically disturbed me. As you can see in the picture, she was really worried. I’m afraid this woman did not speak English; she simply heard the word “photo” or “picture” and saw a foreigner with a big camera (that huge Nikon F4 and a 105mm Micro I believe) and understood my proposal. It would also have been out of place to ask anything… being one way or another, she gave me one of my favorite street photographs ever.
I have recently read that “Street Photography” has always to be VERY related with human condition, and I agree. I believe this is one of the most soulful and poignant pictures I’ve ever taken. I will never know the reasons why this woman was disturbed and why did she accept my picture request, but I only can be extremely thankful even when I know I will never see her again in all my life. What about you?
Have you had a similar experience with a person who has given you a once-in-a-lifetime picture? Do you usually shoot portraits to strangers when you travel? Or are you afraid to ask permit to take a photograph? Have you ever missed a person that you know would add meaning to the picture you were going to shoot?
Map Bhaktapur, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.[/caption]
PARAMETER | VALUE | TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE |
SHUTTER SPEED | 1/125 | Light intensity was relatively low at the end of the day, so measured with the camera at Matrix Mode. Used f11 to have enough depth of field and took some exposures to stitch them together. |
APERTURE | f4 | I closed my lens to have some depth of field. |
ISO | Fuji Velvia 50 | Did not want to get a noisy picture, so kept the ISO as low as possible. 200 was enough for this situation. |
MODE | A | When a tripod is used, no mode is needed. Manual is always the most comfortable option. |
LENS USED | Nikon 105 mm Micro | I wanted to be in the scene, so opened up my Nikon 12-24mm wide angle and tried to locate the camera as near as possible to the scene. |
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS | - | I wanted to take a panorama of this impressive scene with so nice lighting, so used my small Gitzo 01 tripod, light enough to allow me to work in to the mountains. I shot some panoramas. If you are going to shoot panoramas you must level the head of the tripod, which is very difficult if yours do not have a bubble. This was the hardest part of shooting this picture. |
Published on 2016/01/19 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint. [849 Words]
I can recall right now one of the most impressive works by Ansel Adams: “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite, CA.”, an impressive view of the Yosemite Valley after a storm. A good amount of Clouds are clearing in the distance but let the viewer perceive the stunning shapes of the valley.
This image was taken from a panoramic viewpoint, but the reality is that if you limit your working locations to places near a road, you are going to miss most of your good landscape opportunities. Nature looks more appealing seen from above.
I can give you some reasons to look for scenes to practice photography away from civilization:
1. When you hike for an extended period of time you allow time to accumulate so that “picturesque” scenes appear in front of you. In reality it is the interaction of the weather conditions with the earth surface that produces memorable pictures, so the more time you spend outdoors, the more possibilities you give yourself to get those favorable climate conditions that will add drama to your pictures and will allow you to create something more appealing than a postcard.
2. Mountains are always best photographed from a high vantage point: usually from a mountain pass or from the top of a peak… We all who like hiking know how wonderful are the views you can enjoy from the summits.
3. When you begin to walk away from civilization you get immersed into Nature, and your senses become fine-tuned with the landscapes you are searching. It’s easier for us to find where the pictures are hidden, it’s easier to discover a leaf detail, a composition of tree trunks or hills receding in the distance…Human constructions decrease in number, even sometimes disappear. Without these distractions it’s easier for us to focus on the landscapes we are looking for.
When I saw this image taken in Nepal I was trekking in the Annapurna Conservation Area in the Nepal Himalaya. I had begun trekking in the small town of Besisahar and had been progressing among forests and cliffs for some days until I arrived to Manang, when I saw one of the walls of Annapurna, the main 8000 meter peak you can see during that trek. It was a stunning view indeed, but the best was yet to come.
I believe it was the day after Manang when I passed under the big mass of the Thorung Peak, which usually do not have so impressive appearance, but the weather conditions can change dramatically any landscape. I saw clouds passing at high speed next to the vertical face of the peak. When they go so fast clouds create many different configurations is a small period of time so I asked my porter to stop and I set up my tripod on the snow. I set my Nikon F4 loaded with Black and White film (Ilford Pan-F 50). I mounted the Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 AF to focus only in the main face of the Peak and waited for the clouds to cross the frame of the image.
During maybe half an hour I pressed the shutter whenever I saw a nice configuration of rock and clouds. I shot horizontal and vertical versions, I zoomed in and out, I mounted another body with color film (it was not so easy to shoot both possibilities, you had to had two bodies, each one loaded with one type of film) trying to get nice compositions. When I have in front of me a scene that moves me, I always try to create the widest variety of pictures I can get. You never know the use you are going to make of that image in the future.
Sometimes the peak was completely hidden, sometimes there were nearly no clouds. The key to this kind of pictures is to have enough clouds in the frame to transmit the sensation of drama and wilderness, but not too many so that they hide completely the peak. The ability to convey what the photographer felt in the moment of pressing the shutter resides in getting a balance between rock and clouds.
[pullquote]After half an hour the package of clouds had passed away. The peak was completely lit. The scene had become a boring postcard. [/pullquote]
In the final frame I selected there are clouds in front of the main face of the peak (on the left of the frame) and behind it (on the right); some parts of the peak are hiding while others are showing. The sharp ridge that climbs directly to the summit, the verticality of the face of the peak and the shapes of the half-hidden pyramid that conform the summit add impact to the picture. Recent snow cover the rock on the right creating a speckled pattern that looks great in black and white.
After half an hour the package of clouds had passed away. The peak was completely lit (the screens of light and shade were not present anymore) and the main face was completely lit against a clear blue sky. The scene had become a boring postcard. It was time to wrap-up my gear and continue hiking looking for more interesting situations to photograph.
I believe that the color versions are nice, but they are not as pleasant as this black and white version.
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Published on 2016/01/12 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
[770 words]
I decided to visit Mission Beach during Sunday. I had been said that surfers and sunbathers usually go there to spend the day. It was June and the beach was full; even Belmont Park with its peculiar Giant Dipper wood Roller Coaster had a lot of life, there was people enjoying their weekend. In addition I found to my surprise that there was a classic car show (I can’t be sure, but I believe they were selling the cars) which added a bit of color to the Park. Something that has always been drawn to my attention is the special relation many Americans do have with cars… they really love them! It sometimes can even a form of idolatry… cars do have a special meaning for many people in the US…
[pullquote]A sensation of depth in an image is achieved when the image is organized in different planes that can be easily scouted by the eye. Each plane has to contain its own elements clearly defined and recognizable that contributes to the general meaning of the photograph.[/pullquote]
I like this picture because it has depth and symbolic meaning (subjects/objects in the picture can be easily related to the city of San Diego and the United States), and they are distributed in a hierarchical way in different planes of the picture.
A sensation of depth in an image is not always easy to get. It is achieved when the image is organized in different planes (usually foreground, mid-plane and background) that can be easily scouted by the eye. Each plane has to contain its own elements clearly defined and recognizable that contributes to the general meaning of the photograph.
I think depth is clearly stated in this picture. The first plane is established by the man who is located in the center of the frame; mid plane by pedestrians and parked bicycles, and the foreground is occupied by the huge Giant Dipper Roller Coaster which frames the scene.
When I saw that the guy with the “Arrogant Bastard Ale” T-shirt turned away I knew there was a picture to take. I set him in the center of the frame, like if he was watching the scene. Needless to say when we have a scene like this in front of us, we photographers don’t think in so many ideas simultaneously. We simply know that “there’s a picture” there, that all the subjects are in “their place” creating a composition. I knew the scene I had in front was one the “pictures” my brain has learned to recognize as scenes that work as a photograph. All the sets of images that work as a photograph conform the mental model all photographers develop during the first years taking photographs.
I can never emphasize enough how important is to develop a mental model seeing the pictures of other photographers, taking your own and comparing them. Trying to see the differences between her pictures and other’s, any beginner is able to see possible improvements that can add to her photography. This is a long process that any photographer who is beginning has to establish as a routine.
[pullquote]When you have in front of you a big guy with an “Arrogant Bastard Ale” T-shirt under a huge old Roller Coaster with a beautifully restored American classic car on his right, you have no choice: you can shoot, shoot or shoot…[/pullquote]
When you have in front of you a big guy with an “Arrogant Bastard Ale” T-shirt under a huge old Roller Coaster with a beautifully restored American classic car on his right, you have no choice: you can shoot, shoot or shoot… it’s just a matter of finding a nice composition. In this case it I had to change the lens to my wide angle, the 24mm, as it allowed the most of the Giant Dippier Roller Coaster to show in the frame. The 20mm would have included more of it, but the foreground would have had too much space and the subjects on it would have been too far away from each other, the image would have lost part of its cohesion. It seemed that the 24mm was the one that gave the best perspective.
When using wide angles, use whenever possible the less extreme one you can. If you can shoot the picture with a 24mm, don’t go for the 20mm unless there’s a compelling reason to do it. The use of wide angles will be a subject of another post...
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]]>[dropcap]Segovia[/dropcap] is a beautiful town not far away from Madrid and is very well known because the Romans built there on the 2nd Century AD an Aqueduct that some people say (do not know if it is true) the biggest Roman construction 100% standing (ok, the Colosseum is bigger, but maybe 40% is on the ground!)
I do not know if this statement is true, anyway it is a stunning monument, and maybe due to its monumental size it is so difficult to photograph… even using an extreme wide angle, you cannot photograph it all, so you have to try to look for other alternatives: a possibility is to focus in only one section that can represent all the construction.
I was in the city working on a reportage about the Jews in the old times of Segovia… ok, the Aqueduct had little to do with the Jews, but anyway wanted to go back home with the best picture I could get about the monument, so begun to explore it from different position and with different light conditions.
During the afternoon some dark clouds had covered the sky. They produced a soft, shadow-less light, usually not very useful for architecture, but although in advance it would have been hard to say, that soft light was going to work for my picture.
Under the monument, in the center you could photograph nothing. All the stones were above me, ‘too near’… and if I went further away the view became the ‘cliche’ picture that all the tourists take back home when they leave the city. It was a too easy and boring composition.
So I decided to take a look from both extremes (or corners) of the monument, which are separated 800m. The look was especially beautiful from one of the extremes using a very long tele-photo lens. So I set my tripod up and mounted the Nikkor 80-200 2.8 AF with a duplicator 2x.
I liked the composition: a repeating pattern of stone textures and arches repeated in a rhythmic way. It was so nice that I decided to give the arches 85% of the space of the frame surface. On the right there was a straight street covered with cobblestone that provided a counterpoint to the arches. It is always better to try to provide a counterpoint because both shapes properties mutually reinforce each other: the repeating arches and the plain cobblestone street.
I liked the composition, but something that gave the viewer a sense of scale was missing, so decided to wait a bit for someone whose shilouette set the scale. In his case it was a woman that went up the street.
Here is an important tip: Ask yourself: “What do I like of this image?” In my case it was the rhythmic repetition of the huge mass of stone, so I gave it nearly all the space in the frame, leaving just the minimum space to the corner and woman, who had a secondary utility to set the scale, and the straight that was a counterpoint to the repetition. If you have something you like in the composition, GIVE IT SPACE. That’s in my opinion the best way to compose a picture.
I could turned right the tripod head, including more of the street and some houses, but it complicated the scene. This is a typical case in which ‘less is more’: if you add too many subjects/objects to the picture, you may dilute your compositional statement.
[pullquote]“What do I like of this image?” In my case it was the rhythmic repetition of the huge mass of stone, so I gave it nearly all the space in the frame, leaving just the minimum space to the corner and woman...[/pullquote]
I had two possibilities where I could focus the camera: the person or the stones on the left. I decided that this was a picture of the Aqueduct so the stones were more important and I focused on them, leaving the pedestrian a bit out of focus.
[dropcap]Just[/dropcap] another note. This picture is very hard to take without a tripod. The combo camera body plus 80-200 2.8 plus duplicator can be around 2 kilograms (4 pounds), too heavy to maintain in horizontal position by hand for a long period of time. In addition, a small movement of your wrist with a 600mm lens produces a huge movement on the composition… that is why I always carry my tripod with me, because I know sooner or later I am going to miss a picture if I do not carry it.
The soft light simplified the scene. With direct sunlight the stone textures would have been emphasized, but
the mixture of lights entering the arches and shadows would have made the picture too complex. Overcast light was ok.
Regarding composition, it clearly does not follow the ‘rule of thirds’. I’d like to ask to all my readers:
Do you believe that using the rule of thirds the picture would be better composed? If so, how could I use it to improve my composition?
Do you have a picture you’ve taken in a similar situation?
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Christmas market in Jungfernstieg, Hamburg, Germany.[/caption]
Published on 2015/12/05 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
A 'Personal Vision' is a way to see the world around us. It is not something we have been born with, but something we have to develop throughout our life. It is a different way to experience our world. A "Photographic Vision" is someting that has to do with a photographic camera; it is about knowing what can be taken as a photograph. An "Artistic Vision" is what allows me to express a feeling with a photograh, no matter if the picture resembles reality (we would call it a 'figurative picture') or not (we would call it a 'non figurative' picture, like the one you see above).
One of the best advances of internet has brought to us is the possibility to know people who share our hobbies or passions. In my case it was clear that these people would be around photography, so it was a pleasant surprise when I discovered the National Geographic had a forum about photography Called “Your Shot”, where you can upload your own pictures and comment them with other photographers. It is a great possibility this wonderful publication has given to us to share our photographic experiences with other people who share our passion for photography. I recommend you to open an account as soon as possible.If I have to answer the question if this picture is something I have seen ‘with my eyes’, I have to say: “No”. If I have to answer if this picture conveys what I saw and felt, I have to answer: “Yes, even more than the static picture I would have shot setting the parameters of my camera at more common values following the rules of the ‘technically correct picture’.”
Gallen Rowell, who is known to have been very critic about digital techniques, wrote in his article ‘Reality, Visions and Photographs’: “I have grown to accept the fact that the borders between real vision and photographic vision can never precisely be defined, but that’s very different from conceding that there are no boundaries. I have given up the battle on the commercial front, where photographers have come to be considered illustrators with limited accountability for content, but I am ready to fight for my beliefs about the need for more integrity across the board in editorial photography.”
Regarding this image I can say that my ‘photographic vision’ allowed me to take it using different parameters on my camera than the ones that would have led me to a more static and usual picture. On the other hand, my ‘personal vision’ will never allow me to see the world this way, I will never be able to state that ‘I saw this image through my eyes’. The ‘Digital Vision’ (which is cousin of the ‘Artistic vision’) is the one that allows me to express a meaning of feeling with Digital Edition Tools applied to photography and/or other process like painting. One of the best examples I have ever seen is this wonderful digital composition by Travis Smith - www.seempieces.com.
Terria CD Cover by Travis Smith - www.seempieces.com. Published with kind permission.
It is clear that this picture have never existed in our world, but in the mind of an artist, but does it have less value as a photograph? I do not think so. Someone may state that it has no value as a proof of existence of its referent, as other photojournalistic works have, but it was simply conceived with other finality. Being National Geographic a source of unbiased information during more than a century I understand the zeal of her staff on protecting the integrity of the submitted photographs to the Forum, but have to say this photograph resides somewhere within the interstices of the guidelines, and those guidelines could be extended to include images that have other values different than their journalistic approach.
Jungsferstieg, Hamburg, Germany. Source: Google Maps.
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE
APERTURE: f22
I closed my lens as much as possible to get the sensation of movement.
ISO: 100
Light intensity was low in a Christmas day in the North of Europe (we were near dusk) and wanted to have a veeeery long exposure, so set my ISO as low as possible.
MODE: S
My main need was to have movement, so went for a low shutter speed.
LENS USED: Nikon 12-24mm AF
Used at 14 mm (21mm on a 35mm size sensor)
I wanted to be show the head in relation with the movement around, so used my Nikon 12-24mm wide angle and tried to locate the camera as near as possible to my subject.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
I wanted to be show the head in relation with the movement around, so used my Nikon 12-24mm wide angle and tried to locate the camera as near as possible to my subject.
Published on 2015/12/01 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
A reportage is a set of well selected and interrelated pictures where each photograph complements the others and create a balanced whole where the subject can be perceived. In fact this photograph is part of a complete reportage about Bergen, but let’s analyze this specific composition. What aspects do I like in this image?
Direct sunlight would have produced too harsh shadows set against painted wood boards reflecting the direct sunlight; the alley would have become an agglomeration of black shadows too difficult to perceive properly. This soft light is much better for a complex composition like this one.
I’d like to add just one more reflection about a technique to add interest to a picture. Human brain perceives photographs in two steps:
I add this statement because a picture like this is better perceived if it is printed in large size because the girl, who is the key to understand the photograph, has to be perceived by the viewer. Once the brain is able to get the key to the picture, all the shapes fall into place.
The girl is size is small compared with the whole image and the contrast with the background is not exaggerated. She is a bit hidden in the lower left corner. This technique of delaying the perception of a key detail of the composition is a way to add interest to a picture.
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/160
There was plenty of light in this morning in Bergen. Measured with the camera using Matrix Mode.
APERTURE: f 2.8
Selective focus was needed to differentiate the subject from the surrounding roofs. The difference in color, white against saturated reds, maroons and yellows, helped me to make the subject stand out, but setting the roofs in the foreground out of focus allowed me to remark the difference even more.
ISO: 100
Selective focus was needed to differentiate the subject from the surrounding roofs. The difference in color, white against saturated reds, maroons and yellows, helped me to make the subject stand out, but setting the roofs in the foreground out of focus allowed me to remark the difference even more.
MODE: A - Aperture Priority
I was shooting with a tele-photo... had I go to close the lens a bit more I'd have increased ISO one or two steps to 200 or 400.
LENS USED: Nikon 80-200 mm at 112mm (168mm on a full format Sensor)
I needed shallow depth of field, so went for 2.8 and cheked if I had enough shutter speed not to get blurred roofs. It was 1/160, maybe a bit tight, but enough to get a sharp picture.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
This picture was shot hand-held. When you're not working in a studio you can just wait for someone to walk around you. Patiente is a valious virtue of any photographer.
EXIF DATA
Shooting Prameters: 1/160 second; f2.8; ISO 100
GEAR LIST:
Camera Body: Nikon D200;
Lens: Nikon 80-200 AF D used at 112 (168MM on 35mm)
Filter: B+W 77mm Skylight 1A Multi Coated (2C) Glass (KR1.5)
Memory Card: Lexar 16Gb
Tripod Legs: Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 3 Sections;
Head: Gitzo G1372M Magnesium Alloy
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Published on 2015/11/10 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
Photography as a medium will always move in the unstable equilibrium among these factors:
Inherent dependency on reality.
Technical limitations, that diminishes as time goes by.
New abilities to express our feelings and emotions through it
When Nicephore Niepce took his giant step, the first photograph, in 1836 had huge limitations. He was not able to render the world with the colors he saw, and had to wait eight hours for the exposure to complete (let us say that his pictures could not be very spontaneous) and the print he made was unique. In addition, his picture is not as defined as he may had wanted to be, but the greatness of his invention was so important that he deserves a place in the Olympus of photography.
The fact is that, for the good and for the bad, these limitations have fallen as the decades have passed and soon afterwards Fox Talbot invented the negative, so the photograph was not unique any more. At the end of XIX century the grain of films improved. The first color slide process, the Kodachrome was in the market in 1935 and it has improved until the 1990’s, being the Fuji Velvia 100 the most prefect film of all.
However, during all the past decades, photographers have always have felt the photograph they took a bit “part of themselves”, sometimes trying to snatch or improve reality if they found it necessary.
You can read on Ansel Adams, 40 Examples (1983), the comments about one of his most famous pictures, Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, 1944, where a horse graze in a pristine valley with the snowed mountains in the background: “The enterprising youth of the Lone Pine High School had climbed the rocky slopes of the Alabama Hills and whitewashed a huge white LP for the world to see. It is a hideous and insulting scar on one of the great vistas of our land, and shows in every photograph made of the area. I ruthlessly removed what I could from the negative and have always spotted out any remaining trace in the print. I have been criticized by some for doing this, but I am not enough of a purist to perpetuate the scar and thereby destroy, for me, at least, the extraordinary beauty and perfection of the scene.”
Some years later, Galen Rowell [www.mountainlight.com], a Nature and Mountain photographer who became famous for his books and column written on Outdoor Photographer Magazine gave his opinion in his articles. Although he used and defended technical advances (you can read the article ‘Around the World, The F4 shakedown’, or ‘A Digital Sky’, page 104. In this last article where he tells us that he had to go to a specialist and pay him some hundred dollars to get a hole burnt in a slide cloned (it was written around 1990), Mr. Rowell closes the article writing these lines: ”Now the ball is on our court to use this handy tool ethically to preserve or enhance what is really in our original photos rather than to create what was never there.””Now the ball is on our court to use this handy tool ethically to preserve or enhance what is really in our original photos rather than to create what was never there.”
Galen Rowell was known to welcome new technical, but not digital, advances that improved his own vision and allowed him to portray the beauty of the world. He used and defended neutral density and polarizing filters, slow shutter speeds to convey motion, flash units, but not changing digitally the color of water or the sky digitally for creative expression. He set his personal limit in what a slide can render using a photographic camera.
It is a limit that protects the integrity of photography as an honest tool to document the world. It is an interesting point of view shared by many photographers. But digital tools are by far more powerful than analogic ones.
Now we photographers have in our hands many more possibilities to change what our camera registers. We have more possibilities to express our feelings about a specific situation and also to lie to our viewers. In my honest opinion it is a matter of personal responsibility, but not only of responsibility photographers, but even more of the people who pays them: owners of big firms who hire the photographers and “photoshoppers” to create advertising campagins.
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/100 seg
Light intensity was low at the end of the day, so measured with the camera at Matrix Mode. Used f11 to have enough depth of field and took some exposures to stitch them together.
APERTURE: f/2.8
I closed my lens a bit to have some depth of field. FOCUS hast ALWAYS to be ON THE EYES... in this case on the glasses, but not too much as I wanted the face to be the main point of importance. With 2.8, only the plane of the front of the face is in focus.
ISO: 100
Don't like digital noise...ISO 100 was a good option to get a clean picture.
MODE: M
This picture is handheld. I was using a I 50mm (a 75mm on a small DX sensor) and needed at least 1/75 to get sharp picture. Going to 1/100 to be sure was ok...
LENS USED: Nikon AF 50mm 1.8
My 50mm, converted into a short tele on my DX sensor camera, allowed me to get a good detail of the sculpture.
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]]>Published on 2015/11/03 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
The inclusion of the other children, the boat and the nets tell me more than if I included only the face of my subject (the child on the left). It tells me he lives in a fisherman village. Sometimes an interesting face or a definite expression is able to carry all the weight of the picture, but that is not always the case. In these cases the portrait you are taking, will be more expressive if you include some of the environment of your subject.
You nearly need a magnifying glass to find Malawi in a World Map. It is small, long and narrow, and if you do not notice that there is a blue stain in the middle-East part of Africa called ‘Lake Malawi’, it is difficult that you may find out that there is a country with the same name.
Not so long ago it was part of a region called Rhodesia, and today it is a beautiful holidays location, a must-stop for all the tourists who are travelling across the southern part of the Black Continent a typical holiday location where South Africans go.
This environmental portrait was taken in Cape Mclear, a small fishing village located in the shore of Lake Malawi. Although there are some small guest houses and camps for tourists, the local fisherman ambient is still intact and the flavor of Africa can still be tasted… at least at the moment I took this picture. The number of tourists is still not big and you still have to travel to the village in a crammed pick-up full of locals. It is not the most comfortable way of travelling, but it reminds you that you are in Africa outside the main tourist routes.
Every morning at sunrise you can see dozens of small boats (hollowed out hand-made tree trunks) going to fish to the Lake. Most male population of Cape Mclear get some hundreds of meters in the Lake with nets and fishing lines to get the capture of the day while women and boys and girls stay in town repairing nets and doing other works.
When I shot this picture the day was cloudy and the light was overcast, which produced a very soft light with soft shadows, wonderful for any portrait. This soft but directional light produces shadow-less but rounded faces, with a wide tonal range that looks great in a photograph.
Soft but directional light of cloudy days produces shadow-less but rounded faces, with a wide tonal range that looks great in any portrait.
This picture was taken in the afternoon when I was walking on the shore, when I found this group of three children on the boat. I asked permit to photograph them and they agreed without saying many words, so I changed the lens on my camera; I cannot be sure, but I believe this picture has been taken with a Nikkor 24mm AF-D.
I had studied the scene from the distance before asking permit and when I got near them I began to think about what I wanted to show in this portrait. I wanted to include what they were doing (that is why this kind of picture is called an environmental portrait) so the nets and a bit of the boat should appear in the final composition. A wide-angle seemed to be the choice, but which one?
The deformation is more noticeable if you’re portraying persons as human brain recognizes human body relations and is able to recognize even the minimum deviation. If you’re shooting landscapes you have more room to play.
To choose the lens you have to balance two aspects:
The wider the lens (the smaller the focal length), the more of the environment you will be able to include around your subject.
The wider the lens, the bigger the wide angle deformation (not to be confused with wide angle distortion) you will get. Every wide angle moves every object away from the lens in an amount proportional to the distance it is located from the camera. Distant objects are taken away more than nearer ones, which produces a deformation compared with the scene we see with our eyes. With a wide angle we get a perspective se simply cannot see with our eyes, but we pay the price of deforming the scene... a small price to pay.
This deformation is more noticeable if you’re portraying persons as human brain recognizes human body relations and is able to recognize even the minimum deviation. If you’re shooting landscapes you have more room to play.
The typical options are the 35mm, the 24mm and sometimes the 20mm. The 35mm is usually the best option for this kind of portraits as it is wide enough to include the environment around the subject and does not produce much deformation. In my case it was not wide enough, so had to go for the 24mm, which is the farthest I would go in any portrait under normal circumstances. With a 20mm distortion is simply too big; it is rarely the best option, but remember that in photography there are no absolutes!
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/60
My subjects were very static, so did not have to use a high shutter speed, investing those points of light in depth of field. I liked the children on the left to be in focus, but also the nets in the foreground were important for me as they talk about what the children were doing. 1/30 could also have worked, but with this speed some movement of the children could have been registered.
APERTURE: f8
I was using a wide angle lens which gave me plenty of depth of field. On the other hand, my subjects were very near the camera, which reduced it. I could have used an ISO 400 film, but the colors would have been very poor and the image would have had more grain. f8 and 1/60 seemed to be a good balance point.
ISO: 50 - Fuji Velvia 50
This image would have gained nothing with noise... so used ISO 50 film. The saturated colors of a Velvia 50 were unsurpassable.
MODE: A - Aperture Priority
The easiest way to work: set your aperture and look if the speed works for you.
LENS USED: Nikon 24mm AF 2.8
Using a wide angle lens and including parts of the body of one of the children allowed me to convey a sense to the viewer that 'he is inside' the picture and also allowed me to increase the sense of depth in the composition.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
I had plenty of time to think about how I was going to shoot this image. Even before I got in contact with the children, I was thinking how I was going to photograph them and set the parameters (shutter speed, aperture) even before I talked with them. The best results in photography come when you have time to think your picture. Fast photography is, most of the times, a lotto.
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To be continued on Four tips to improve the Composition of your Environmental Portraits on this same series.
]]>Published on 2015/10/27 - Text and Pictures by Alberto Mateo, Travel Photographer for The Last Footprint.
Imagine you are in Piazza di San Marco in the always beautiful Venice, one of the most photographed places on Earth. No matter what season or part of the day you are, is it possible to imagine more cameras per square meter in a different Square of the planet?
You have the Bassilica di San Marco on the left. The Palazzo Ducale and the columns of the Lion and San Marco in front of you, the Campanille (Bell Tower) on your right. Hundreds of doves fly around your head while the violins of the terrace of Cafe Florian play Vivaldi in the distance. You can see that the biggest army of tourists the Christianity has ever seen surrounds you. They are doing selfies, feeding the doves, photographing themselves and all the monuments and buildings in the Square.
You think to yourself that you would like to take an enviromental portrait showing people and those spectacular ancient sorroundings. Portrait photography is one of your main prioirites in your trip.
Why don’t you get frightened if you know you are in the viewfinder of many cameras, mobiles and tablets of dozens of people who are photographing in the Piazza? Why don’t you get nervous, even furious, because you are going to appear in the pictures of people who maybe the next day are going to fly back home to Shangai, Toronto or Sao Paulo? Your brain doesn’t send a message to your guard to be up.
Now let us imagine other situation. Imagine it is Sunday, early in the morning, and you walk alone in an empty street in a big city downtown. Everybody still is sleeping, you can hear your footsteps.
You see a person walking towards you at the other extreme of the street. You don’t know her intentions but, why do you get nervous? If you heard her steps behind, you would manage to take a fast and nervous look back: “who is walking behind me?” You get ready to run away if needed. Your brain is sending alarm messages to your consciousness.
Now imagine that, when you are going to cross the other person, he shoots you a photograph ‘in your face’… uh! Your normal reaction would be getting really wary, even frightened!
The Circle of Personal Space can be defined as the sphere around you where you allow unknown people to enter and, maybe, photograph you.
What is the difference between the two situations? It is what is called the Circle of Personal Space, which is a measure of the sense of alarm you feel in a specific situation depending on the people you have around. The Circle of Personal Space can be defined as the sphere around you where you allow unknown people to enter and, maybe, photograph you. Each person has her own Circle and is always in the center. The Radio varies with the situation that person is immersed in, and this Radio is the key for the photographer to get a picture shot from ‘inside the action’ or a distant one.
This psychological Circle might be the result of hundreds of years of evolution, reminiscences of a time when we were hunters… or preys, when we had to have a sense of alarm to protect ourselves from predators.
In a place full of people like a County Fair or Piazza San Marco, you feel safe and stop being alert. Your Circle of Personal Space is big, you allow people to be near you and, in some situations, even photograph you without paying attention. In an empty street of a big city your Personal Circle is small, and if the city is dangerous or unknown, even smaller. You will not allow strangers to get near you without noticing a sense of alarm.
As a photographer you are in the other position: you are the stranger who is ‘haunting’ pictures. If you are shooting street scenes, you have to try to anticipate that circle of the persons you want to photograph and the possible consequences of shooting them.
If you are shooting street scenes, you have to try to anticipate that circle of the persons you want to photograph and the possible consequences of shooting them.
This Radius of this Circle depends on the Personal Experiences of the subject, in the place where she lives (in big cities it’s usually smaller), in cultural aspects (do her religion or society tolerates pictures?) or in personal aspects (is he a wary or trustful person?)
Did I ask a group of young students of photography what photography is about, they would tell me that photography has to do with shutter speeds, f numbers, ISO’s, Megapixels, RAW files… but I can bet that they would never say that it is about PSYCHOLOGY.
Sooner or later you will be photographing human beings who think, relate each other, who have fears and wishes, and your final aim as a photographer is to reflect not only the skin cover we all can see in a person, but also those inner feelings that get reflected in any portrait photograph.
Have you ever had an unpleasant or funny experience shooting pictures?
Have you experienced yourself the Cirle of Personal Space of any of your subjects? Have yoy photographed in Street Carnivals?
NOTE: On the next Post I of this series will examine two different situations with two persons with different Personal Circle.
TECHNICAL DATA OF THE PUBLISHED IMAGE
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/250
I needed to 'freeze' their movement. 1/125 would have been enough, but 1/250 was better to be sure no motion blur was going to be registered.
APERTURE: f5
I was using Shutter Speed priority program and the aperture fell at f5.
ISO: 100
This image would have gained nothing with noise... so set the aperture to ISO 100. ISO 200 or 400 would also have worked.
MODE: S
I had to freeze the movement, and everyone was moving fast during that Carnival day. Anything faster than 1/125 would have worked.
LENS USED: Nikon 12-24mm AF at 16mm (24mm in Full Frame Format)
This type of events are better photographed 'from inside', with a wide angle, than 'from far away', with a tele. A wide angle gives the viewer a sense of being inside the scene.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
This is a 'fast' picture; I did not have much time to think about how to take it. My priority was to try to freeze the movement so chose a relatively fast speed, 1/250, and allowed the aperture fall wherever it fell, which was f5, enough to get some depth of field with the wide angle I was using.Have you liked this post? If so you can SUBSCRIBE to The Last Footprint to receive the last updates, learn photography and get travel tips. It is FREE and you can unsubscribe whenever you want.
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