Tips and Techniques | Photocrati

The Tuesday Composition: Avoid the Middle, Man.

Virga over the Straits of Magellan: The sky was more interesting than the water, so I used a lot more sky than water. Sometimes it's that simple. — Virga over the Straits of Magellan. The sky was more interesting than the water, so I used a lot more sky than water. Sometimes it's that simple.

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

Last week we talked about working the edges of your photographs. This week, I thought we’d start taking about where we place objects in an image; I like Geir Jordahl’s metaphor of choreography. By moving around, by pointing the camera in different directions, by choosing a framing and focal length and orientation of our shot, we’re including and excluding objects from our image, changing their size and shape and moving them around within our image. While we do not have (outside of Photoshop) unlimited flexibility to rearrange our images this way, we do have quite a number of controls over where we place in our images. So, where should we put them? Where will they look best? (more…)

The Days Inn Diffuser

Let me start off by saying that I don’t necessarily condone this sort of behavior–being the good Catholic boy that I am, I was riddled with guilt afterward, but I need to set up my scenario so hopefully you’ll see my point. Here’s what happened. I had a shoot in North Carolina to cover something that I have always wanted to experience: a soldier’s return home from deployment. I was asked to cover a squadron of Marines returning home after spending nine months in Iraq and I immediately said yes. I flew into Raleigh-Durham the day before and then proceeded to drive almost three hours to my hotel (which was NOT a Days Inn) just wanted to clarify that. When you’ve been flying and driving all day the hotel is always a welcome sight “¦ sometimes.

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The Tuesday Composition: Working your Borders

The edges of your image (the borders, not the edges within your image), play several important roles in composition.

Puffin and Distraction, Iceland — Puffin and Distraction. Iceland. Don't do this! (Or at least, crop the distracting bit of bird, right.)

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

First, it’s easy for distractions along the border of an image to pull the eye “out’ of the image, and thus, they are usually undesirable. Highlights near the edges can be a particular problem. Edge distractions are best noticed and corrected for in-camera. One of the firm habits I have when doing landscape photography is taking a moment before shooting to glance around the edges of a photograph looking for distractions. If I find them, often only a very minor adjustment in camera angle or position is necessary to move the distractions off-stage. (more…)

Wedding Photography: Death of the Formal Portrait?

Oh Formal Wedding Portrait, we hardly knew ye.

It seems that lately I am beginning to see more wedding photographers who are “photojournalist only” or “natural light.” I don’t want to get into a debate about the merits of these specialties as I’m a big believer that whatever works for you and your clients is great. Everyone doesn’t have to do it the same way. In fact, it’s a good thing we don’t because then wedding photographers would be like gas stations: Whoever has the lowest price gets the business.

That being said, it still seems like we are starting to move towards a complete elimination of the “formal” wedding portrait. I know for a fact that many photographers hate to shoot them and some flat refuse to. I don’t understand that mentality. (more…)

Introduction to Death Valley: Part 3, “And the rest…”

Shafts, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California — Shafts, Zabriskie Point. Death Valley National Park, California. Usually I think of Zabriskie as a morning shot, but afternoon works here.

In this last installment of my introduction to Death Valley, I’ll touch on a few more locations for first-time visitors to Death Valley.

(If you haven’t seen them yet, check out part one and part two.)

Zabriskie Point

One of the classic photographic locations of Death Valley is Zabriskie Point, located just up the road from Furnace Creek. Erosion has carved up these layered, multicolored hills into strangely folded patterns. The main viewpoint overlooks this folded landscape and marks the beginning of trails which descend down into it. I’ve most often photographed Zabriskie in the early morning, the area does not get first light until a half-hour or more after nominal sunrise, but there are things to shoot here all day. (more…)

The Tuesday Composition: Areas of Low Contrast, Negative Space

Tree Ballet, Mono Basin, California — Tree Ballet. Mono Basin, California

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

Last week we discussed areas of high contrast, this week we’re going to turn around and say a few words about low contrast areas and how they contribute in a composition.

At least one of these effects shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you read last week’s column. If our eye tends to gravitate over time towards the high-contrast parts of a composition, then it more or less equally gravitates away from the low-contrast areas of the image. I won’t dwell on this aspect of it, if you want a nice, simple example start with the tree at the head of last week’s column and notice that the valley walls don’t pull your eye the way the tree does.

But as much as that’s true in last week’s tree, it is even more true for Tree Ballet. Save for three small areas of the image (the bare trees and a couple patches of dead grasses) Tree Ballet has no real detail or contrast whatsoever. Whereas the small amount of detail in the valley walls in Morning by the Merced will occasionally pull your eye in to look at what detail is present, the complete lack of sharp detail in Tree Ballet does not. We say that most of this image consists of “negative space”. “Negative space” is the art term for space around the subject of an image. The large area of this image devoted to negative space is important to this image, it emphasizes the cold, isolating fog. (more…)

Essaouira Report: The Gnaoua (Gnawa) Music Festival

I recently returned from the coastal little town of Essaouira in Morocco, where the world-renowned 12th Festival of Gnaoua Music took place from June 25 to 28. This is an annual event, religiously attended by fans of international and African music since it’s the venue of many world-class musical groups, generally from Africa, Europe and the Americas. To me, the attraction was to photograph the exotic Gnaoua musicians during their performances, as I had heard they had small–almost private–seances in various parts of the little medina in the very heart of Essaouira.

Gnaoua (sometimes also spelled Gnawa) music is a mixture of sub-Saharan African, Berber, and Arabic Islamic religious songs and rhythms, and it combines music and acrobatic dancing. Aurally and historically, its main influence is traced back to sub-Saharan Africa, but its current practice is concentrated in north Africa, mainly Morocco and Algeria. However, I have discerned similarities between Gnaoua music and folk songs from Sudan, so perhaps its influence extends even further. (more…)

Introduction to Death Valley: Part 2, Geographic Extremes

Capoeira Storm, Badwater, Death Valley — Capoeira Storm. Badwater, Death Valley

Death Valley is a land of extremes. In part one of this series, we talked about its vastness and extreme temperatures. But another way in which Death Valley really “takes geography to eleven” is in elevation. Death Valley’s low point, Badwater, is nearly three hundred feet below sea level but is located almost directly between Dante’s View (over a mile “up” on the near canyon wall) and Telescope Peak, just across the valley at over eleven thousand feet above sea level.

Both the highs and the lows have much to offer photographers. (more…)

The Super Wide Portrait

Want to have some fun next time you’re shooting environmental portraits? Then think wide! Just when you are about to pack up that gear and call it a wrap, pull out that super wide angle lens and try something different.

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Introduction to Death Valley: Part I, the Sand Dunes

Dunes Photographers. Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is both a famous and challenging place to photograph. A desert, Death Valley is one of the hottest locations in the world with recorded temperatures as high as 134 °F. It also usually features dessicatingly low humidity and a nearly universal lack of shade. The Valley is enormous, over one hundred miles and thirty miles long, often leaving you shooting a long distance from wherever you’ll be sleeping.

And yet I keep going back. There’s just too many great photographic opportunities there, and even this brief (two or three part) introduction will only give a short taste of what’s available.

Let’s start with sand dunes.

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