Get there early and reap the rewards…

A week ago, the day before Christmas Eve, I was in Wales visiting relatives. The plan was to spend the saturday just visiting and use the sunday for a photographic mission to the Gower Peninsular - where I grew up as a boy.

All through the previous day and into the night, the rain had been scything down and all the rivers were in full flood, so it wasn't looking good for the following morning. I decided to set an alarm anyway and as luck would have it - the rain stopped during the night and the skies were clearing. I'd pre-decided to visit Three Cliffs bay - one of my all time favourites - and headed off in the dark.

Many people wouldn't think to visit the beaches in winter, but I've always preferred the wilder coastal spots over the more popular holiday spots, so as the days get shorter, I have more of the beach to myself! The bay I'd chosen, isn't all that accessible and you have to walk for a couple of miles to get to it, so it's usually fairly empty, even in July. When I finally got there, there was just me and a foraging fox - and he took off as soon as he saw me. As the sun slowly rose, I had a great couple of hours shooting - the sky was still heavy with water and the sea was in full rage at high tide - much more dramatic than it's calm summer persona.

I've added one of my favourite shots from the day above. I took this using a new Nikkor 10-24mm wide angle zoom that I bought recently (It's a really great wide angle lense - if you're a Nikkon user and looking for one, I am really pleased with the results it gives). This shot was taken using an ND8 neutral density soft grad to balance the sky and get more cloud definition and I blended 2 exposures in photoshop to get the final image.

There are more images posted on my google + page - if you're interested, have a look, I'd value your feedback!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103320240261166592824/posts

I urge you to give a winter dawn shoot a go - you'll have a great time and due to the light and weather, the results are often much more theatrical, offering great picture opportunities. If you plan properly in advance, you'll have a great days shooting - here are a couple of quick tips to make the day run smoothly:

• Check and pack your equipment the night before and then leave it all by the front door 

• Make sure your footwear and winter clothing are suitable - nothing ruins a day faster than being cold and miserable and this is so easily avoided by preparing better.

• Take plenty of batteries and memory.

• Allow plenty of time to get to your destination, park up and hike out to your chosen spot - ideally you want to be there with your gear set up as the first colour creeps into the sky so you can make the most of it.

• Pick a place you want to shoot - and stick with it. Planning ahead makes your chances of success that much better, so pre-visiting a site is a good way to work out where you'll need to be when the sun rises.

• If you're going to a new spot that you haven't visited before, get a good map (Ordinance Survey in the UK) and a compass. This way you can get a good idea which way the sun is going to travel across the area. You don't want to be rocking up to a site in the pre-dawn only to find that the shot you were planning only looks good at sunset! 

Finally - as the days are so short, dawn is at 8.00 am and sunset at 4.00 pm, so you don't even need to get up really early or stay out late! What are you waiting for - get out there and start snapping!

 

If you're enjoying these posts, why not leave me some feedback - I'd like to hear from you - and why not click to follow.  Good shooting!

Essential Kit No. 4…

LED Head Torch – safety first - safety second!

One of the great hidden truths about taking landscape images is that - to get the stunning view, you will need to walk, sometimes a couple of hours over rough terrain. I came to photography through a love of the outdoors, so the mountain and hiking aspect comes as no surprise to me, but in all the magazines and books I've read on the subject - very few mention that you are likely to need to equip yourself to be safe and comfortable in the middle of nowhere!

 

Writers always stress the importance of the "golden" hours at dawn and dusk - when the light quality is at it's best, throwing long soft shadows and putting the maximum colour and drama into the sky. If you've ever looked at an image of a stunning winter mountain sunset or beautiful summit sunrise, the question that most people aren't asking is - "how the hell did that guy get down from there in the dark"?

In order to get the most out of a sunset, you will have to stay there until the sun is right the way down and that means either staying put on some summit until dawn or retreating back to the car. Similarly, if you want to shoot sunrise from the summit of Ben Nevis, you will have to climb it in the dark first. It's a basic fact that nobody wants to talk up in between the glorious vistas!

A few years ago, I was out walking with my brother on Great Moss in the Lake District. We'd started late, but it was October so the days were still fairly long. We set out to bag Scafell Pike. After getting to the summit, we headed straight back down without a problem, but as the light dropped we lost the trail and even though we were near it, never found it again. I had packed snaplights and I knew where we were on the map, where the car was and we had a compass. After a brief man tantrum from my sibling, we set about walking on a due south compass bearing holding a snaplight each over our heads, falling over every 3 paces. Much effing and jeffing ensued! We walked though chest high ferns, had to cross 3 rivers and it took 4 hours, but we did navigate right to the car! My brother had left his rag well behind by this time and now he never goes anywhere that isn't paved. I, on the other hand, took this as a lesson hard learned and went right out to buy a head torch! I've been back several times in the daylight and there are so many ravines and waterfalls where we were, it's amazing we didn't die (more than once I did consider killing him when the whining got too much)

So - with this in mind - my essential kit this posting is a good head torch.
I've had 4 or 5 over the years, of various designs and there are several things to look out for when selecting one:

• Look for one with a fully adjustable strap, preferably with a centre strap that goes over the top of the head. The elastic will sag over time and without this, keeping the lamp in place is impossible.

• Go for an LED torch over a standard bulb or halogen. These have become widely available more recently and they offer a better light for less money and the battery life is far better. Nobody wants their lamp to go out half way home (done that, got the T-shirt then used that T-shirt as a bandage!)

• Carry spare batteries! 

• Look for some adjustability so the lamp can be pointed where it's needed.

• Many lamps now come with several bulbs in the array so you can run them brighter when needed or dimmer when you want to save the juice.

• Water is the great killer of head torches. I've used cheap versions and expensive waterproof ones and these days I wouldn't pay over £10. If your cheap torch dies - get another cheap one. I used to own a top of the range Petzel waterproof torch, which was great, but had some drawbacks. The battery pack on the back of the head weighed a ton and as it was pre-LED, the light wasn't great either. In the end the elastic perished way sooner that the torch, rendering it useless anyway. My advice is to buy a good light weight cheap torch and if it rains, run it from under your hood. 

Finally, a head torch will come into it's own while you're setting up your camera in the dark or packing away your gear and unlike a regular torch, it's hands free so you won't have to jam a regular torch in your mouth to see what you're doing - good-times!

I recently spent a morning shooting on a beach (more of this in the next posting) and had to walk 40 minutes along cliffs and then descend to the beach in the dark - but with my torch on, everything went to plan perfectly and I was on the sand and set up as the sun came up - the beach was deserted apart from a single fox.

If you're planning an early or late trip into the countryside, get ahead - get a head torch!
Nothing puts a dampener on the day like a depressed dish fracture of the skull.

Get creative - Fun with filters!

One of the best creative additions you can use with your landscape photography, after getting a good wide angle lens, is a range of filters. If you want to get more colour and drama into your skies, or achieve unusual striking effects, filters will open a whole world of possibilities.

 

There are hundreds of filter effects available for digital and traditional photography. The only limit (apart from the cost) is your imagination! I'll briefly run through the most commonly used filter types and their effects:

Polarising filter

This is probably the most used filter in my bag and will have the biggest impact on your shots. These filters work like polaroid sunglasses, filtering out a section of light from the spectrum and the effects are the same. Skies really pop with a polarising filter fitted and have much more colour with far greater depth to the cloud formations. Also, you can reduce reflections on water.

Once fitted the filters are used by rotating them on the end of the lens until you get the effect you desire. They filter light a bit like a venetian blind, so by spinning the filter round they will filter more or less light, and your image effect will alter significantly. If you only buy one filter - this is the one. There are linear and circular polariser versions available so I'd advise you go for the circular type.

Neutral Density filters

These are designed to cut down the light that enters your camera aperture without adding a colour cast to your image. Again, like sunglasses, they allow certain effects in full light and are available at various strengths as either graduated or full tint versions.

These are used for two main reasons. By adding an ND graduation filter, you can balance your exposures so the skies are not blown out and the foreground too dark. They also add more definition to your skies, although there's no colour boost.

By adding a solid tint ND filter, you can cut down the light entering the lens, and lengthen your exposure time without waiting for less light. This offers all sorts of creative options with moving subjects, typically moving water and seas, or fast moving clouds, giving that ghostly blurred look that's currently fashionable.

UV filters

I've read a lot of conflicting advice on the use of these. Many people advocate adding one on every lens you have as a lens front protector. I bought one and never use it - the effect on your images are negligible and the security offered is minor.

Coloured filters

There are endless coloured filters available to allow you to add a colour effect to your images. I have a couple buy I tend not to use them as I'm not a fan of the unrealistic effects. Probably the most useful would be a tobacco gradient that you can use for sunsets.

Infra Red filters

These work by cutting out the visible and UV portions of white light just allowing the Infra red wavelengths in and can create some beautiful monotone and false colour effects. Green plants appear bright white while the skies go black and really throw out the clouds.

Effects filters

There are a massive range of effects filters available: Star burst filters, soft focus, lens flare, the choice is vast, Many are more suited to other subjects that landscapes but are a great experimental aid.



There are two main routes do go, when considering a filter for your lens:

Screw in filters

 

 

 

 

 

These are round filters that, as the name implies, attach to your lens front by the screw thread. They are easy to use, simple to fit and probably the easiest way to start using filters with your camera.
There are a couple of down sides with screw in filters however. If you buy any graduated Neutral density (more about these later) or coloured filters, the horizon line where the graduation ends will typically be in the middle of the filter - so, as you'll need to place this on the horizon line - it will impact badly on composition. I bought a few and found them severely limiting.

Also you're pretty much  constrained to using one filter at a time, so using a polariser in combination with an ND grad is not an option.

I have however used a screw in polariser quite extensively and for me this has been the most useful screw in filter for shooting outside, hand held - unobtrusive and easy to dial in.

Finally, not all lenses have the same diameter across the front of the casing, so you will end up buying filters for each lens you need to use - not a big deal, but worth remembering.

Slide in filter systems

 

 

These are much better solutions for landscape filter use, and once you get the hang of using them, can offer endless options to fine tune your final image. Typically, the system will use an  adapter ring screwed to the lens front, that carries the slot in filter holder. Then, the rectangular resin filters slot into the holder guides and can be rotated, or moved up and down to suit.

I find this to be a far more flexible system, allowing more than one filter to be used at any angle or position - the sky's the limit. The only down side here is the systems do look daunting to the beginner at first and you will end up hauling about more gear. You can buy all the individual adapter plates to suit all common lens sizes, so switching the filters to another lens is cheap and easy - often, you can buy the holder systems with a full range of adapter plates.

To finish - you can get all the filters above at wildly varying prices - just look on ebay and you'll see that a single filter can vary in price from £1 to £50 for what appears to be the same thing essentially. The market is flooded with cheap Chinese filters and while these offer the option to experiment without breaking the bank, the quality can't be guaranteed. you can however, buy a whole bunch of cheap filters and experiment with them without costing the earth - find what you like and what works for you, then buy better quality later as you improve.

If image quality is critical, I'd always advise buying from a respected well known manufacturer, so for screw in filters, you can't go far wrong with Hoya and for slide in systems Cokin and Lee's filters are both excellent quality with Lee's having the reputation for pro quality (and higher price).

For the sake of budget, I've gone with a Cokin P filter system and I'll be posting a couple more entries about my experience with this going forward.

Look out for a couple of entries over the Christmas break - I'll be making a few trips out and I have some projects lined up indoors. Hope you enjoy the holidays and get some great festive shots!

If you're enjoying these posts, why not leave me some feedback or click to follow - I'd love to hear from you!

 

Put you on it - Gary McParland

I just discovered Gary's beautiful work while trolling the interwebs for inspiration, and I am now fully charged up to 11!…

 © Gary McParland

Gary McParland is an Irish fine art landscape photographer based in County Armagh and his exquisite landscape images really capture the essence of the celtic fringes of our islands. 

Gary's website url is: www.garymcparland.com
If you have some time, treat yourself to his fantastic gallery - it really is a treat.

Essential Kit No. 3…

Essential Kit No. 3 - a robust memory card holder

Ever wonder what you'd do if you lost the SD card that you'd just spent all day filling? Those opportunities are probably not going to be there again very soon, if at all! Also, nobody wants to drive three hours and hike for another two, only to find they've forgotten to pack empty cards – so it's a good idea to make some kind of special effort to protect your SD cards and manage a selection of them ready for use.

As a digital photographer, your cards are as precious as a traditional photographer's exposed and un-exposed film rolls and they really need to be treated in the same way. They need to be kept clean and secure, not rattling about in the bottom of your bag, in a pocket, stuck to a fluff covered toffee or ground into powder by loose change. Also, they really need to be dry, as moisture will destroy them and then you'll be putting something contaminated into your camera body, so this is one area where you can't be too anal-retentive!

Also, SD cards are relatively fragile in use and can fail at any time leaving you with nothing, so getting into the habit of rotating several cards in and out of use is a good practice to foster so you avoid an "all the eggs in one basket" catastrophic failure. Ideally you want to have a few cards to spread the risk of loosing one to file corruption, so buying several smaller cards (4 or 8mb) is better than one 32mb card in this respect and they're way cheaper as well.

I've bought this 8 slot carrier and have found it to be ideal. I bought it on Amazon - there were plenty of alternative brand options available and it was only £7.50… 

Like all great products that just work without any fanfare, I've been using this for a couple of months and forgotten that it's there - but I'd really miss it if it was gone.

There are several designs available from a load of manufacturers, hard shell and soft wallet types. I think the hard shell design has the edge as it prevents crushing and some are even water resistant or lockable for added security.

 

They're available with a variety of capacities - I plumped for 8 bays but you can get more or less. I liked the "Samsonite" look of the thing and it will accommodate 3 different card formats, which is nice.

As part of my personal routine, I tend to keep my empty cards in the case and put them into individual plastic holders when they're full, but you could just move the cards from one side to the other when they're full for the same affect.

So, in conclusion - a cheap but really useful product for looking after your precious cards - does it's thing inconspicuously without costing the earth - why haven't you bought one already? 

4 seasons in one day…

…well actually, in two! About 2 months ago now, I set out for a planned shoot in Snowdonia (for non UK residents, that the mountainous north east region of Wales), the scenery is majestic and I'd just bought some ND filters that I was itching to try out on some moving water.

As I work full time, I have to plan in any extended days shooting well in advance, so when I heard the weather forecast and saw the massive low swirling just off Ireland, I was concerned! Not to worry, said the BBC weather monkey - no rain until sunday, late afternoon. Perfect, thinks I - leave early - arrive in-country at 10.00 am saturday shoot all day on the slopes of Tryfan - camp overnight - get up early and catch the dawn for another great day clicking away - drive back before the rain. I'd be in and out like the SAS right?

Well - didn't quite work out that way! 

Day one went to plan. Tryfan, for those who have yet to go, is a beautiful mountain and - unusually for Wales and England - sits on it's own, so you can frame it perfectly against a dramatic sky. I found a great position where I could catch fast moving water and Tryfan in the background - the sky was full of interest and I had a great couple of hours experimenting with long exposures – I even managed to not drop anything in the river, of destroy my equipment! All was good. The shot above was the most successful of that batch of exposures and it's my personal favourite from the trip - hope you like it. If you go to my google plus page you can see the colour version, but I think the mono version has the edge.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103320240261166592824/posts

As the evening drew on, the light was dramatic, with shafts of gold breaking through the building cloud cover and I got some really atmospheric gems. Now, the secret to getting great colour into the sky is to make the most of the low dawn and dusk sun, so if you're away from home in the middle of nowhere, that means an overnight stay. The weather was still fairly warm  - it had even been sunny most of the day - so I had planned to camp in a farm at the foot of the mountain. Them I could set an alarm, get up in the dark and deploy for the glorious dawn I was expecting. I ate my lonely dinner, got into my bag and hunkered down with my i-pod for the night - what can go wrong!

This was where the wheels came off the agenda! That night, not only was it "brass monkey" cold in my tiny one man tent - the wind built to the point where it was actually blowing under the tent with me in it. I put on all my clothes and hoped the tent pegs wouldn't let go. The rain thrashed down for a solid 8 hours and when I finally struggled out at dawn, the cloud was about 15 feet from the ground - I couldn't see the mountain - I couldn't see my car! It was a wash out, literally!

I paid the farmer - possibly the most miserable man in Wales - £5 for the privilege of laying in his mud and packed up my sodden camp in the refreshing 45 degree rain - got in the car and got the f*** out of Dodge - there was no chance of any more shooting and you've never seen two more different days. I drove off to find a full english. And this is the point of my tale - sometimes the random factor that you just can't allow for, will destroy your best laid plans! The weather man sometimes gets things 24 hours out of whack and all we can do is be as prepared as we can, take our opportunities where we can and with some luck, bag a couple of great images!

Over the next couple of post I'll be looking at filters and how they can be used to add some great dramatic enhancement to your landscape shots. I'll put up another "put you on it" and "essential kit" and I have a top ten tips posting planned so you can make the most of your outdoor shoots and plan for success!

Just make sure to check the weather first!

If you're enjoying these posts, why not leave me some feedback - I'd like to hear from you - and why not click to follow.  Good shooting!

Put you on it – Bae Bien-U

I stumbled onto a link for this site a couple of weeks ago and wanted to share it with you - it's a real treat.

© Bae Bien-U

Bae Bien-U is a Professor of photography at Seoul Institute of the Arts, Korea. His online portfolio is filled with beautiful, dream-like mono imagery that I would urge you to check out - you will not be disappointed!

http://bbuart.com/

Essential Kit No. 2…

Essential Kit No. 2 – Lens Blower

Dust is the ultimate nemesis of the photographer (that and zombies) and cameras have a knack of attracting all manner of dust, grit and crud, which eventually will compromise the quality of your images, so it's a good idea to get in some cleaning products early on.

The best way to expel dust from your equipment is with  a controlled air source to blast it away and there are plenty of great products on the market for just this purpose.


I bought one of those classic "grey puffer with a brush on the end" things to start with and set too with great zeal, but the shortcomings of this kind of design were quickly all too obvious.

First off, the brush section came off the bulb every time I used it - very annoying. Also, the amount of air it moved was minimal. Finally, the brush shed bristles so badly, I was actively making my camera dirtier!

Don't buy one of these - they are almost manufactured to disappoint!

The key to moving dust is the amount of air delivered - the bigger the puff, the more chance of blasting everything out. I found loads of options online and plumped for this:

Giottos GTAA1900 Rocket Air Blower - Black - £7.93

 

It retails (from Amazon) at a reasonable £7.93 and does basically exactly what you'd expect - it's a full fist sized rubber bulb with a nozzle attached. Each squeeze moves a big volume of air and the long nozzle means you can get inside your camera body and blast out all the lurking crud buildup. There's no brush, but you'd be far better off going to a DIY barn and buying a small good quality 1" paint brush and using that on the outside of the camera and lens. Never be tempted to put your fingers in there or touch the sensor as you will do more damage than good that way, guaranteed. If the camera sensor is dirty - take it to a reputable camera shop and get it professionally cleaned. From what I've read - most people advise this about once a year - I've not had to deal with that yet.

In use, I've found this to be an excellent tool - I usually give everything the once over when I'm packing my bag and it's great to just blast over filters before putting them on. Best of all, unlike the aerosol "keyboard air" type cans - it'll never run out!

There are plenty of alternatives out there too - here are a few:

Buyincoins Rubber Air Blower Pump Dust Cleaner £1.19

Giottos GTCL2810 Q.Ball Angleable Air Blower - Black £7.12

Hama 5610 Bellows Blower 55mm Diameter Bulb  £6.74


All prices are from Amazon.co.uk


They all look just as good - judging from the price I'm guessing the Buyincoins pump is smaller than the others - I went for the fancy shape, it's the big kid in me!
An added bonus with these puffers is blasting them on the back of people's necks when they least expect it - fun for all the family!

So there we go - keep the dust at bay and that's one less thing to worry about!

 

Essential Kit No.1…

I'm going to post periodic reviews or recommendations on items of kit and equipment that I think are useful, well designed or just plain useful. This won't always cover camera equipment and as I'm mostly interested in landscape photography, could well cover all manner of things that I  find really useful or work really well when you're out in the field.

So, here's my first recommendation - an essential basic item with a myriad of uses…

Essential Kit No. 1 – Black Bin Bag

I'm starting basic with this one - it's a design classic! We all use them – mostly for the intended purpose, but when you're out in the middle of nowhere, it's the one item that can make things way easier in so many ways. The first time I planned a trip out to get some misty dawn images, a bin bag was one item that would have really helped. My kit got all wet, everything I put down got wet, my knees got filthy - it all got emotional!

• Use it to but your kit down on the ground – it will stop your camera bag getting wet and dirty – if you're on a beach, it'll stop sand getting into everything and that's a bad thing!

• Use it as a seat or put it down under one knee when you need to kneel for a  low angle. You can split the bag and lay on it if you want to be shooting up at trees.

• Use it as a bag liner in the event of a downpour – I have one ready so I can just stuff the whole camera in and back into my rucksack. Nothing murders camera equipment faster than water.

• At the end of the day – bag up all your crap in it and bin it – leave nothing but memories. If I'm shooting on a beach from now on, I'm going to start bagging up a sack of the plastic crap at the end of my session, that gets washed up – I'm no tree hugger, but if we all did that it'd have a real impact. (just making a note to self - latex gloves!)

In an emergency you can tear 3 holes in it and make a waterproof coat or use it as a style free useful hat. Take 2 and use them inside your boots if it all goes a bit Bear Grylls. I have a couple in my bag as extra padding so nothing rattles – it's as useful as your camera! And way cheaper!!


I'll be dropping these posts in randomly as and when, so keep an eye out for them. If it's useful, regardless of cost - I'll be putting you on it!

All the best - keep snapping

Real photographers do it in the raw…

It's nearly December, so no - I'm not advocating we all get nekkid and start snapping away - too cold! But as the blog title implies, when it comes time to setting the file format on your DSLR - RAW is the only way to go.

For a photographer working with digital media - the saved file is the equivalent of your exposed negative, so we all really want to be capturing and saving the maximum amount of information from the camera sensor as possible. All digital cameras in every shape and size, will offer you a range of saving options that will dictate the amount of picture information saved to the memory card.

Most people save small files - keep the same card in the camera forever and never take their images off and store them. If this sounds like you, there's nothing wrong with that - I'm sure scrolling through 8 billion images each time you want to find one has the long winter nights flying by! But if you want to keep your images safe and work on them after shooting - the camera RAW file format is your best bet.

So what's wrong with jpeg you say? well, nothing really, it has it's place - for instance, it's a really good format for online use or for uploading an image to a stock library, but the jpeg format doesn't capture all the file data that you will get from a RAW file and is far less useful when you want to edit it later.

A camera RAW file will allow you the opportunity to edit your file in many more ways than a jpeg. Your jpeg files will have had some compression added to them by the setting you've selected and this can affect the quality quite badly. If you've ever looked at an image file that has weird pixellation around the edges of things - it's usually down to jpeg compression artifacts - here's an example:

In contrast to this, your camera's RAW file will be fully editable and you can open it into one of the many applications that will allow you a far greater level of control over your finished image. My personal weapon of choice is Adobe Photoshop which offers the full control of opening your files in Adobe Camera Raw, but Nikon's own "View NX 2 software that came with my camera is pretty good too (I'm sure Canon, Pentax, Sony etc come with good software too).

Here are some of the benefits that working with your camera's raw files will offer you:

1 - It will be the biggest file that your camera can capture - why take smaller images? Memory cards are cheap as chips and it's good practice to use a few in rotation anyway just in case one fails.

2 - You will be able to control noise much more effectively in camera raw.

3. You can easily remove lens aberrations such as barrel distortion on wide angle images, vignetting around the image edges and colour fringing.

4. You are able to adjust the exposure before opening your file fully for editing - very handy!

5. You can alter the white balance of your image, so if you have accidentally left the white balance set for indoor lighting and then spent all day taking landscape shots outdoor - you can correct the hideous colour cast that will be on all your images (No, I haven't done this - but it's only a matter of time and you'll be able to hear the swearing).

6. You have far greater control over colour adjustments like "Vibrance", "Saturation", "Contrast", "Fill Light" and black levels.

7. You can use the "Recover" option to better control any black and white "clipping" in the image - that's where all the detail will be lost in total shadow or blown out to white highlights. The slider allows you to put back the detail in these areas.

8. Opening a RAW file will give you the ability to tailor several exposures of the same image, processing each version for a different result before merging them into a single file. This gives you the ability for example, to process a landscape shot for the foreground exposure and again for the sky, which would typically be bleached out - then merge the two.

9. If you shoot RAW, you can archive your raw file and your processed version so you will always have access to the original.

10. It's comedy gold for all sorts of "naked shooting" double entendres

So there you go - after all that, if you're still saving your files as fun sized jpegs, what is wrong with you people, get with the program here and start doing it in the raw!

You know you want to!


As usual, if you're enjoying this stuff at all - let me know and please click the "follow" link. Happy shooting!

Put you on it - Ansel Adams

My intention with this blog, as well as being a bit informative and hopefully humorous, is also to direct people to the work of some of the great photographers who's work I find inspirational and exciting.

The entire reason for me getting into photography in the first place, is a love of the outdoors and the beautiful images that can be captured in wild places. Landscape photography speaks to everyone - the opportunities are limitless, and I'll be showcasing some of the greats here – starting with the undisputed, never beaten in the ring, all time champion of the craft – Ansel Easton Adams.

Use the link and have a look at what is justly regarded to be some of the best landscape photography ever shot - the man was a seminal genius…

http://shop.anseladams.com/

Image ©Ansel Adams

Lens Aberration - that can't be good…

I've been putting my camera through it's paces for a few months now, trying new things, having some successes (along with plenty of failures), but one thing that's really starting to bug me is the performance of the kit lens.

I mentioned it in the last post, so I'd like to elaborate a bit here so other users will know what to look for - but the same problems seem to crop up regardless of the lighting conditions and don't seem to be exclusive to the extremes of the focal length.

Now - don't get me wrong here - compared to the majority of compact cameras this is still a great lens and I've found it great for learning the craft and how to use my equipment. And I've captured some great images, but the lens has introduced the same 2 flaws consistently, that - now my eye has become more critical - is really doing my head in!

This shouldn't come as a surprise really as I've noticed quite a few adverts offering the camera body on it's own or with the lens and the price increase is now only £30. When you look at it that way - even factoring in the problems - it's an incredibly cheap lens and pretty good value for money.

But you do only get what you pay for in this life of toil and it shows here

Some things that are bad, sometimes sound nice - binge drinking, joy riding, friendly fire - they all sound nicer than they really are. Lens aberration just sounds straight up nasty though, and here's what to look for if your lens is exhibiting flaws:

1 - colour fringing - this is the number one gripe I have with the 18-55 kit lens. You would expect some colour fringing at the focal length extremes (18 or 55) - or maybe if you shoot straight into the light source, but it seems to happen under most circumstances.

2 - colour noise - this is the equivalent of the grain you would get in some high iso films, and would show as grain in the print. Here it shows as noisy pixels and is most often seen in the sky areas of an outdoor image

An example of both can be seen in this image of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona…

This shows the camera raw image opened in Adobe Camera Raw, for processing into photoshop (this is a great tool and I'll cover it more in a future post). Zoom into the detail though and all is not well!

If you check out this enlargement - you can see the colour fringing clearly along the edge of the building. It shows as a green colour fringe along the edge.

Also the sky areas are fairly noisy. You can see this as a dithering of the pixels across the flat blue of the sky.

On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be any vignetting - that's where the edges of the lens barrel cast a dark halo around the image corners like you're looking down a tube - so it's not all stick and no carrot!

So - time for a top tip here, brace for impact…

Check your images at true 100% magnification on a proper monitor or laptop screen

Never judge the quality of an image by looking at it on the camera LCD screen - everything looks great on there! The true acid test, for all images, is to open the file in your preferred processing application (there are loads - the Nikon "View NX 2" software that is supplied with the camera is great), and view the image at 100%. I usually zoom in to 400% to check mine and that's when all the badness floats to the surface - but at least then you can correct it.

It makes the difference between a good image and a potentially great image.

I'm planning to break up the posts going forward with some diary type posts, some tips and some gear or magazine or book reviews. In addition, my passion is for landscape photography, and I will be posting links to other established photographer's work that I find inspirational, so you can explore their fantastic imagery yourself - kind of a "put you on it"

If you're enjoying the post to date though - please link to follow (I need some followers!) and I will always welcome your feedback.

Taking the plunge…

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I’ve spent the last couple of years wishing more and more that I had access to a camera – but here’s the problem. I wasn’t interested in shooting film.

I know that will have "real photographers" punching themselves in the face in indignant rage, but the whole process of loading the film, calculating the exposure (lightmeters?? wtf) and making the prints seemed mind numbingly laborious – and after all that, you have no real idea what you’ve got until days later. Not for me.

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop for my work for years – digital was the way to go for me!

But the digital cameras that my family had owned were really coming up short. You got the instant results, but the quality was almost always terrible even though some of them had over 10 mega-pixels. I wanted to be able to sell my images on the stock sites I contribute to, so compact point and shoot cameras were out.

So, I gravitated towards a digital SLR. After reading all the magazines (and there’s soooo many) and getting some good advice from a colleague, I narrowed the contenders down to Canon and Nikon. It was a 50/50 choice and while I was weighing things up – Nikon released the D3200 and it swung the deal.

If you want a thorough review here – look online or buy a mag – there are experts who can give you a thorough unbiased report based on years of expert testing. My perspective is from the “learner driver” end of the spectrum.

All the reports I read before and since buying, are pretty much on the money – this is a great camera. And Nikon’s advertising backs this up – anyone can pick it up and get great images as soon as the battery is charged. The price is attractive given the mega-pixel count that the APS-C sensor can capture and the controls are intuitive and easy to get the hang of. I bought the camera with the Nikkor 18-55mm kit lens, ordered some spin on filters and a cheap tripod on ebay and I was good to go!

I set out on the Saturday morning after getting my hands on it and staggered back home 5 hours later thinking I was Ansel Adams.

Unfortunately, not only were my feet blistered – my shots were really – for want of a better expression – mehh! They were really only run of the mill snaps and when I looked at them on screen, I realized I had nothing. A thought wormed it’s way into my mind that maybe it’s harder to take good images than I had rashly assumed. Just as everyone wrongly clings to the belief that we’ve all got a book inside us – maybe we can’t all be photographers! (same as we can’t all date supermodels,  go to work on jetpacks or bring about world peace). Maybe I should aim lower – depressing!

Luckily – I pushed through and things have improved, although there’s plenty of distance to go – I’m enjoying the process. Learning to use a sophisticated camera well is only going to take time, and practice makes perfect.

The one major piece of reviewer advice that I think is key with this or any DSLR purchase – the kit lens is fine, but that’s about all. There are some real performance drawbacks with the glass (listen to me using photo-boy terms) and they really impact on the performance of the camera back. The 18-55mm kit lens has huge problems with colour fringing (look out for a specific post coming soon), and tends to make the images “noisy”. I was getting really down-heartened, worrying that it was due to the camera performing badly, but it is down to the lens choice. 

I’ve just bought a 50mm prime as my second lens purchase and I’ll be able to compare the 2, but if I was buying today, I’d be tempted to go with the camera back on it’s own and buying a 35 or 50mm prime. The price is roughly the same but the quality of the glass is way better. Hindsight is 50/50.

So, to sum up…

1. Digital photograph good

2. Camera great

3. Skills poor

4. Lens, a bit wafty! Not terrible, and great for practicing, but certainly not capable of what I'm trying to achieve.

It can only go upward from here!

Please leave me some feedback if you're enjoying these posts - I welcome your messages and hope you'll keep following the posts!

Lense virgin!

Actually, that's not strictly true - but it had been a good long while since I'd owned a camera. Long enough that the entire digital SLR thing had happened without me!

 

By way of a brief introduction, I'll just introduce myself and fill in a bit of background…
My name's Richard Evans - I've been working as a graphic designer and illustrator for around 25 years. I've worked with digital images daily, retouching and comping with the best - but until this year, I hadn't picked up a camera since I was in art school.

This wasn't laziness or anything like that - I just didn't own a camera! Everybody else in my family has one, but what with the price of kids shoes and the intimidating level of blokey f-stop rubbish, I just thought that it's not for me. I'd see people on holiday humping around 8 stone of camera baggage and chuckled inwardly at how they were documenting the scene without actually enjoying being there.

But during this time, I'll have to admit, there has been a growing desire to get into photography as an artistic outlet. A camera is another creative tool  after all - just a lot more expensive than a pencil. How hard can it be?

I took the plunge and lashed out a bunch of cash on a Nikon D3200 (I'll expand on this in my next posting) and haven't looked back.

So here's the reason for starting a blog!

Buying a piece of camera equipment is just the first step into the mind bogglingly complex world of digital photography. If all you want to do is point and click, that's great - bash on! There are way worse things you can waste your money on than a good camera and you'll have a blast filling up those SD cards!
 
If, on the other hand, like me, you'd like to be able to capture the kind of images that stand out from the crowd - stick with me! We can rope up and climb the steep learning curve together!


As a creative, I know what makes an image special. I can appreciate the craft and attention to detail, the composition and creative flair. To capture these qualities in an image is a much trickier undertaking though. I've made almost all the mistakes that people attribute to beginners - hopefully, by documenting my misadventures here, you can avoid falling into the same pits!

I saw a short video recently where the photographer was talking about the beginners frustration at not being able to produce a great image, and it really resonated with me.  He said that, as creatives, we all have innate good taste when it comes to images - we know what we like and this can be frustrating to the beginner when their images just don't have that special something.

His advice was to just push through this early phase, shooting as much as possible and you will eventually match up your images with your expectations. It'll take about 7 years on average! Now - that's a long time, but being good at anything takes time - I've been repelling women consistently for years now but it took dedicated practice to get that good (just kidding). I came away reassured by this advice and with each day's shooting, my images are stronger and better composed. I know in my mind what I want to be shooting though, and there's some years to go yet until I'm there!

Stick with it and we'll all be taking the kind of images we're proud of!

If you want to leave me your comments that'd be great - I'll be aiming to post on a weekly basis and trying to address the kind of issues and topics that I find interesting, funny or frustrating as I try to take better images - see you next posting