August 2017 – To Travel Hopefully

Planning a Shoot [Encore Publication]: A case study in planning and executing a photo shoot

Whether traveling or near home, some of our best photo opportunities occur spontaneously. Serendipity is part of the fun of photography, but another big part of the photographer’s craft is to carefully plan and professionally execute a photo shoot. Using a recent shoot in which I collaborated with professional dancer Molly as a case study, in this post I’ll cover the essential elements of planning and conducting a shoot.

Good planning is key to ensuring a fun, safe, and efficient shoot as well as obtaining the desired artistic outcome. Buy this photo

Elements to Consider When Planning a Shoot:

What is the theme or mood? The artistic concept will inform all the other elements of the shoot. For the shoot with Molly, we decided on an edgy, urban theme. Based on that choice, the decisions about location, timing, gear, technique, and post-processing all flowed consistently.

We chose a gritty, urban theme for this shoot, and all other decisions flowed from that choice. Buy this photo

Where is the location? Often one of the most challenging aspects of planning a shoot is scouting for a suitable location. The location, of course, should support the theme of the shoot. It also needs to be accessible, safe (for this shoot, we rejected shooting on or near railroad tracks for safety reasons), and suitable for making the type of images desired. There are also legal considerations, as in most cases permission is required to shoot on private property and even some public spaces require permission for commercial uses. Molly and I eventually decided on using the old barracks at the decommissioned Presidio of San Francisco and the adjacent Crissy Field recreation area. This space was accessible, relatively safe, provided a gritty and urban mood, and afforded sufficient working room for both dancer and photographer.
When should the shoot be scheduled? Obviously, the date and time scheduled need to work for all parties involved. These parties include not only the model(s) and photographer, but also other client(s) and often an assistant. Equally important is ensuring the timing supports your artistic choices. The season of the year and the time of day should offer the best chances of obtaining the lighting you desire. The scheduled time should also work as well as possible with respect to other considerations such as opening hours of the chosen space, traffic and volume of other people in the location, and even tides, snowfall amounts, or other environmental factors. Molly and I chose to shoot in the “golden hour” just before sunset on a Sunday to ensure good lighting and access to the location.
What gear and techniques should be used? After choosing the theme and the supporting logistical elements, it’s time to select the techniques desired to capture the images and the gear required to execute. Elements to consider include lighting (I prefer to work with available light and reflectors/diffusers whenever possible, but sometimes speedlights or portable studio lights are required), lenses (it’s often best to bring a range of lenses for different perspectives), props, and accessories (will you need to stabilize with a tripod, or perhaps you’ll require neutral density filters to obtain the shutter speed and/or aperture you want?). In the shoot with Molly, I used the camera handheld at mostly fast shutter speeds and low camera angles with fast prime lenses to get that edgy look.

To capture the fast motion of the dancing and to support the urban theme, I worked handheld with fast prime lenses and low camera angles. Buy this photo

How should the images be post-processed? Again, the overall artistic concept should inform decisions about post-processing. For this shoot, I aimed for a high-contrast, slightly grainy look and also converted several of the images to black-and-white.
How will the images be distributed and used? All parties should agree before the shoot on how the images will be shared and/or sold. To protect both model and photographer, it’s a good idea to sign a model release. For more information on model releases, see this post: Post on Model Releases.

With attention to planning and execution, a photo shoot will be more enjoyable and productive and the artistic results will be better. Buy this photo

Do you have tips and tricks you use when preparing for your shoots? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about planning your photography? Find them all here: Posts on Planning.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format. Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format. What are the results so far? I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots. Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often. And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow. If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow. The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too. I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format. For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode. I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode. Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone. Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing. If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow. I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files. Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask? There are several major reasons:

I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me. I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera. But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting. They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone. You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot. I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients. But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever. And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot. This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting. It also fills up memory cards more quickly. While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files. That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up. Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images. They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format. They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file). They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format. There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images. But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only. I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images. I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me. In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format? Why? Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Beyond the Postcard Shot [Encore Publication]: Some sites are so iconic, you have to think differently to get a unique shot

Much of the joy of travel photography is seeking out and capturing images of little-known places and the ordinary daily lives of the people who live in them. But when we’re traveling it is also inevitable that we’ll come face to face with the world’s most famous, overexposed, iconic sites. You know, those places that are so often documented and discussed that we automatically associate them with the city or country where they are located. London has Big Ben, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge, Tibet has Potala Palace, India has the Taj Mahal, Cambodia has the Angkor Wat temple complex, and so on. These sites have been photographed and shared so many millions of times that they are ingrained in our visual memories. But there are ways we can approach and photograph the world’s iconic sites so as to avoid the “postcard shots” and create something different. In today’s post, we’ll explore a few methods you can use to make less familiar images of the world’s most familiar locations.

Focus on part rather than the whole: Instead of capturing an iconic site such as London’s Big Ben with a normal or wide-angle lens to include the whole structure, try using a longer lens or getting up close to capture just a portion.

Big Ben is nearly always photographed from a distance using a normal or wide-angle lens to include the whole tower. Here I used a medium telephoto lens looking up at the clock’s face to emphasize some of the detail on the facade. Buy this photo

Embrace the crowds: Instead of working to remove the hordes of visitors from images of iconic locations, sometimes it is effective to embrace the crowds. This can create a “nod and a wink”, self-referential photo that tells the viewer we all know this site is a tourist draw. In this image of Stonehenge, I used a wide-angle lens to include not only the monoliths but also the long line of visitors who have come to see them.

Intentionally including the hordes of visitors in some of our images can give a different effect from the usual photos in which we attempt to remove the people. Buy this photo

Try a different time of day: Many of the world’s most famous sites are associated with a specific time of day or lighting conditions. The Golden Gate Bridge, for example, is often photographed at sunset or as the banks of fog roll over it. Tibet’s Potala Palace is usually pictured by day. So, for a different view of this lovely temple/palace complex, I visited it by night. The resulting images offer a different mood from the postcard shots.

A different time of day can yield very different images from the usual ones. Here, Potala Palace is captured by night, a seldom seen view that offers a very different mood than the postcard pictures. Buy this photo

Incorporate unexpected visual elements: We associate certain visual themes with iconic locations, so surprise your viewers by including unexpected elements in your images. I especially enjoy incorporating anachronistic visuals, such as a Buddhist monk speaking on a cell phone (though even that is becoming something of a cliche these days). In this image of Delhi’s iconic Qutub Minar, I framed the shot first and then waited for the jetliner to enter the frame just behind the minaret.

Including non-contextual visual references in our shots of iconic sites can surprise the viewer. This image of Delhi’s ancient Qutub Minar minaret incorporates a modern jet airplane for a mashup of old and new. Buy this photo

Find a different vantage point: The Taj Mahal is a gloriously lovely building, but its true beauty is often overlooked by photographing it straight on from the iconic vantage point across the reflecting pool at the main entrance to the site. Instead, try capturing the Taj from an unusual vantage point, such as the Moonlight Garden across the river from the back of the Taj. The resulting image will surprise the viewer by offering a less-seen perspective and by framing the iconic site in an unusual context.

This image of the back side of India’s iconic Taj Mahal was made from the Moonlight Garden across the river. Freed from the usual framing of the front of the Taj with its reflection in the pool, the viewer can truly appreciate the gracious beauty of the structure itself. Buy this photo

Next time you visit one of the world’s most overexposed sites, try making some images using one of more of these new approaches to surprise the viewer with something different. Avoid the cliches by emphasizing just certain portions of the site or by including crowds or non-contextual elements in your images. Shoot from a different vantage point or at an unexpected time of day. There’s really no need to add one more to the heap of millions of identical photos of these places, so go wild and try something unique!

How have you created unusual images of the world’s most iconic locations? Please share your thoughts here!

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

Camera as a Service? [Encore Publication]: A first look at Relonch’s artificial intelligence photography service

In the 150 or so years of its history, the camera has evolved rapidly as a result of the advent of new technologies, each promising to dramatically simplify the photographic process and improve the resulting images. Just within my lifetime, there have been major upheavals via the introductions of the Kodak Instamatic, the Polaroid SX-70, and of course digital photography. So perhaps it was inevitable that someone would develop an AI (artificial intelligence) to make photography as simple as pushing a single button.

A company called Relonch (https://relonch.com/) is developing such a system now. Sometime in 2018, they expect to roll out a Camera as a Service for $99 per month. You get a loaner of a brightly colored Relonch 291 camera (manufactured by Samsung), with a fixed focal length lens and only a single button, which is used to take the picture. It doesn’t even have an LCD screen to review your images. The purported value of the subscription price, of course, is not derived from the camera hardware, but rather from the service. For this lofty price, your camera transmits your image files to Relonch, who then use algorithms to analyze and process the files. The next day, they send the processed images that they consider to be your best photos back to your mobile device of choice.

The concept here is that most people are confused by all the settings on their camera, even if it’s a fairly simple point-and-shoot device, so their photos rarely come out the way they envisioned them. Instead, let them use a simple camera with just a single button, but employ AI techniques to post-process the best images to make them look closer to the way the user intended.

I haven’t tried the camera and its wraparound service yet (the company’s headquarters and showroom are in Palo Alto, near to where I live, so perhaps I can do so soon), but based only on their description of the concept I share my thoughts here.

Will users pay $1200 per year for this service? I’m skeptical as to whether there is a broad market for the service at this price point. “Serious” photographers, that is professional and enthusiast amateurs, already know how to use the manual controls on our cameras and enjoy the process of capturing images and enhancing them during post-processing to achieve the final results we want. Are there enough users who don’t know how to use their cameras but are still willing to pay so much for better images? Time will tell.
Are people willing to leave the choice of which images they receive up to a software algorithm? I wouldn’t want someone else, even a top professional photographer, deciding which of my images I get to see and permanently deleting the rest. And I certainly wouldn’t want an AI to make this decision for me.
Are users okay with waiting a day to see and share their images? We’ve gotten pretty spoiled as a consumer class. We expect instant gratification, and ever since the first Polaroid cameras came out in the 1940s, photographers have been able to see their images right away. Waiting a day may not fly.
Do people really want their photography to be mechanized? For its whole history, photography has seen its reputation tarnished when compared to other visual art media because a part of this art form includes the use of a mechanical device, the camera. Just as a great painter creates her art through her vision and her technique, so does a great photographer. The gear we use is only incidental to the quality of the images we create. I fear that by taking the craft out of the process and substituting an AI for the artist’s vision, the Relonch service will further degrade photography as an art form. And let’s be honest here. An AI can adjust color balance, sharpness, clarity, vibrance, and exposure to improve a raw image, but it can’t determine how to crop or selectively adjust parts of the image to make it artistically pleasing or to give it a story to tell. And most important of all, no amount of post-processing can turn a poorly composed or an uninteresting image into one worth looking at. An AI may soon be able to drive our cars from Point A to Point B, be we’re a long way from having an algorithm that can create true visual fine art. I’ll leave you with the words of master landscape photographer Ansel Adams: “There’s nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”

What do you think of the Camera as a Service concept? Valuable evolution of photography that will bring its benefits to a wider range of humanity, or expensive gimmick that will degrade the artistic worth of the medium of photography? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Focus on Edinburgh [Encore Publication]: Ancient and modern, Scotland’s capital city offers great architecture, museums, and more

At the end of our two-week hiking adventure in Ireland, we added a stop in Edinburgh for a family visit. Ancient and modern at the same time, Scotland’s capital offers a wide range of experiences for the traveler, and a wide array of subjects for the travel photographer. From architecture to museums, castles to palaces, glorious views and creative contemporary cuisine, this city has become a world-class destination. Here is a brief photo essay capturing some of our experiences there.

The main attraction, dominating the city from its high central vantage point, is the ancient Edinburgh Castle. It’s an easy walk from the center of town up the hill to tour the castle. On the way up, a variety of interesting views of the castle unfold. Try different lenses and compositions to take advantage of the many moods of this place.

Edinburgh Castle towers above the city center and offers a variety of different perspectives for the photographer. Here I’ve shot from halfway up the hill using a telephoto lens and polarizing filter to isolate this one portion of the edifice and to enhance the stonework and the sky. Buy this photo

Edinburgh’s Royal Mile stretches from the Castle down to the Palace at Holyrood House. It’s easy to see this street as a shopping mall jammed with tourists, but it would be a shame to overlook the stately old architecture and the little closes (alleyways) off the main street.

To make this image along the Royal Mile, I chose an unusual perspective and used a medium telephoto lens to align the different colors, textures, and angles of the statue with the cathedral. Buy this photo

Edinburgh is changing. During several visits over the decades, I’ve heard many a bagpiper playing in the center of the city, but this is the first time I’ve met a female piper. She was happy to pose for a portrait. Buy this photo

Brightly painted façades lend a splash of color to the old stone architecture in this lovely neighborhood. Buy this photo

Scottish food has also evolved a great deal in recent years, with several restaurants serving contemporary takes on traditional Scottish dishes. Nowhere is the ambiance nicer than at the Witchery by the Castle, along the Royal Mile.

To capture the lovely interior of the Witchery, I used a fast normal lens and a high ISO setting. This scene was lit entirely by candlelight and a few sconce lights in the ceiling. Buy this photo

Revisiting Edinburgh Castle on our second day, I wanted to shoot it from a different perspective at a different time of day. During post-processing I decided that a black-and-white rendering of the image would highlight the austere tone of the castle. Buy this photo

Edinburgh has a proud literary tradition, from Burns to Scott to Stevenson. The city’s literature museum, while small, is worth a visit.

I couldn’t resist capturing this display sign in the Writers’ Museum highlighting the Stevenson quote that graces the name of this website. For more on the importance of this quote to the development of my passion for travel and photography, please see this page: About To Travel Hopefully.

At the other end of the Royal Mile from the Castle lies the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This is the Queen’s official residence when she’s in Scotland, and its tour is first-rate. While photography is not allowed inside the lovely palace, it is okay to photograph the stately and much older abbey adjacent to the palace.

Again here, I tried to seek out an unusual perspective in this shot of the abbey at Holyroodhouse. I shot upward with a wide-angle lens, using spot metering to expose for the stonework and a small aperture to provide broader depth-of-field. Buy this photo

I made this portrait of our daughter with two of her friends from university by stepping back and framing them using a medium portrait lens. I chose a medium aperture to ensure sharp focus on the subjects while also keeping the façade of the abbey reasonably sharp. Buy this photo

Behind Holyroodhouse is a hill towering above the city. A short but fairly strenuous hike leads to Arthur’s Seat at the summit. From the summit there are glorious views over the whole of the Edinburgh area. This image of the Palace at Holyroodhouse was shot from partway up the hill.

A view of Holyroodhouse from partway up the hike to Arthur’s Seat. A polarizer helped bring out the drama in the sky and the saturated green of the lawns. Buy this photo

On our final evening in Edinburgh, we dined on exquisite contemporary Scottish cuisine at the Tower Restaurant. Sitting atop the Scottish National Museum, this spot has marvelous views over the city to the castle. The view shown in this image was just as marvelous.

To photograph the beautifully plated trio of smoked Scottish salmon accompanied by a glass of old single malt whisky, I shot from above using a touch of off-camera flash to balance the ambient light of the restaurant. I used a diffuser on the flash and bounced the flash off the wall to soften its light. To learn more about food photography, check out this post: Post on Food Photography Buy this photo

Scottish traditional music is alive and well and performed almost every night at Sandy Bell’s Pub. This portrait was made using my favorite portrait lens set to a wide aperture, with a high ISO setting on the camera. The shallow depth of field throws the whistle player into soft focus, so the emphasis in the image is placed on the fiddler. Buy this photo

Have you visited Edinburgh? What are your favorite spots there? What experiences should a photographer be sure to seek out? Please leave your comments here.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

The Camera Eats First [Encore Publication]: How to make delicious images of local food specialties

A big part of the joy of travel is learning about the local food and drink. For the travel photographer, local culinary specialties represent a cornucopia of image possibilities. In this post, we’ll look at some food images and discuss a few tips and tricks to make delectable photos of the victuals we meet while traveling. Warning: Do not read this post while hungry.

When photographing plated food, it’s best to get in close. Shoot straight down or at a slightly oblique angle, and always check your background to ensure it is as uncluttered as possible. Be aware of your focal point and depth of field (how much of the image is in focus) so that the most important part(s) of your image are sharp.

For this photo of a cheese plate in Burgundy, France, I got in close to the subject and chose a small aperture to ensure all the different cheeses were sharply in focus. Buy this photo

Don’t forget that specialty drinks are also a big part of local culture. For example, in Argentina the deep love of mate (pronounced MAH-tay), a local infusion, becomes almost a religious practice. This image of the mate service engages all the senses with its bright colors, contrasting textures, and suggestion of the smell and taste of the drink. To capture a sense of the Argentinian obsession with mate, I shot this image of the serving of the drink with all its components. I wanted to include some of the environment around the mate tray as well. The scene was lit with natural light, which further saturated the bright colors.

Argentina’s national obsession, mate. Buy this photo

Always be on the lookout for local dishes that are unusual or exotic to our own sensibilities. This image of the local Peruvian specialty cuy, or guinea pig, has sold well on American and European stock photography sites because the main ingredient is so unfamiliar to our palettes. I love the saturated colors and the humor inherent in the guinea pigs holding peppers in their mouths. The ocher wall makes a lovely background to offset the colors of the dish. To capture this image of Peruvian cuy served during a home-hosted lunch, I got in close as the hostess held up her dish, ensuring that the ocher wall behind was all that was visible in the background. I chose a wide aperture to slightly blur one of the guinea pigs and the wall. I used natural lighting with just a kiss of off-camera flash to accentuate the highlights.

Cuy (guinea pig) is a Peruvian delicacy. Buy this photo

Sometimes it is the ingredients rather than the final dish that are most interesting. While on a shore excursion on the Greek island of Rhodes, my family saw these beautiful octopuses hanging to dry in the sun. After photographing them, we ordered a plate of grilled octopus. We very nearly missed the sailing of our ship, as the taverna’s cook took her time to grill the dish, but it was absolutely worth it!

Obviously, natural light was the way to go with this image. I wanted to get in close, but not too tight, so that the lovely Rhodes scenery would be partly visible behind the drying octopus. I used a medium-wide aperture to slightly soften the background. Buy this photo

What’s even better than food images? Portraits of local people making or serving the food! Here’s a shot of a server holding up a tray of Istanbul’s best baklava. The background is a bit cluttered, but I like this image for its blending of the beautiful dessert tray with the pride of the man serving it.

Often a street vendor, cook, or restaurant server will be reluctant to have their portrait made but will be happy to pose with their wares. For this portrait of an Istanbul baklava server, I chose a wide-angle lens and got in very close to the food tray to emphasize the baklava while including the server in the composition. Just natural light and balanced fill flash were used as lighting. Buy this photo

Street markets are a wonderful source of travel images. They tend to be bright, colorful, exotic, and characteristic of the location. Be aware that some vendors will expect you to buy something if you want to photograph their wares.

I like the contrasting colors in this shot of Istanbul’s ancient Spice Market. Buy this photo

Nearly every culture around the world has its own version of barbecue, and in my broad and diverse travel experience, it’s all good. Here’s a photo of whole branzino (Mediterranean sea bass) fish being grilled topside by the captain of our small wooden sailing ship on the Turquoise Coast of Turkey. It was nearly completely dark, so I lit this image using light from the burning coals and a touch of flash. A relatively high ISO was required to balance the low natural light with the need for a small enough aperture to keep the whole subject in focus.

Whole fish on the grill aboard a gulet yacht in Turkey. Buy this photo

Sometimes a local cuisine is all about diversity, such as the Dutch-Indonesian specialty rijsttafel (rice table). Some presentations of rijsttafel in Amsterdam involve over a hundred different tiny plates, each containing a different food preparation. To capture this tapestry of tastes, I stood on the bench and shot obliquely onto the table top, including as much of the spread as I could.

Indonesian rijsttafel served in Amsterdam. Note that in restaurants at night we have little or no control over the artificial lighting, which can sometimes lead to an unnatural color cast on the food. Shoot in RAW format so you can adjust the color balance during post-processing when you get home. Buy this photo

I grew up in New England, and after traveling to more than 100 countries around the world I can say with authority that few meals can beat a good old-fashioned New England clambake with lobster. To capture this iconic image, I shot up close and directly toward the lobster, using a normal lens with a medium aperture. This allowed most of the meal to be sharply focused, but with some falloff in sharpness toward the edges in order to emphasize the Maine event. The contrasting colors between lobster, clams, and corn make for a pleasing composition.

A lobster clambake in Maine showcases the contrasting colors and textures of this delicious meal. Buy this photo

As a parting shot, I’ll leave you with this image of French haute cuisine. The gloriously prepared and plated fish course at Paul Bocuse’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant made a fun subject because it is whimsical and artistic at the same time. The available lighting was soft and subdued for artificial light, so no flash was needed. I shot some closer compositions of just the plate, but preferred this one with some of the table setting included.

Bon appétit! Buy this photo

What are your favorite food photos? Do you have tips on how to make food images really pop? Please share your comments.

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling or at home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

The Great American Eclipse: How I captured the recent total solar eclipse

I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to observe and photograph four total solar eclipses all around the world. This past weekend, I drove with my family to Salem, Oregon to photograph the Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017. I delivered a lecture on eclipse photography before an audience of about 400 eclipse chasers and scientists, and I was also interviewed by the New York Times. But most important, I was able to capture some amazing images of the big event! In today’s post, I share a few of those images and discuss how they were made.

For tips about how to make close-up portraits of the sun during an eclipse, check out this post: Post on Eclipse Photography. My best advice is to use a very sturdy tripod, turn off vibration reduction or image stabilization on your longest telephoto lens, manually focus before the start of the eclipse (and use a piece of tape to hold your lens’ focus ring in place), use ISO 400 and f/11, and bracket your exposures to ensure you’ll have some that are well exposed. Buy this photo

As totality approaches, the sun becomes much less bright and your exposure will change dramatically. You may have to boost your ISO setting and/or open your aperture to capture these last partial stages before totality. Buy this photo

It’s important to know exactly when totality will begin. Set a timer to be sure you don’t miss it. I like to remove the solar filters from all my lenses about 1 minute before the start of totality. Then I am ready and waiting for the diamond ring effect to signal the beginning of totality, and I’m ready to shoot and capture this beautiful moment. Just be sure you don’t look directly at the sun through your lens after removing your filter until the diamond ring effect has taken place, or you could damage your eyes or your camera’s sensor. Buy this photo

It is especially important to bracket exposures during totality, because the range of brightness values between the bright inner corona and the dim outer corona is too great for any camera’s sensor to capture in one image. By shooting a series of several different exposures, you can combine them during post-processing using HDR (high dynamic range) software, allowing for all the subtle beauty of the corona to be captured. This favorite image of totality shows colorful prominences, ethereal streamers, and the rarely seen “earthshine effect” whereby the surface detail of the moon is lit entirely by sunlight reflecting off the earth. Buy this photo

The second diamond ring effect occurs moments after the end of totality. This HDR image combines seven of my bracketed exposures, yielding an image of breathtaking beauty. Buy this photo

Get creative about displaying your images after you get home. This montage was made from 15 of my favorite images to show the progression of the eclipse from partial stages through the diamond ring effect, into totality, and back again. Buy this photo

I used a second camera with a wide-angle lens mounted on a tripod and controlled by an intervalometer (timer) to shoot a bracketed set of exposures every 30 seconds during the whole eclipse. In post-processing, I combined the images into a time lapse montage showing the movement of the sun across the sky in different stages of the eclipse. Note that I am standing in the foreground operating my other camera, the LCD screen on which clearly shows a closeup image of the sun during totality. Buy this photo

Did you observe and/or photograph the Great American Eclipse of 2017? Please share your experiences here.

Want to read other posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

I See a Little Silhouetto of a Man [Encore Publication]: Intentionally underexposing your subject can create dramatic images

A silhouette is an image rendered as a solid shape of a single color with its edges showing the outline of the subject. In photography this is a rather easy effect to achieve. Simply by underexposing the subject by several stops, all the shadow detail is lost and the subject will appear as an outline in black. This technique can yield dramatic, powerful images if used properly and sparingly.

When the subject is already backlit, just expose for the background and then dial down the exposure by approximately two stops. This image of a man fishing off the seawall at the Malecon in Havana, Cuba works effectively as a silhouette. The subject was strongly backlit by the late afternoon sun reflecting off the ocean, so I exposed for the water and compensated by another two stops. The resulting photo is more evocative of the mood of quiet contemplation than it would be had I exposed for the fisherman.

This shot of a man fishing off a sea in Havana is rendered more powerfully with the subject in silhouette. Buy this photo

During a studio shoot with a yoga and fitness model, we decided to try something different. We turned off the main light and the fill light that ordinarily illuminate the model, and instead turned up the intensity of the lights on the white backdrop. The resulting images showed the model in full silhouette as she dances and performs yoga poses.

In the studio, turning off the primary lights and increasing the brightness of the back lights yields a true silhouette. This image is striking because it reduces the model’s form to an outline, emphasizing her motion. Buy this photo

The silhouette is a simple technique you can use to get creative in your photography. Experiment away–memory cards are cheap!

When do use the silhouette as a photographic technique? Please share your tips here.

Want to see more posts on techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Photographic Blasphemy [Encore Publication]: Why you don’t need a tripod for most travel photography

Warning: The following assertion will sound heretical to many photography enthusiasts. Stop reading now if you can’t handle the truth :-).

I’m going to say it. You don’t need to carry a tripod for most travel photography situations. There, I’ve said it.

This is blasphemy to many photographers. After all, for the past 15 years or so, the badge of a “serious” photographer has been this three-legged object we stick between our camera and the ground. Most scenic overlooks and other landscape photography-friendly locations have been positively flooded by a veritable sea of tripods in recent years. I’ve seen viewpoints so clogged by tripods that photographers and even (heaven forbid) non-photographers are forced to elbow their way through just to get a place to stand to watch the sunrise, sunset, or other pretty happening. For years, I have carried at least a lightweight tripod, and occasionally a heavy-duty professional tripod, with me to nearly every shoot, which for me is usually about two per day. It’s become an ingrained behavior, a knee-jerk reaction, for most photographers. But why, exactly?

During my recent travels in India, I made many wonderful images in all genres of photography. I used a lot of gear to do so. One item I didn’t use: a tripod. Buy this photo

There are times when a tripod is necessary. In very low-light situations, such as true nighttime scenes, most astrophotography, and some indoor shoots, it is essential to mount the camera on a sturdy tripod. When a very long shutter speed is required for a specific effect, such as blurring water in a waterfall or shooting a dancer using rear-curtain sync flash, then you really do need a tripod. We can even include shoots where several images will be combined using software to make a high dynamic range (HDR) or panoramic image in the category where a tripod is helpful (though, I would argue, not really essential anymore, given how good software has become at stitching overlapping images together).

But so many other times, a tripod is not only not an asset but actually becomes a liability. Travel photographers must be very mindful of the size and weight of the gear we carry on our adventures. Every item we bring has to be considered in terms of its value: will the space it takes up in our limited carry-on baggage allotment and its weight on our back every step of our trip be worthwhile in terms of its usefulness in making the best possible images? A tripod, even a lightweight travel tripod, is a relatively large and heavy piece of gear. There are other items we need to leave at home in order to make room for a tripod.

I recently returned from a 2.5-week journey through the north of India. I brought as much gear as I could reasonably fit in carry-on for the international and internal Indian flights. It weighed a lot, and I had to lug much of the gear I brought on the trip each day on my back through 115-degree heat, sometimes up steep hills to the top of ancient forts. At the end of the trip, I contemplated my usage of each item I carried. Both DSLR camera bodies, every lens (even the massive 500mm super-telephoto which I required to make great images of far-off tigers), the speedlights, both battery chargers, and all remote releases, cables, filters, cleaning supplies, etc. were used at some point during the trip. The one item I never once needed: you guessed it, the tripod!

True, India is a very densely populated country where most sites do not allow tripods or, if they are allowed, the crowds are too thick to deploy them. And there was ample bright sunlight at most of our locations to handhold the camera.

But I would argue that a tripod is simply not needed for many travel photography situations in general. These days, a camera’s sensor is so fast and noise-free, and the camera’s resolution so high, that camera shake for most landscape photography settings is a much smaller risk than motion of the subject itself. My Nikon D810 has a resolution of nearly 37 MB, so if a single tree branch or sometimes even a single leaf moves, I can see it in the image. A tripod is no more going to stop a leaf from moving than could the ancient viking king Canute stop the tide from coming in (a story frequently misused in modern times, by the way).

From now on, when I pack for a day’s shoot or a month-long journey, I’m going to seriously consider whether I’ll need a tripod and will pack one (or two) only when I can reasonably expect to need it.

What about you? Do you always carry a tripod, or do you consider its appropriateness before you travel? If you always carry it, do you always need it? Would you bring some other piece of gear along if you didn’t have to make space for the tripod? Please share your thoughts on this controversial topic here!

Want to read more posts about photographic gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Join Me on a Photography Tour of India: Capture unique images of cultural celebrations, wild tigers, glorious monuments, and people from all walks of life

Dear Readers,

From Jan. 24 through Feb. 8, 2018, join our small group of photography enthusiasts and experience India with all your senses. India is a dream destination for travel photographers: a vivid tapestry of colors, cultures, and chaos. We’ve planned this unique itinerary to provide ample opportunities to capture unforgettable images that you won’t find in travel brochures and on postcards. Included are visits to two of the most colorful and exciting of India’s exotic annual cultural celebrations, the Republic Day Parade and the Desert Festival (similar to the Pushkar Camel Festival but with far fewer tourists and photographers). We also search for wildlife in a national park hosting among the world’s highest density of wild tigers, visit India’s iconic forts and monuments, and seek authentic interactions with a diverse range of local people.

Our extraordinary photographic journey will take us through Delhi’s colorful bazaars and to its annual Republic Day Parade, to the incomparable Taj Mahal in Agra, on to the annual Desert Festival with its rich tableau of dancing and cultural activities, and then on safari to seek the royal Bengal tigers of Bandhavgarh National Park, among other memorable destinations. Throughout this journey, we will be interacting with fascinating local people from all walks of life, whom we will get the opportunity to meet and to photograph.

Award-winning professional travel photographer Kyle Adler will be shooting alongside tour participants and will provide personalized in-the-field instruction. During our optional informal workshops, we’ll review our recent images, plan our shot list for upcoming locations, and cover techniques to make the best images possible. Topics will be tailored to the group’s interests and may cover any aspects of travel photography from shot planning to capture technique, and on to post-processing and image sharing. Unlike most photography tours, we will place a special emphasis on learning to use the camera as a bridge to enhanced understanding of the land and people we visit. Photographers of any level will see their images improve, and non-photographer friends and family are also most welcome to join this tour. You can make memorable images using whatever camera gear you wish to bring; it is not necessary to invest in specialized gear.

See the detailed itinerary, hotel list, pricing, and other information here: KYLE ADLER- COLORS OF INDIA PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR

Please let me know if you have questions or are interested in learning more about the trip. Mary and I hope that you can join us for this rare opportunity to experience the people, cultures, landscapes, and wildlife of India on a one-of-a-kind adventure tailored to photographers like you!

Architecture in Ireland and Scotland [Encore Publication]: From Neolithic to today, Ireland has remarkable buildings; here’s how to capture them

During our recent travels in Dublin, hiking across southwestern Ireland, and visiting Edinburgh, we encountered fascinating architecture at every turn. From ruined farmhouses to stately manor houses, and from Neolithic-era “beehive huts” made of stone to modern fishing shacks, there is a wealth of diversity in the buildings in this region. Here I present some images of the architecture we saw during our rambles, along with a few words about each.

Dublin’s Trinity College is one of the oldest universities in the world. Famous as the home of the ancient Book of Kells, the college also boasts the Long Room, quite possibly the grandest study hall in the world. This image was made with a wide-angle lens using only available light. I used a relatively high ISO setting so that I could choose a small aperture for greater depth-of-field while still using a fast enough shutter speed to handhold the camera. Buy this photo

Another perspective on the Long Room, this image captures only the upper gallery, emphasizing the repeating patterns of the ladders, arches, and shelves. During post-processing I decided to render the photo in black-and-white to bring out the texture and pattern. Buy this photo

An architectural photo doesn’t have to isolate the building from its surroundings. I combined a shot of Dublin’s famous Olympia Theatre with a street scene by framing the theater and waiting for an interesting cast of characters to walk by. Buy this photo

Dublin Castle was built during the Anglo-Norman period and has witnessed nearly the entire history of the city. It is an austere but not particularly pretty building. To capture this image I shot with a wide-angle lens and a polarizing filter to bring out the texture of the stonework and to attempt to enhance a rather undramatic grey sky. Buy this photo

The interior of Dublin Castle is prettier than its exterior. This shot was handheld, as tripods are not allowed inside. I used a fast normal lens, but even with a high ISO setting the light was sufficiently low that I had to use a large aperture, resulting in a shallow depth-of-field. Although the foreground objects are not in sharp focus, I think this scene works rather well to capture a sense of the place. Buy this photo

In the remote and beautiful Gougane Barra Forest Park lie the ruins of a Sixth Century abbey founded by St. Finbarr. To make this image, I shot from inside one of the cells where the monks lived, looking outward toward the ruins of the abbey walls and altar. From this perspective the viewer gets a sense of what it would have been like to live a mostly solitary and austere life here many centuries ago. Buy this photo

On the same tiny island where the ruined abbey is located on Gougane Barra, there is a more modern but quite lovely church. We spent some time getting to know the American bride and groom who were celebrating their wedding here, and I shot them in front of the little chapel looking across the lake from the mainland. Including people in the context of the building makes architectural photography more relatable and compelling. Buy this photo

Hiking along the remote Sheep’s Head Way, we came across this old farmhouse. I framed the image with an extreme wide-angle lens to lend it an interesting perspective, and I used a circular polarizing filter to saturate the colors of the building and to enhance the sky and lawn. Buy this photo

The stately Bantry House lies at the end of the Sheep’s Head Way and has been owned by the same family since 1750. This photo was made from the top of the hundred steps leading through the gardens and up a hill behind the house. It’s a lovely vantage point from which to photograph the mansion, its gardens, and the gorgeous harbor and mountains in the background. A polarizing filter was used to add drama to the sky and to saturate the colors of the water and gardens. Buy this photo

This old farmhouse is now an interpretive center and shop open to the public to give a sense of what rural Irish life was like a century ago. The front of the house is especially charming when framed to include the rustic surroundings. Buy this photo

We started our walk in Killarney National Park at the lovely Derrycunnihy Church. I framed this scene from a low angle looking slightly upward at the church and using a wide-angle lens. The perspective gives a sense of the stark isolation of the church in this very remote wilderness setting. As always when shooting upward with a wide-angle lens, one must take care not to distort the lines of the image too severely. Buy this photo

Along the Gap of Dunloe we hiked past this bucolic scene around a ruined farmhouse. I framed the image to include the horse carts and the rutted pathway. Buy this photo

The Wild Atlantic Way showcases some of the most scenic views in all of Ireland as it winds through rolling hills toward the remote Blasket Islands. Along the way the observant hiker will see dozens of strangely shaped stone enclosures called beehive huts, some of which date back to the Neolithic Period. This image was shot with a telephoto lens to highlight the beehive huts and to compress the distance between the huts and the Blasket Islands dotting the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Buy this photo

The quaint seaside village of Dingle is chock full of charming stone houses with brightly painted doors and windows. Because it was pouring rain all day and I was recovering from an illness, I brought only my phone’s camera. Even so, I was able to make some nice images of the houses by using the Manual app to take control of the phone’s camera. Buy this photo

Edinburgh, Scotland has a tremendous variety of architecture, which could be the subject of a separate post. For today, I’ll close with this image of the ruins of the ancient abbey at Holyroodhouse at the end of the Royal Mile. I shot with a wide-angle lens using a small aperture to maximize the depth-of-field and taking care to keep the horizon level so as not to distort the lines of the archways any more than necessary. Buy this photo

For a refresher on architecture photography, check out this post: Post on Architecture Photography.

What are your favorite destinations for architecture? Please share your thoughts in the comment box.

Camera Pixels App (Updated Review): Significant improvements in the new version make this a best-in-class app

I’ve posted repeatedly about the importance of understanding how to take manual control of your camera in order to make images that are properly exposed and focused. Whether you are using a professional DSLR, an advanced full-frame mirrorless ILC, a compact point-and-shoot, or the camera built into your smart phone, there is no way you will get consistently acceptable results if you leave the camera’s settings to its auto mode. See this post for an overview: Post on Beyond the Auto Mode.

About three months ago, I posted a review of an early version of an iPhone app called “Camera Pixels”. In that review, I found the app to be a very promising concept due to its advanced DSLR-like features and intuitive controls, but I couldn’t fully endorse it in the earlier version because I found several bugs and interface quirks. You can read that earlier review here: Previous review of early version of Camera Pixels app. Since that review was published, I have had several discussions with the Camera Pixels support team to detail my concerns about the various issues I found.

For the past two days I have been testing a new version of the Camera Pixels app, and I can now recommend it wholeheartedly. The new release preserves the advanced features and (relatively) simple interface of the earlier version, but it has addressed all of the significant issues I outlined in my review of the previous release. Specifically:

the image flicker in the “viewfinder” area of the screen has been eliminated,
the bracketing of exposures now retains the proper requested spacing (unless at a physical limit of a setting),
there is a new “Pro View” mode that keeps the manual settings toolbar always on the screen so any manual overrides are immediately apparent, and
the controls to separate the exposure point from the focus point are now more intuitive.

Like the “Manual” camera app that I’ve been using for years and the “ProCam 4” app that has been my go-to camera control app for the past several months, the new “Camera Pixels” app allows the manual selection of ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation, and focus distance (note that the iPhone camera’s lens has a fixed aperture, so F-stop cannot be manually set). Also like the Manual app and the ProCam 4 app, Camera Pixels allows images to be captured using RAW mode, which has a great many advantages over capture in JPEG format (see this post for more information: Post on RAW Capture). And all three of these camera apps display a histogram to assist in setting exposure properly.

In addition, both Camera Pixels and ProCam 4 (but not Manual) offer some very useful advanced camera control capabilities, including the following:

Shutter Priority: You can choose an exposure mode in which you select the shutter speed first and the app will set the appropriate ISO.
Exposure Bracketing: You can shoot a series of four shots at different exposures to increase the likelihood that one of them will be at the best exposure for the lighting conditions. The series of shots can also be combined using HDR tools found in Lightroom, Photoshop, and other editing software into a single image with a higher range of tones from very dark to very bright.
White Balance: You can adjust white balance in the app, which is often preferable to having to adjust it in your RAW files during post-processing.
Virtual Horizon: The display can show you when the horizon is level.
Slow Shutter Options: You can select long fixed shutter speeds as well as bulb mode to keep the shutter open for as long as you’d like.
RAW+JPEG: You can choose to store the image in both RAW and JPEG formats.

With all this incremental functionality, your little phone’s camera begins to behave a lot like a more advanced standalone camera. While the iPhone’s camera, with its small sensor and its tiny fixed-aperture non-interchangeable lens, still cannot compare to a professional or enthusiast DSLR or ILC camera, the results using an advanced manual camera control app such as Camera Pixels or ProCam 4 are vastly improved compared to using the phone’s native camera app. At iTunes App Store pricing of $2.99 for Camera Pixels or $4.99 (temporarily reduced to $1.99) for ProCam 4, either of these apps is a great buy and a serious enhancement to the iPhone’s built-in camera.

There are some significant differences between Camera Pixels and ProCam 4. ProCam 4 offers advanced image editing capabilities, while Camera Pixels does not. However, Camera Pixels offers more flexible exposure bracketing options, the ability to separate exposure point from focus point, a better histogram, and more advanced RAW and video shooting options. And a significant advantage of the new Camera Pixels app over ProCam 4 is its simple and intuitive user interface for setting and resetting the manual camera control features such as exposure compensation, shutter priority, and ISO priority. In fact, the Camera Pixels app comes the closest I’ve ever found to the user interface of an advanced DSLR or mirrorless camera.

One note to enhance the usability of the Camera Pixels app: As far as I can tell, there is no built-in help content in the app itself, but there is a very useful online user guide available from the app’s developers. You can find the user guide here: Camera Pixels app user guide.

In summary, the new Camera Pixels app is a great concept that comes closest of any camera control app I’ve found to the look-and-feel of an advanced standalone camera. With the greatly improved new release, Camera Pixels has become the best option I’ve found for iPhone users wishing to control the phone’s built-in camera like an advanced DSLR or mirrorless standalone camera. I now fully recommend this app, and I plan to use it as my first choice for advanced control of my iPhone’s camera.

Here’s the link to the Camera Pixels app on the Apple App Store: Camera Pixels app.

What app do you use to control your phone’s camera? What do you like and dislike about it? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photography gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Focus on SF Pride Parade and Festival [Encore Publication]: Some images of this year’s San Francisco LGBTQ pride events

It’s no surprise that San Francisco hosts one of the world’s oldest and largest LGBTQ Pride events in the world. Each year, the parade and festival grow bigger and better attended. SF Pride is one of my favorite annual events in my home region, the SF Bay Area, and while I find it gratifying to see the mainstream acceptance of this event, it’s also a bit disconcerting to see this once edgy and over-the-top celebration partly subsumed into a blander, more corporate culture. In today’s post, I share some of my favorite images from this year’s Pride Parade and Festival. The goal is to showcase the incredible diversity of the participants and observers at this grand celebration, along with a few words about how the images were made.

The theme of this year’s parade is Resist. It’s a worthy goal given that gains celebrated over the last 50+ years are being systematically and broadly undone by all branches of the US federal government. In this image, I wanted to capture an establishing shot of the large parade contingent without losing the personal element, so I used a medium lens and composed to include the first few rows of marchers. Buy this photo

To personalize the message of activism, I focused on an individual marcher. I used a fast portrait lens set to a wide aperture to defocus the background, and I included the bright pride flag carried over the subject’s head. Buy this photo

Another individual portrait, this image sets off the subject from the background through use of tight composition and shallow depth-of-field. Buy this photo

I captured the joy of the young “marcher” by getting in close and shooting at a very wide aperture, so only the young girl’s face is in sharp focus while all other foreground and background elements are soft. Buy this photo

A touch of post-crop vignetting applied in Lightroom during post-processing helps emphasize the sheer exuberance in this image. Buy this photo

At a huge event such as SF Pride, with more than half a million participants and spectators, it’s important to capture some intimate images in order to emphasize the impact on individual people’s lives. Here I’ve used an 85mm portrait lens to share a private moment during a big public event. Buy this photo

Another intimate couple’s portrait, this image is awash in the colors of the pride flag and the marchers’ clothing. Careful attention to composition and selective focus help bring out the private moment within the context of the larger contingent. Buy this photo

I’m not usually a big fan of selective colorizing, but sometimes its use is appropriate. When I pre-visualized this image of a parade spectator dressed in white, I imagined the entire scene in black-and-white except for the vivid rainbow colors of the pride symbol. It’s an easy effect to achieve during post-processing in Lightroom. Simply select the part of the image you want to remain in color using the Radial Filter tool, and then remove the color from everywhere else in the image by bringing the Saturation slider down to zero. Buy this photo

To convey the grand scale of the event, I shot from a low angle and composed to include several rows of festival participants with San Francisco’s City Hall in the background. Buy this photo

What are some of your favorite celebrations, and how do you capture their diversity in your images? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling or close to home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens. Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached. Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses. That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses. While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead. In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background. Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject. But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot. Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses. First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming. While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage. Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms. This is a blessing especially to travel photographers. Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality. That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths. And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms. This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions. This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography. A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background. The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image. This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.

This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background. It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect. Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed. Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images. And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions. Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background. Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses. My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses. For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime. Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses. I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two. Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions. If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera. I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens. This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens. This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being. I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days. But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length. It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes. I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why? Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Focus on Balaknama [Encore Publication]: Making portraits that go beyond documentation to help Delhi’s street kids

During a recent trip through the north of India, I had the opportunity to meet with the advisors and some of the young staff at the Balaknama Newspaper, a project to empower the street kids of New Delhi. I’ve long been interested in the plight of the street kids who live in Delhi’s sprawling slums and have historically been terribly mistreated at the hands of exploitative child labor bosses, a corrupt police force, and often their own abusive families, so this visit was important to me personally. In this post I share some of the images I made of the kids who risk their own safety to expose the abuses against the young people in their community, and I also discuss how to go beyond the purely documentary function of portrait photography to give your portraits more power.

The images I share here are published with permission from Balaknama’s editor and the NGO who supports the project. However, I will not share the location of the offices nor the real names of the kids who work there, in order to protect their identities.

The power of a portrait to advocate for social change depends primarily on its ability to go beyond simple documentation and to reveal the personality, background, and/or motivation of the subject. For this shoot, I wanted to convey the passion and bravery of the young reporters. I shot with available light only (no flash) in order to capture the intimate and urgent mood of the work the kids are doing. I used several lenses for different perspectives, but most of the images were made using a fast prime portrait lens. My shooting perspective was from a low angle so as not to give the appearance of looking down on the subjects. People appear more empowered when the camera observes them from the perspective of their peers–it should appear as though the viewer is a part of the conversation.

This 17-year-old reporter is also the primary organizer of more than 10,000 of Delhi’s street kids. I wanted to capture her intensity and focus in this portrait, so I got in close with a medium-length portrait lens and shot from the perspective of a participant in the conversation. A wide aperture (low F-stop number) is helpful to isolate the subject from the background. Buy this photo

The “decisive moment.” I shot several frames of this young reporter as he described the horrific abuses of his peers in the slums of New Delhi, in order to maximize the chances of capturing just the right instant. I love this image, which to me appears to emulate the drama and body language of Francisco Goya’s famous painting, “The Executions of the Third of May, 1808”.

This powerful portrait has a painterly feel and freezes the tension and drama of the harrowing stories retold by the young reporter. Buy this photo

The interaction between the students at the newspaper is an important theme. Here I worked to capture the girls’ engagement with each other and with the overall discussion. Buy this photo

Language barriers are less important than many photographers believe them to be. A simple “thumbs-up” gesture evoked a playful response from these young Balaknama staffers, providing a light moment during the intensity of our conversation. Buy this photo

As I’ve often written in To Travel Hopefully, it’s important to remember to include your own group in some of your images. While I most likely won’t publish this image in my stories about Balaknama, I am happy to have this documentation of my fellow travelers as we interacted with the students and staff at the newspaper.

For large group shots in tight spaces, use a wide-angle lens. This was shot with a Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens at its widest setting, giving the viewer a sense of the setting as well as the people there. Buy this photo

I wanted to capture a final portrait of the two primary student organizers as we left the newspaper’s offices, so I asked them to pose together during our walk through the neighborhood. This gives a sense of the environment in which they live and work. I got in close using a wide aperture to soften the background, but I also chose a background that would inform the viewer about the kids’ environment. Buy this photo

Do you have techniques for making powerful portraits that go beyond pure documentation to advocate for the people and causes in the images? Please share your thoughts here!

Want to read more posts about what and how to shoot while traveling? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

Focus on Tahiti Dance Fete [Encore Publication]: A case study in shooting under challenging circumstances

The travel photographer must be prepared to shoot under challenging circumstances, because often we have little control over the conditions in the field. We may plan our travel years in advance to observe and photograph a total solar eclipse, only to wake up on the morning of the eclipse to find the sky is totally overcast. Or we could make arrangements months ahead to be at a major cultural festival, but learn upon arrival that the area we’re shooting from is hundreds of yards from the action. These things happen, but the professional photographer still needs to get her shot. So, what can be done to persevere and increase our odds of getting usable images under adversity? The answer, of course, depends on the specific circumstances of each shoot, but there are some general tips I can offer. Today’s post presents a case study based on my recent shoot of the solo dance competition at the Tahiti Fete in San Jose, California.

The dancers made lovely subjects, but the shooting conditions were very challenging. Read on to learn how to make the best of a difficult situation. Buy this photo

Upon arrival at the dance competition, I realized immediately that this shoot would be challenging. It was held in a cramped hotel convention room with a makeshift stage, rows of folding chairs for spectators, insufficient lighting of poor color quality, and a bank of judges blocking most of the view of the stage. To make matters worse, the room was packed with people, many of whom stood up to cheer on their friends, and the only available seats were near the far end of the room. An extra challenge was thrown into the mix by the cluttered and unattractive background behind the performers on the stage.

Cluttered backgrounds are a significant obstacle, but good images can still be made in these situations. Buy this photo

What can be done to mitigate against a cluttered background? I shot plenty of images of each dancer to increase the likelihood that I could eliminate some of the more distracting background elements while still capturing the excitement, grace, and colors of the dancing. This image was the best I could capture of this particular dancer, so I committed to it in post-processing. I cropped the image to avoid the most distracting elements, adjusted the exposure curves, contrast, and sharpness of the background to de-emphasize it, and applied some post-crop vignetting to ensure the dancer would be highlighted.

When using a very high ISO, some noise will result. This doesn’t have to be a disadvantage. Buy this photo

The lighting was very dim at this venue. Because I was shooting from far away, I needed to use a long telephoto lens, which limited me to a small aperture and no possibility of using flash. Nonetheless, a fast shutter speed was required in order to freeze the fast action of the Polynesian dancing. This combination (low lighting, small aperture, and fast shutter speed) leaves no option other than a very high ISO setting. I shot the above image at ISO 6400. Even with an excellent professional camera sensor, such a high ISO will generate some noise in the image. Noise can often be reduced to acceptable levels during post-processing. But for this particular image, I was aiming for a soft, painterly feel. The visual effect of high contrast, soft colors, and a bit of visual noise here gives the feel of an impressionistic rendering. For this expressive Tahitian subject, I was very happy to have a Gauguin-esque style shine through in the final image.

Cut out elements that don’t work. Buy this photo

To make the above image, I cropped out distracting portions such as the judges’ heads in the foreground and an ugly door and wall in the background. The resulting aspect ratio is non-standard, but works well for this image. I desaturated the background and used post-crop vignetting to focus attention on the dancer.

Black-and-white renderings can be more forgiving when color quality is low. Buy this photo

This image portrays a lovely subject but the lighting was especially poor. Realizing I couldn’t do much to mitigate the strange color cast resulting from the artificial lights, I converted the image to monochrome, boosted the contrast, and adjusted the color channel mix to render a pleasing and elegant final image. Check out this post to learn how black-and-white conversion can be used to save the day when color temperatures or image noise are problems: Post on B&W conversion to save strangely colored images.

Bringing it all together: This image works nicely in spite of all the challenges present at the shoot, including foreground obstacles, dim and low quality lighting, a far-away vantage point, and a cluttered background. Buy this photo

In spite of multiple significant technical issues, I was able to make some striking images of the lovely dancers at this Tahitian festival. Hopefully, the tips presented here will help when you next are faced with a challenging shoot. The most important thing is to keep shooting as best you can while in the field. There are multiple methods you can use in post-processing to mitigate against the shooting challenges and end up with images you will be proud of.

What techniques do you use when faced with difficult shooting conditions? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Join Me on a Photography Tour of India: Capture unique images of cultural celebrations, wild tigers, glorious monuments, and people from all walks of life

Dear Readers,

See the detailed itinerary, hotel list, pricing, and other information here: KYLE ADLER- COLORS OF INDIA PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR

Celebration Time, Come On [Encore Publication]: How to shoot festivals, street fairs, and other celebrations

As a professional travel photographer, I have to be prepared at any given time to shoot in nearly every genre of photography. Landscapes, urban scenes, street photography, night and astrophotography, sports, wildlife, and portraiture are all stock-in-trade, and I love them all! But when I’m asked what my favorite photographic genre is, I reply that I love portraying living culture the most of all. Making images of people celebrating their culture, especially when those images convey a sense of place, is my top objective when I shoot, whether I’m halfway around the world or near home.

Culture can be expressed in small everyday elements of dress, gesture, and environment. But celebrations such as festivals, street fairs, religious observances, arts, and sports show us culture writ large. It is these outpourings of color, sounds, motion, and ritual that show us how people are different and yet similar all around the world. And of all the celebrations I shoot regularly, my favorite of all is the annual Carnaval San Francisco. So in today’s post, we’ll explore how to shoot striking images of cultural celebrations, using Carnaval SF as an example.

This year’s Carnaval was held this past Sunday. But I was privileged to be “embedded” with several of the comparsas, or Carnaval groups, during the months leading up to the big parade day. This allowed me the opportunity to get to know the leaders and dancers in these groups, making very special images of the preparations for Carnaval. While I won’t be including any of those behind-the-scenes images in today’s post, the images of the parade day itself did benefit from my having had the chance to get to know the members of these groups over the months leading up to the day. We’ll include some discussion of this observation in the post.

I’d like to start with an observation on gear. I see a lot of fellow photographers shooting at events like Carnaval with way too much gear. When I say too much gear, I mean more gear than is good for them or for the participants and observers of the festival. Several photographers had two or three DSLR bodies mounted with enormous zoom lenses and attached to large strobes with huge diffusers. Some used monopods and a few even tried to set up tripods for this rapidly moving and crowded event. I brought a single DSLR with two light and fast prime lenses (a 50mm “normal” lens, and an 85mm portrait lens). That’s it. I never mounted a zoom lens during the whole day of shooting and I never used any artificial light. And of course I went handheld the whole day; there’s really no safe or practical way to use a tripod at a crowded and mobile event. All 2500 images I made that day used just that compact kit, and I’m very happy with the results.

It’s a good idea to arrive well before the scheduled start time. Often, the best images of the day will be the ones you make during the preparations rather than during the event itself. For this image of a leader of the Viva la Diva group, who I knew well from working with them over the last few months, I got in close with an 85mm portrait lens and allowed her elaborate headdress to fill the entire frame. Buy this photo

Try to include some of the elements surrounding the people in the celebration. A portrait that shows a person or people within their surroundings is called an “environmental portrait,” and often these tell us more about the person and the culture than do close-ups. Buy this photo

Seek out the key people in a celebration, such as the King of Carnaval shown here. He has such an amazing presence that all I had to do was find the right vantage point and shoot away. I always look for uncluttered backgrounds when making portraits, so the background doesn’t distract much from the image. Buy this photo

Kids make wonderful subjects during celebrations, especially during those moments when they forget the camera is there and are completely uninhibited. Buy this photo

Try to choose backgrounds that complement your subject without competing with it. I asked this samba dancer to pose by a street mural whose bright blues complemented her own costume. Buy this photo

Group portraits can be challenging. It’s difficult during the chaos of a celebration to get everyone’s eyes on the camera. Try to find a vantage point that flatters everyone in the image (for full-body portraits, it’s often best to shoot from the level of the middle of the body, not from head level), choose an uncluttered and undistracting background, and select an aperture that gives just enough depth-of-field to keep all the people in focus while softening the background. Buy this photo

To make close-up portraits during the actual celebration (in this case, a parade), it is not necessary to use a long telephoto lens. Shooting with a long lens means you’re “taking” the portrait, not “making” the portrait. You simply can’t interact with your subject while shooting from far away. I prefer to use a prime normal or portrait lens so that I can interact with my subject and make an image where his personality shines through. It helped here that I knew the members of this group from our interactions over the last few months. Buy this photo

Another reason to use a fast prime lens is that you can choose a very wide aperture (here, F/2.0 using an F/1.4 lens) to get tack-sharp focus on the subject’s face while softening the background and sometimes other parts of the body. Here I wanted to emphasize the pointing gesture by having the fingers so close as to be out of focus, while the dancer’s face and body are in sharp focus. Buy this photo

For images that really pop, use a large aperture (small F-stop number) to soften the background and separate the subject from the other people and objects around him. Buy this photo

During the chaos and cacophony of an urban celebration, it’s nice to find those quiet moments, too. While most festival dances are joyous and boisterous, this Latin American folkloric dance is quiet and mournful. I wanted the portrait to reflect that mood, so I shot from the side as if walking next to the dancer and caught the quiet gesture of holding the white handkerchief. Again, a large aperture was used to blur the background and emphasize the subject. Buy this photo

I look for scenes where participants are just being themselves. These girls were having a blast, marching and chatting with each other, but they also were interacting with the crowd. I got down nearly to the ground so as to shoot from their level and framed the image so as to emphasize the color and pattern of their costumes. Buy this photo

Most images of parades are shot from straight ahead looking backward onto the subjects. You’ll observe in this post that most of my images are not made from that perspective, but occasionally it does work to frame a great scene, such as this delightful image of a salsa dancing couple. Buy this photo

It can be challenging to include a whole parade contingent in one shot. Here I was able to frame the whole group in formation, including some of the lovely San Francisco houses on the steep hill behind, by running ahead to the truck in front of the dancers and getting as much distance as I could between me and them. I shot with an 85mm lens and selected a small aperture (large F-number) so as to keep all of the dancers and the background in focus. Buy this photo

With bold and colorful costumes, some subjects cry out for a big striking close-up. When this dancer stopped to interact with me, I got in close with a portrait lens and captured him full-frame. Buy this photo

Don’t shy away from using non-standard aspect ratios. To include the whole Muito Quente contingent, I moved back from the dancers and captured the whole width of the street, then in post-processing I cropped to keep the full width but remove the unwanted foreground and background portions. Buy this photo

Again, it is helpful to know the participants in advance of the performance. I had been working with the Muito Quente group for several months before the parade, which made it more natural to interact with each of the dancers and make the best images possible. Buy this photo

Always shoot in RAW mode for maximum flexibility. A few words about post-processing: Using Lightroom, I make small adjustments to the color and contrast curves so as to emphasize the subject. A little boost to the vibrance (but not so much as to make the image appear unnatural) and a touch of post-crop vignetting can really make the image pop. Buy this photo

Sometimes it’s okay to break the usual rules of composition. A portrait is not supposed to be cropped at the joints, such as at the knee, but here it works because the dancer’s ornate flowing dress gives a sense of motion and fluidity in the bottom of the frame. Buy this photo

Even in a fast-moving parade, find the opportunities to have your subject stop for a moment and interact with you. The resulting images will convey much more personality that way, even if the personage is fully masked. Buy this photo

We’ll close with this moment of sheer Carnaval magic. It’s such a wonderful feeling when all the elements come together to make a memorable image. This portrait uses most of the techniques we’ve discussed in today’s post–careful composition, bright vibrant colors, a perfect moment, sharp subject with soft background–and conveys a strong sense of personality, culture, and place. And that is what Carnaval, and cultural celebrations in general, are all about! Buy this photo

What are your favorite cultural celebrations? How do you make images that capture their essence? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling or close to home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

“Boundless Theft in Limited Professions” ~Shakespeare: What to do if your images are being stolen

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney and cannot dispense legal advice. In this post I am simply sharing as-is my own experiences of learning about unauthorized use of my images and taking steps to correct this situation. You should consult with a qualified lawyer if you are facing theft of your intellectual property.

I recently traveled to London to receive an award and attend the opening of the Travel Photographer of the Year winners exhibition. When I returned from the trip, I performed a Google image search on my winning photograph to see if it had garnered more international press coverage in the wake of the show’s opening. The good news: there were dozens of new articles featuring my winning image, and hundreds of articles in total, spanning dozens of countries around the world. The bad news: I learned that my image was being used without my permission on dozens of sites. A winner of Travel Photographer of the Year and shortlisted for National Geographic’s Travel Photography Awards, this particular image is an important asset in my professional photography portfolio. And while I don’t mind it being shared without authorization if it includes an attribution to me as the photographer, or at least includes my watermark, there were several quite egregious cases of my work literally being stolen. In some of these cases, other people were trying to pass off my image as their own, one fellow even going to the point of claiming he had shot the photo “with a black-and-white camera.” In a couple of other cases, my valuable intellectual property was being made available for download as a wallpaper image to the general public, without my permission. Every one of these illegal downloads takes away the opportunity for me to sell the image on my own site or to earn a royalty through the image being sold by my authorized agents.

It has never been easier to steal intellectual property–in the form of photos, videos, or the written word–than in today’s interconnected digital world. While it can be good for an artist’s reputation and business to have her or his work “go viral” on the web, the benefits only accrue when the work is attributed to the artist who created it. If other people are passing the work off as their own or distributing it widely to others without authorization, then we have a problem.

After consulting with an intellectual property attorney (who also happens to be my brother), I realized that I need to act promptly to protect my rights. I have started the process of identifying the worst cases of theft of my image and taking steps to stop the unauthorized use. If you also have had your photographs used without your permission, here are some steps you may consider taking:

Search the web for all uses of your image and identify the sites where it is being used without authorization: The remarkable technology to search the vast Internet for specific groupings of pixels that resemble your image is actually very easy to use. Just right-click on your image and select “Search Google for image” from the drop-down menu. You’ll see a listing of all likely matches to your image throughout the web. From this listing, select the uses that are not authorized. My image, for example, matched several hundred occurrences on the web, but most of these were valid press outlets reporting on the image’s success with Travel Photographer of the Year and National Geographic Travel Photography Awards. I studied the list of sites to find the ones that were using my image without permission, and I further pared down this list to focus only on sites that were using my image without attribution to me and without my watermark.
Identify the owners of the offending domains: Using a who-is directory search, you can often find contact information for the registered owner of the domain that is using your work illegally. You can first try https://www.whois.net/, although other directory lookup services may provide better information. Enter the domain (for example, reddit.com) from the URL of the site where your image is being misused, and who-is will provide some information on the domain owner. You’re looking for the contact info about the owner so that you can complain about the abuse. Look for a field like this one: “Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com”.
Write and send DMCA Takedown Requests to the owners of the offending sites: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, is a US copyright law that also provides some protection of intellectual property rights in certain other countries. It provides for copyright owners (including photographers) to demand an unauthorized use of their property be taken down. There is a standardized form called a DMCA Takedown Request that can be used to notify the owner of a site that they are using work you own without your permission, and to insist they remove promptly remove the infringement from their site. There are numerous locations on the web where you can find sample Takedown Request forms. Tailor one of these sample forms with your own info, the info about your property, and the location of the infringement of your copyright. You will need to sign (electronically or physically) the form, including a statement that you swear under penalty of perjury that you own the copyright of the work in question.
Follow up to ensure compliance with your DMCA Takedown Request: While the owner of the infringing site or domain is obligated to promptly remove the infringing post, frequently they may not do so in a timely manner, or they may ignore your request completely. Two days after filing seven takedown requests, I have received only two responses, and both of them were from ISPs who claimed they were not responsible for the content their subscribers posted (I have since identified the actual owners of the infringing sites and directly sent them new takedown requests). I plan to continue to follow up over the coming weeks to ensure compliance.
Consider further legal action if required: So far, I have not asked for legal damages from the infringing site owners, but if they disregard my takedown requests and continue to either pass off my work as their own or propagate my photo in bulk to the general public, then I may choose to sue them for damages. I will publish a followup to this post to share how this situation progresses, but I do want readers to be aware that there are further actions that can be taken beyond a DMCA Takedown Request.
Consider registering your most valuable images: A photograph, like other forms of intellectual property, may be registered with the US Copyright Office at https://www.copyright.gov/. Doing so it not required to initiate a DMCA Takedown Request, but having your copyright registered for your most valuable images may offer you more protection and give you standing for further legal action.

I hope that by sharing my own experiences with having my images stolen, readers may gain some context on the problem. In this digital and interconnected era, most working photographers will likely see at least a few of their images used without permission. We all need to be aware of the situation and how to deal with it. Please consult with a qualified lawyer about the specifics of your own situation. Nothing in this post should be interpreted as legal advice.

Have you had your images used without authorization? Please share your experiences here.

What to read other posts about sharing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Sharing Images.

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: How saving $20 on an off-brand accessory cost me $750

Like most photographers, I try to economize on the purchase of the less sexy items in my bag. I’d rather spend my limited Gear Acquisition Syndrome cash on a new camera body or a long-coveted lens than on those little, boring, but necessary accessories like memory cards or batteries. So when I recently needed to buy a new flash extension cord, I found an off-brand model that cost a whopping $20 less than the equivalent-seeming Nikon model. Little did I realize that this decision to purchase a Vello Off-Camera TTL Flash Cord for $22 vs. splurging for the comparable Nikon product (priced at about twice that amount) would, less than six months later, end up costing me about $750 in repairs and lost use of my camera. Here, as a cautionary tale for fellow photographers, is the story of what happened.

For the first few months, everything seemed fine. What a value I thought I’d found. I even published a post in this very forum about how great a value the Vello flash cable was (I plan to write a disclaimer in that post). Then, with no warning at all, during a professional photo shoot for a local theater company, it happened. I tried to remove the flash cord mount from my camera’s hot shoe and it wouldn’t budge. Thinking it was just a bit misaligned, I pushed harder, but still it wouldn’t move. I didn’t want to force it, so I relented for the moment and made it through the rest of the shoot with a useless and distracting flash cord dangling by the side of my camera the whole time. Upon getting home that night, I researched the problem and realized that many people had had the same problem with the Vello cable. Apparently, this accessory is made with cheap materials, and the mechanism that actuates the metal locking pin to hold the cable onto the camera’s hot shoe is made from plastic vs. metal. This plastic part is subject to sudden breakage, which results in the locking pin being permanently stuck in place and the accessory being stuck on the camera with no ability to remove it. There was no alternative other than sending in the camera to a Nikon authorized repair center to have the flash cord disassembled and removed from the camera.

Over a month later, I just got back my repaired camera. The repairs and shipping cost just over $300. But I also lost a month’s use of one of my Nikon D810 camera bodies, and the rental price for that use is about $450. That makes a total of about $750 that I lost over my zeal to save $20 on a poorly made off-brand accessory. We tend to look only at the direct purchase price when deciding which accessory to buy, but the lesson I learned through this painful experience is that we need to consider the full cost a failure could impart, including such potential damages as a disabled or destroyed camera or lens, a missed priceless shot or a bungled shoot for an important client, lost use of our other gear, and even personal injury (imagine if a heavy light stand falls on a model or if a failed light housing delivers an electric shock).

Lesson learned! From now on I will only consider purchasing an off-brand item after ascertaining it poses no significant risk of causing other problems. I will not be penny wise and pound foolish.

Do you have a story to share about the higher than expected cost of some piece of gear? Please leave a comment at the end of this post.

Want to read more posts about gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Meteoric Rise [Encore Publication]: How to shoot the Perseid and other meteor showers

Dear Readers,

Tomorrow night (August 12) will be the peak of this year’s Perseid Meteor Shower. Weather permitting, I plan to be outside in a dark-sky location shooting away at this amazing celestial event. I’m republishing this popular post as a tutorial for those of you who are new to meteor shower photography, or as a refresher for those who have shot these events before. Enjoy!

Kyle Adler

=======

While the Geminid Meteor Shower in December and the Perseid Meteor Shower in August are the best-known, each year there are quite a few major meteor showers that afford great opportunities for seeing meteor activity. Here is a partial list, courtesy of Sky & Telescope:

Major Meteor Showers in 2017
Shower	Radiant and direction	Morning of maximum	Best hourly rate	Parent
Quadrantid	Draco (NE)	Jan. 3	60-100	2003 EH₁
Lyrid	Lyra (E)	April 22	10-20	Thatcher (1861 I)
Eta Aquariid*	Aquarius (E)	May 6	20-60	1P/Halley
Delta Aquariid	Aquarius (S)	July 30	20	96P/Machholz
Perseid*	Perseus (NE)	Aug. 12	90	109P/Swift-Tuttle
Orionid	Orion (SE)	Oct. 21	10-20	1P/Halley
Southern Taurid*	Taurus (S)	Nov. 5	10-20	2P/Encke
Leonid	Leo (E)	Nov. 17	10-20	55P/Tempel-Tuttle
Geminid	Gemini (S)	Dec. 14	100-120	3200 Phaethon

* Strong moonlight will interfere with these showers.

Source: Sky & Telescope

While it’s still technically tricky to make great images of a meteor shower, today’s technology certainly makes it possible for those of us without astronomical budgets to do so. I shot some nice images of last summer’s Perseid shower and would have been out there shooting the Geminids last December except that the cloud cover here in the San Francisco Bay Area was 95-100%. Here’s a composite of several images I shot last August of the Perseids.

A composite image made up of one long exposure for the lake, mountain, and trees, plus several 25-second exposures capturing the individual meteors I observed over a 2-hour period. Buy this photo

Most of the techniques you need for capturing a meteor shower are the same as for capturing the Milky Way. Review my post from a few weeks ago for a refresher course: Post on Milky Way Photography.

The special challenge when shooting a meteor shower is that meteors can occur anywhere in the sky. Even with a very wide-angle lens, such as a 14mm or 16mm lens on a full-frame camera, only a small portion of the sky can be covered. As we are limited to a maximum exposure time of about 25-30 seconds with a 14mm or 16mm lens so as to avoid blurring the stars into star trails, it’s clear that we have to shoot a lot of consecutive images to be likely to capture several meteors throughout the night. We then use software such as Photoshop to combine the images in which meteors are visible into a single composite image showing all of the meteor activity we captured during the night.

A good tutorial on shooting meteor showers, illustrated with amazing images by Glenn Randall, can be found here: Glenn Randall post on photographing meteor showers.

Have you photographed a meteor shower? What techniques did you use? Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

More Hassles Coming for Travel Photographers? [Encore Publication]: The airline electronics ban and its likely impact on travel photographers

A polar bear prowls the arrivals hall at Svalbard Airport. What new horrors will await travel photographers in these troubled times?

The life of a travel photographer is inherently complicated because the cost, fragility, weight, and size of the photography gear we need is incompatible with the rigors of global travel. I’ve written several times before about strategies for selecting and packing gear so as to take along just what we need and maximize our chances of keeping it safe during our travels. But the times, they are a-changin’. The US and UK governments recently instituted regulations banning all electronic devices larger than a smartphone from carry-on luggage on flights originating from 10 Middle Eastern and Northern African countries. Before long, these restrictions could be extended to flights to and from other countries. Camera gear is likely to be explicitly or implicitly categorized as electronic devices, so quite soon we may find ourselves obligated to check all of our gear in the hold of the plane whenever we travel. In today’s post, I will share some thoughts on how travel photographers could handle such a challenge.

Laptops are already problematic for air travel. They must be inspected separately from other carry-on items, leading to delays at airport security areas. Their batteries can, in rare situations, catch fire. And of course their use is always banned during portions of every flight. They are expensive, breakable, and highly coveted by thieves. And the data contained on our laptops must be very carefully protected. For these and other reasons, I already try not to take my laptop with me on most trips. There are image backup strategies, which I’ll cover later in this post, that do not require use of a laptop. I don’t tend to do much captioning, post-processing, or sharing of my images during the trip, preferring instead to take care of these tasks upon returning home. On certain trips, especially when I am leading photography tours or workshops, I do need to take the laptop to get my job done, but I would recommend not bringing along a PC unless it’s really needed. In the future, as regulations may spread requiring that laptops be placed in checked baggage, I see no good alternative other than purchasing a hard-sided and well padded case such as a Pelican brand case to hold the PC.

Regrettably, it seems likely that most modern camera gear will be considered “electronic devices” for the purposes of these sorts of airline restrictions. Today nearly every camera, lens, and even many accessories contain embedded electronics, so they will almost certainly be included under these types of bans. While until now I have always managed to carry on all of my gear on every trip, I see the winds shifting and in the near future I expect to need to be able to securely pack all of my gear as checked baggage. Obviously, a hard-sided and well padded, customizable case will be required for this purpose. I don’t yet own such a case, but many of my photographer friends swear by cases made by Pelican. Here’s one I am considering purchasing soon to hold most of my gear when I travel. It is affordable, very durable, offers a good deal of physical protection, is lockable, and also rolls on solid wheels that can support a lot of weight. I will need to do more homework to determine whether this particular size of case will adequately fit all my gear. Note that I generally do not recommend products I haven’t personally used, but this item is representative of the category of hard-sided cases we travel photographers will need to consider purchasing.

When checking camera gear, it is imperative that we remember to carry with us into the cabin of the airplane all of our memory cards that have images on them. I’m only being semi-facetious when I say I’d rather part with my prescription medications than with my brand new images during a long international flight. But regardless of what new regulations may soon be issued about what items we can carry onto our flights, it is essential to set and follow a good backup plan for our images when we travel. Gear can be lost or stolen, memory cards corrupted, and so on. Images we make during a trip *always* must be backed up so that there are at least two files in physically separate locations for each image. Many photographers use a laptop for their image backups while traveling, but for reasons I’ve already mentioned, I prefer not to bring a laptop unless it’s absolutely required. Instead, I make the time every night during a trip to copy that day’s images to a second memory card, which I store separately from the ones in my camera bag. I do this in-camera because my camera bodies have dual memory card slots, but if your camera has only one slot you can backup to a portable hard drive or another memory card using a card reader. Some cameras have WiFi and/or Bluetooth capabilities, which can facilitate backups to a separate device such as a smartphone or even to the cloud, though network connectivity in many parts of the world is rudimentary at best. A backup strategy that I use when the images are extremely important is to shoot simultaneously to both of my camera’s memory cards, so that the instant the image is shot it is recorded as two separate files. I will then store one memory card separately from my camera gear. Again, this approach will only work if your camera has dual card slots. A final word of advice: bring enough memory cards so that you won’t have to reformat any of them during the trip.

It’s already a hassle traveling the world with a lot of camera gear. Most likely, the hassle factor will increase soon as a result of the turmoil in our modern world. I’m not looking forward to these changes, but I do expect they will happen soon, so I am rethinking my packing and traveling procedures to be prepared. Hopefully, some of the thoughts I’ve shared in this post will help others get prepared, as well.

What gear and procedures do you use to travel safely with all your gear? How do you see your approach changing as new airline regulations are enacted? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about gear? Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright [Encore Publication]: In search of the elusive royal bengal tiger in India’s Ranthambore National Park

Wildlife photography is one of the most exciting and rewarding pursuits I know, but it requires some special knowledge and gear, plenty of time, and lots of luck. I’ve posted on this topic before, specifically about wildlife photography gear (Post on Wildlife Photography Gear) and about sensitivity to the wildlife we’re shooting (Post on Approaching Wildlife). Today’s post is a case study on my recent wildlife safari in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, India. The park is famous for its population of wild royal bengal tigers, but even with its high concentration of the big cats, it is rare to see them. We were fortunate to encounter two tigers during our game drives, one a female who was stalking prey at some distance from us across a meadow, the other a large male who was close to us but obstructed by dense jungle vegetation.

I was rewarded with a few marvelous images of the female tiger, my favorite of which is this one:

The money shot! After weeks of planning, days of travel, hours of driving on rough tracks, and minutes of shooting, I had bagged several hundred images of this remarkable female tiger. A few of the images had the required combination of tack-sharp focus, uncluttered background, and appealing view of the animal. Buy this photo

Making an image like this requires careful planning to be in the right place at the right time. In our case, our travel company lined up the logistics and hired an expert guide and driver, which certainly helps, but it is still necessary to prepare for a photo safari like this. It requires some knowledge of the behavior of the wildlife you are seeking. It calls for having the right gear and knowing how to use it under time pressure and without hesitating. And it requires shooting a whole lot of frames in rapid succession, because most will not turn out perfectly.

To capture most wildlife, a long telephoto lens is a necessity. My go-to long lens for wildlife photography is the Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 lens. It’s more economical than a Nikon or Canon super-tele, and it produces reasonably sharp images even when used at its widest aperture. You can spend much more on this type of big glass if you want or need to, but I’ve found this lens works quite well for me.

Stability is very important when shooting a moving subject far away using a super-telephoto lens. During most game drives around the world, a tripod or monopod cannot be used due to space constraints in the vehicle. I will often use a beanbag to support the camera and lens, but on our canter (a large open vehicle that seats more than 20 people) in Ranthambore National Park, even that could not be used, as there is no surface to support the beanbag. So the only option here is to shoot handheld. Fortunately, the lens has good image stabilization built in, but it is also important to use good shooting technique and a very fast shutter speed. Remember to keep one hand under the lens to support it, the other hand on the grip of the camera, and both elbows firmly pressed against your sides. Gently squeeze the shutter release. I recommend setting your camera to continuous shooting mode if it has this feature, as this will maximize the number of images you can capture as well as avoiding the camera shake from having to press the shutter release repeatedly.

To control exposure when shooting wildlife, I usually use Manual Mode with Auto ISO. This little-known but extremely useful exposure mode allows you to set both shutter speed (which needs to be fast enough to avoid camera shake and to freeze the animal’s motion) and aperture (which I like to keep close to wide-open in order to soften the background), while adjusting the ISO to keep the exposure correct during changing lighting conditions. To learn more about this technique, read this post: Post on Manual Mode with Auto ISO.

Shoot many images while encountering the animal in the field. Keep them all on your memory card (which, of course, you should back up to another medium) until you have the opportunity to carefully cull them down to the ones that are technically adequate. Finally, during post-processing, you can select the few images that are both technically acceptable (tack-sharp focus, proper exposure) and artistically appealing (the subject looks great, the background is uncluttered and attractive). These selected images should then be carefully cropped and adjusted for exposure, contrast, and color balance.

There you have it. The effort that goes into making just a handful of really excellent wildlife images is disproportionate to the workload involved in most tasks we do, and the frustrations are many, but the rewards when it all goes well and we have a wonderful portrait of the animal in hand make it all worthwhile.

What are your favorite wildlife photography techniques? Please share them in the comment box.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

“To Travel Hopefully” News Flash!: I am honored to be a winner of the Travel Photographer of the Year competition

Dear Readers,

I’m just home after a whirlwind trip to London to receive my award and attend the opening of the exhibition for the prestigious Travel Photographer of the Year competition. I was named a winner in the Wildlife and Nature category for my image of an alligator and its reflection in a Louisiana bayou. TPOTY is considered by many in the industry to be the premier international travel photography competition. A panel of highly regarded judges considered tens of thousands of entrants from 123 countries.

The experience attending the exhibition opening was exhilarating. I had the amazing opportunity to meet the competition’s organizers, many of the esteemed judges, and several fellow winning photographers. I was interviewed on-camera for British news outlets. The quality of the show is first-rate. Until the opening, I’d never seen my winning image displayed as a photograph should be: printed at museum quality to a large size, and properly lit. The TPOTY exhibition started last month at the UK City of Culture festival in Hull, runs in London through September 3, and then moves on to several international venues.

My image may be purchased on TPOTY’s website in formats ranging from a postcard for less than one British pound up through a large framed museum-quality print. The retrospective book featuring all winning images can also be purchased on this site: Travel Photographer of the Year online store.

Feeling very honored and humbled by this major validation of my recent career change.

Thank you for your incredible support thus far. Please invite your friends and family members who are also passionate about travel and/or photography to join us here at To Travel Hopefully. Here’s to the many further travel photography adventures we will share together!

Cheers,

Kyle Adler

Focus on Dia de los Muertos [Encore Publication]: When a local festival takes you around the world

Sometimes you can attend a local event and feel as though you’re transported to a far-off part of the world, or even feel like you’re traveling across a wide cultural tableau of a whole region. That’s how I felt while shooting the recent Dia de los Muertas (Day of the Dead) celebrations in downtown San Jose. Although I had traveled only half an hour from my house, this festival celebrating life and honoring departed relatives took me on a cultural and historic journey across all of Latin America and beyond. In today’s post I will present a simple photo essay featuring some of my favorite images from this festival.
An Aztec dancer helps convene the day’s celebrations. Buy this photo

The Aztec fire dance’s origins date back to pre-Columbian times. Buy this photo

This shrine, erected on the back of a pickup truck, is dedicated to the memory of the owner’s deceased father and brother. Buy this photo

The “elegant skull” face painting is an element of Day of the Dead celebrations in several Latin American countries. Buy this photo

These lovely ladies awoke at 5 AM to paint their own faces and those of their family members. Buy this photo

More wonderful face art. Buy this photo

I love the cultural juxtaposition of Hello Kitty with Day of the Dead. Buy this photo

Although this portrait of a couple also worked well in color, I love the dramatic impact it makes when converted to a high-contrast black-and-white image. Buy this photo

Elegant and beautiful! Buy this photo

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief compilation of images from this recent festival and that it inspires you to seek out Day of the Dead celebrations near your own home.

What are some of your favorite cultural traditions? Have you captured these traditions using your camera? Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to see other posts about what to shoot while traveling and near home? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/shoot/

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: