Travel – Page 16 – To Travel Hopefully

Focus on Bethlehem AD [Encore Publication]: Our neighboring town hosts perhaps the largest nativity scene reenactment in the US

Even professional travel photographers can’t travel all the time. I’m always on the lookout for great opportunities to shoot local attractions during those stretches when I’m home. There’s a fun annual event in nearby Redwood City, California called Bethlehem AD that puts on perhaps the nation’s largest re-imagining of the nativity scene. Replete with Roman centurions, townspeople, craftsmen, dancers, bakers, camels, alpacas, and of course the holy family, some wise men, and a heavenly host of angels, this lavish staging of the nativity is a photographic treat.

Because the event is held only in the evening and there is very little lighting available on location, photographers must provide their own lighting. I used an off-camera speedlight that I handheld off to the side of the camera and connected to my camera’s TTL metering system using a flash cable. I’ve shot with Nikon’s own brand of flash cable in the past, but this new off-brand model worked better and cost a fraction of the price [NOTE: I retract my support for this off-brand flash cable. It failed and caused considerable damage to my camera. I strongly recommend you order the genuine Nikon brand flash cord, instead.]:

I shot in Manual mode at 1/60 second for flash synchronization and at f/5 or f/8. I chose ISO settings from 800 up to 3200 depending on the subject. Buy this photo

To freeze the motion of these dancers, I used TTL flash (off-camera, connected via a 3-foot flash cord) and a shutter speed of 1/60 second. Buy this photo

As with any sort of portrait photography, the best results are obtained by getting to know your subjects first, getting in close, and spending enough time that they become accustomed to the presence of the camera. Using this method, you can obtain natural-looking portraits. Buy this photo

All of these images were made using my go-to portrait lens, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8. Buy this photo

Beautiful portrait lighting can be shaped using an off-camera speedlight such as the Nikon SB-910. I made this portrait by holding the speedlight, with diffuser attached, a couple of feet to the left of the camera and bouncing the light off a nearby wall. The resulting light is soft and warm with no harsh shadows. Buy this photo

The final tableau, of course, is the actual manger scene. Because we arrived at closing time, this scene was packed with performers and spectators. I used the 85mm lens’ magnification power to isolate the holy family and a few onlookers from the rest of the scene. I handheld the flash unit above the camera and aimed it directly toward the holy family. A high ISO setting of 3200 also helped concentrate the ambient light at the scene. Buy this photo

What are your favorite winter holiday events? Please share your experiences shooting around the holidays.

Want to read other posts about shooting ideas while traveling or close to home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

Focus on Naatak “Arsenic and Old Lace”: America’s premier Indian theater company launches its sixtieth production

Naatak Indian Theater’s sixtieth production, an adaptation of the classic black comedic film “Arsenic and Old Lace,” opened yesterday and will run through November 19, 2017. If you live in or will be visiting the San Francisco Bay Area during this show’s run, I highly recommend your attending a performance. For more information or to order tickets, visit: Naatak Arsenic and Old Lace.

I had the privilege of shooting the tech rehearsal and one of the first performances. Today’s post shares some of my favorite images from both the tech rehearsal and the performance. I will refrain from providing commentary on the action in each image, so as not to spoil the narrative. I will, however, provide a few technical tips regarding how the images were made.

During downtime at rehearsals, be on the lookout for interesting shots. Here the director addresses the entire cast before beginning a run-through.

For the most dramatic images, choose your depth-of-field carefully. In this shot, I wanted the character in the foreground to be tack-sharp while the background character was still mostly in focus, so I selected a medium sized aperture in order to render a moderate depth-of-field.

Shoot a lot of images to ensure that a few capture just the right expressions on all the actors’ faces.

Just because you’re documenting a live performance doesn’t mean you can’t render the images artistically. I framed this dramatic moment to include lots of negative space around the actors, and in post-processing I lowered the black-point so as to surround the action with a completely black background.

Highlighting the little elements can make for pleasing images. I used a medium focal length (85mm) portrait lens to capture this image of an eccentric character, cropping it to allow the windows to provide a frame-within-a-frame.

Good theater is created in large part by the ensemble, with actors reacting to the action around them. Try to capture not only the active characters but also the ones reacting more passively to them.

Not every action shot needs to be zoomed in up-close. Here I captured the dramatic interplay among the cast members using a normal (50mm) lens to allow the whole scene to be included.

One of the joys of this production is the elaborate two-story-high set, so during the curtain calls I wanted to be sure to include the upper gallery.

How do you translate dramatic performances into still images? Please share your thoughts here.

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

Focus on Tourettes without Regrets [Encore Publication]: Adventures shooting a long-running underground performance event in Oakland

When I’m not traveling, I am fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there is never any shortage of amazing photographic subjects. In a typical week I conduct about 3-4 shoots and I’m always on the lookout for new experiences that will enhance the diversity of my portfolio. Recently I was invited to shoot the latest monthly show of Tourettes without Regrets, a long-running underground performance held in Oakland, California. Attracting an extremely diverse and hip young audience, Tourettes presents a completely different variety show each month that can be described as equal parts comedy, poetry slam, circus, battle rap, and burlesque. While the show is remarkably edgy and raucous (this is a PG-13 rated blog, so you’ll have to visit my main portfolio website to see many of the edgier images), in true Bay Area style it never puts anyone down and instead celebrates all of our differences. A hot, smoke-filled, jam-packed warehouse, entirely dark save for a few bizarrely colored LED spotlights, is not an environment that is particularly photography-friendly, but I was able to make some nice images through perseverance and creative post-processing. In this post, I share some of my favorite images along with a bit of discussion about how they were made.

Emcee and Tourettes without Regrets curator, Jamie, introduces the show. The warehouse was so packed with young spectators that I had to shoot around them with a moderate, fast telephoto lens. In post-processing, I cropped the image to remove unwanted elements and adjusted the shadow tones to darken the background. Buy this photo

This month, the show’s theme was “F*** Valentine’s Day”, so each act consisted of a pair of performers. These two ladies presented an aerial act that was mesmerizing but challenging to shoot due to the long distance to the subject, low light conditions, and strangely colored LED spotlights. I cropped the image in post-processing and converted it to black-and-white to avoid the strange color cast. Buy this photo

This skit depicts a woman breaking up with her boyfriend, who then tries to win her back with tears, money, and even a marriage proposal. Nothing works, until he begins to treat her poorly, at which point she decides she wants him, after all. The image captures an apt moment in the drama. Buy this photo

A Crocodile Dundee-style knife thrower and his lovely assistant prepare to terrify a volunteer from the audience. To capture this act I had to use a high ISO setting and fast lens due to the low lighting and the requirement for a fast shutter speed. During post-processing, I converted to black-and-white, increased the contrast and adjusted the color channels to enhance the dramatic feel, applied noise reduction to reduce problems associated with the high ISO setting, and cropped to remove extraneous elements. Buy this photo

A hip hop dancer amazes the crowd. A fast shutter speed was essential to freeze the motion. Obviously, to achieve a fast shutter speed, I needed to use a fast lens and high ISO setting. Shoot lots of frames in situations like this one, because you can never be sure when the best exact instant will present itself. Buy this photo

This scene from a battle rap, where two freestyle rappers trade insults, captures the essence of their interaction. Note the shallow depth-of-field places the emphasis on the performer not rapping at the time, with only the outstretched left arm of the other rapper in focus. I then converted to black-and-white to remove the color cast and cropped tightly using a square aspect ration to achieve an edgy Instagram-style image. Buy this photo

What are some of your favorite subjects to shoot in your neck of the woods? What events epitomize for you the area in which you live? Please share your thoughts here.

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

Post-Processing without Post-Traumatic Stress: A pro’s case study on quick and simple workflow for large batches of images

As a working professional photographer, I wouldn’t trade my job for any other in the world. I get to travel the world while capturing images of the diversity of cultures, landscapes, foods, events, and wildlife it has to offer. And when I’m not traveling, I have the opportunity to document so many wonderful people and events in my own San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood. Every job, not matter how wonderful, has its challenges. In this digital age, we photographers are often faced with workflow challenges: how do we cull 10,000 images from a big shoot down to a manageable number, post-process the best ones so that they’ll look their best, and distribute them quickly to the client? Today’s post offers one professional’s take on a quick and simple workflow that meets these challenges, delivering wonderful images to the client in a short period of time while (hopefully) preserving the sanity of the photographer.

I recently had the opportunity to capture two dress rehearsals and two performances of Dance Identity’s annual Spotlight production, showcasing 250 students and company dancers in 22 numbers. I shot nearly 10,000 images, culled them down to about 700, post-processed, and delivered a gallery to the client, all within 24 hours of the final show. Here’s how.

To illustrate the workflow, we’ll use as a case study the annual Spotlight production of local dance school and company Dance Identity. To document their 250 dancers in 22 dance numbers, I shot both dress rehearsals and both performances, as well as capturing dancers backstage and during candid moments. I captured some group shots of all the performers, instructors, and crew. And to get the big picture, I even shot from the catwalks at the top of the theater down onto the stage. In all, I shot nearly 10,000 images, which I culled to about 700 of the best photos, each of which required individual attention in post-processing. I delivered a gallery with these top images to the client within 24 hours of the end of the final show. Needless to say, without an efficient workflow this challenge would have been crushing. Here’s how I did it. The process I share here will be helpful for enthusiast photographers as well as pros. It doesn’t matter whether you’re delivering your images to a paying client or to your friends and family. When it’s crunch time and you have to turn around thousands of images from a shoot very quickly, this is a workflow that gets results.

Every image is different, but for large-scale shoots it is important to have a workflow that is streamlined so much of the processing can be done in an automated fashion.

Step 1: Culling Your Images

After each shoot, if there’s time before the next one starts, I review and begin to cull my images. There are some advantages to culling on a bigger screen, but to save time during big events like Dance Identity’s Spotlight production, I cull right on my camera’s LCD screen. Sure, some excellent images will be discarded using this approach, but with 10,000 images to get through quickly, it’s impractical to upload all of them to a PC and rank them all in a tool like Lightroom. I zoom in on the images when required in order to get a closer look at focus, facial expressions, etc., and I use the camera’s histogram to check exposure. I delete liberally as I go, keeping only the best images for a second review on the laptop. In the case of the Dance Identity shoots, I culled in-camera from 10,000 down to about 1500 images.

With so many similar images to choose from, the culling process needs to be quick and dirty. I do it using my camera’s LCD screen, transferring only the best images to the laptop for further culling and processing.

Step 2: Post-Processing

After culling down to a manageable number of images, but ensuring that the selected photos still represent all the dance numbers and all the performers, as well as a range of styles (group shots, motion shots, closeups, etc.), it’s time to post-process. I use Lightroom nearly exclusively as the tool for this job when it’s a large-scale shoot. Lightroom is optimized for the professional photographer’s workflow, and its presets, synchronization tools, and intuitive layout allow photographers to get the job done quickly and properly.

First, I import the selected images into Lightroom, using a preset to automatically adjust white balance, exposure, and noise reduction to the subject, in this case a fast-moving dance performance shot in an indoor theater. For example, I use the import preset and/or synchronization capability in the Develop module to quickly apply noise reduction for all the shots made at high ISO settings (1600 and above).

Next, I turn off synchronization and go through each image individually in the Develop module, fine-tuning the settings for that specific image. With many hundreds of images to fine-tune, I can only spend about thirty seconds on each one, so the workflow has to be very straightforward. Typically I use the crop tool first, as this will be required for nearly every image. I use the straightening tool within the crop toolset, selecting a line (such as a line on the stage or the bottom of the theater’s curtain) that I want to align with the top and bottom of the image. Then I crop the image to highlight the subject in the most powerful way. Sometimes I turn off the aspect ratio lock and set the image’s proportions manually, but most of the time I try to work with the aspect ratio as shot in the camera. After straightening and cropping the image, I do some fine adjustments on the exposure and color settings, and then apply any needed effects such as post-crop vignetting or conversion to black-and-white. Rarely, I may have to apply some selective adjustments such as brightening just one part of the image or removing a distracting background, but this slows down the workflow and should only be used when required.

Each image should be quickly straightened and cropped, then color and exposure settings (like the black point in the image above) can be applied to show the subject most effectively.

Step 3: Delivering the Final Images

Once all the selected images have been processed, it’s time to deliver them to the client. It can save time and simplify the workflow to use Lightroom’s Publish module to send your images directly to the platform you plan to use to deliver them. My website is powered by SmugMug, which integrates well with Lightroom. However, in the case of the Dance Identity shoots, I exported the top images to my PC’s hard drive, then uploaded the files from there to a new gallery on my website. It’s your call as to which method you like to use. In either case, once your final image files have been uploaded to your platform, it’s a good idea to apply security settings such as watermarking, right-click protection, and passwords to protect the images from misuse. This is also the time to apply keywording so that you, your clients, and the public can find the images now and in the future. Finally, communicate the availability of the final images, the access method, and the pricing to your client.

Delivering your images to a high quality platform quickly is a requirement to meet client needs in today’s world of fast-paced digital media.

So, there you have it: A quick but effective workflow to go from many thousands of raw images down to a few dozen or a few hundred beautifully processed photos, delivered to the client quickly and professionally. And the best part is that you, the photographer, can retain at least some of your sanity in the process. Of course, if you’re preparing fine art images for a major competition or exhibition, you’ll want to labor painstakingly over each one, hand-crafting every element of the image until you get it perfect. But when you’ve got many, many raw images that need to be delivered promptly, this process is a workmanlike way to get the job done!

Take a bow! You’ve married art with process engineering to deliver high-quality images to your client in a minimum amount of time.

Whether you’re a pro shooting for a paying client or an enthusiast shooting for family and friends, this basic workflow will get your images looking great and in the hands of those who want to see them in the shortest possible time.

What tips and tricks do your use when processing very large batches of images? Please share your suggestions here!

Want to see more posts about image post-processing? Find them all here: Posts about post-processing.

Approach with Care [Encore Publication]: Sensitive photographic practices help keep wildlife wild and healthy

Photographing wildlife in its natural habitat is one of the most exciting and rewarding activities I can imagine. From researching the species’ behavior to seeking it (sometimes for days) in the field, to that wonderful moment its image is captured on our memory card and to the thrill of viewing that image when we return from the field, there’s something truly magical about this genre of photography.

Observing and photographing animals in the wild, such as this rare wildcat along Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, is thrilling. Strive to put the animal’s welfare ahead of your image-making. Buy this photo

Done properly, wildlife photography can have zero to very modest negative impact on the creatures whose images we capture. In fact, photographers have done a great deal over the decades to help preserve wildlife through sharing images that inspire local people, governments, and the public to protect endangered species.

But by stalking and encroaching on a species’ territory, we photographers also put wildlife at risk of harm. Improperly engaging with animals with the intent of photographing them can cause a predator to starve by allowing its prey to escape, cause another creature to become prey by distracting it from its natural wariness, stress the animal to harmful levels, or acclimatize them to being around humans.

Here are some important guidelines for photographing wildlife in as safe a manner as possible:

Do your homework: The more you know before you set out to encounter a creature, the less likely you are to cause it harm inadvertently. If you will be going with a safari or tour, research the outfit first to make sure they follow the highest ethical standards. Get to know the behavior of the species you are seeking. What is their daily and seasonal routine? Where is their habitat? What do they eat and what eats them? What is a safe distance from which to view them?
Keep a respectful distance: As kids we were told to keep away from wildlife for our safety, but as photographers we also need to consider how far away we must stay in order not to cause the animals undue stress. Knowing where their meal ticket comes from, some safari and tour operators are willing to break park or preserve rules and approach the animals very closely so their clients can get great photos. Do not encourage this. Aside from the harm this stress can cause the animal, a stressed animal will look stressed in your photo and is more likely to bolt and leave you with no photo at all. So, use a long telephoto lens, keep your distance, and both your subject and your images will be the better for it.
Show special respect for the young: Baby animals are extremely vulnerable and should be treated with special care. If you are traveling with a tour, defer to your guide’s knowledge. If you’re on your own, be sure you’ve done your homework first, and err on the side of caution.Young animals, such as this baby baboon in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, should be photographed with special care. I made this image using a long telephoto lens and shot from a safari vehicle parked at a respectful distance. Buy this photo
No kidding–don’t feed the animals: It seems almost too obvious to have to state, and yet nearly every day I encounter humans attempting to feed wildlife. In Yosemite National Park, a number of bears must be killed each year because they have become dependent on humans for food. At your local city park, you’ll probably observe people trying to feed the birds or squirrels. And of course there are the big news stories (the recent major one was about the killing of the beloved Cecil the Lion) about hunters baiting animals with food. A well placed and properly maintained bird feeder in the backyard may be okay, but no other attempts should be made to feed wildlife.
Come back another time: In today’s networked world, word about rare animal sightings travels quickly. If you hear about a sighting while traveling or near home, chances are many other photographers and watchers have also heard about it. Multitudes of humans crowding around an animal will put it under undue stress and will also ensure you won’t make a great portrait of it. Come back another time when there are fewer other people. No photo opportunity is so irreplaceable that we should put the wildlife at risk.

With a little knowledge and courtesy, photographers can make great wildlife images while helping preserve and protect their subjects and keeping the wildlife wild. Conversely, without respect or information about the local fauna, we run the risk of putting them at grave risk. As the saying goes, make good choices!

The world’s smallest species of reindeer, the Svalbard reindeer is at risk due to global climate change. Cautious and respectful photographers can use their images to help protect and preserve at-risk species. Buy this photo

Do you have best practices about shooting (with a camera, that is) wildlife in the field? Have you observed human behavior–positive or negative–that serves as an example? Please share your thoughts here.

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

Stripped Down to the Bare Essentials [Encore Publication]: Cupid’s Undie Run supports Children’s Tumor Foundation

I’m fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fun, crazy, photogenic events–planned and spontaneous–occur nearly continuously. But the zany and colorful annual event known as Cupid’s Undie Run, for which participants strip down to their underwear and run through the city’s streets to raise money for Children’s Tumor Foundation, is actually held in dozens of cities around the world. The San Francisco version was quite small this year, in spite of 60-degree mostly sunny weather, but it was as energetic, irreverent, and just plain fun as ever. Today’s post features a few of my favorite images from this Valentine’s Day inspired event. This time, it’s just for fun; I’m not going to annotate the images with a lot of detailed information about how they were made. Enjoy, and consider supporting this valuable charitable cause: Children’s Tumor Foundation.

In between rounds of margaritas, a quick run along San Francisco’s waterfront. Buy this photo

Happily, the weather was unseasonably warm and dry. Buy this photo

The “finish line” is the front door of the pub. Buy this photo

It wouldn’t be Cupid’s Undie Run without Cupid. Buy this photo

Speaks for itself. Buy this photo

A quick reminder about how to make a stunning portrait: 1) find soft and appealing lighting, 2) get in close with a medium portrait lens, 3) select a wide aperture for shallow depth-of-field. Buy this photo

I love this town! Buy this photo

Look for this fun event in your town next year around Valentine’s Day. And, whether you’re traveling around the world or right in your home town, seek out those fun and quirky happenings that yield eye-catching images.

What are some of your favorite events to shoot, and why?

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

Sweet Release [Encore Publication]: What is a model release and when do you need one?

We photographers are passionate about many aspects of our trade. We love the artistic expression, that feeling of capturing a special moment that otherwise would be lost to time, even the gear we use to make images. But one aspect of the trade that few of us–professionals and amateurs alike–enjoy thinking about is the legal side of making and selling images. And one legal element about which we need to be knowledgeable is the model release. Unless you never plan to make any images in which any person is recognizable, you should learn what a model release is and when you may need to use one.

First, a disclaimer: I am not an attorney and the advice I provide in this post is not intended to replace consultation with a competent lawyer. What I provide here is just some practical advice I’ve acquired over the years, in which course I’ve made plenty of mistakes. And you should also be aware that laws governing when you can photograph a person and how that image can be used vary from country to country and even among states or provinces within some countries. With these points made, let’s explore the basic concept of a model release and when you may need one.

In the simplest terms, a model release is a legal agreement between a photographer and any person who will be recognizable in images made by the photographer. It spells out the conditions under which the image can be published and often specifies the compensation to which the model is entitled. In the US, a valid model release must be signed and dated by the photographer, the model, and a witness. If the model is a minor child, a parent or legal guardian also must sign. This agreement protects the photographer against being sued for defaming or cheating the model, but equally it protects the model from being taken advantage of.

When I work with a professional model, like Laura here, I always obtain a signed release before the photo shoot. This practice ensures she will be properly compensated and protected against inappropriate uses of her likeness, while I and any publisher will be protected against defamation claims by the model. Having the release means I have more flexibility as to how the image can be used later. Buy this photo

So, when do you need a model release? Here are some situations (not an exhaustive list) in which you should have one:

A person can be recognized in your image. Note that personally identifiable information doesn’t derive only from a direct likeness of the person’s face. He or she could also be recognized from a special feature such as a tattoo or from the context such as a clearly identifiable location.
… AND … one or more of the following statements is true:
- You may wish to sell the image for commercial purposes such as advertising or use in a business’s publicity or promotion.
- You may wish to enter the image in a competition or contest. Check the specific competition’s rules; some require a model release whenever a person is clearly identifiable in the photo, while others do not.
- You may wish to provide the image (even if you’re not compensated) for other people to use in a context you can’t control. A model release protects you and those who obtain a license to use your image from being sued by the model for using their likeness in a way that they don’t approve.

In contrast, there are plenty of situations in which you don’t need to have a signed model release. Some of these include:

One or many people appear in the image but none is recognizable. The subjects may be far away from the vantage point or they may all be obscured or facing away from the camera. As long as they cannot be identified individually, there is no need for a model release.
You plan to use the image only for your own portfolio.
You plan to use the image only for editorial purposes. If your photo is published in a newspaper, magazine, or website where the primary purpose is editorial rather than commercial, a release is not required. Imagine if every reporter had to get a signed release before publishing the likeness of every person appearing in any news outlet. This would have a chilling effect on journalism, which is a pillar of a free and democratic society. So in most cases, if your photo will be used for editorial purposes (that is, it will appear in a newspaper or magazine’s news section rather than in an advertising section), then you and the outlet’s publishers don’t need a release.
The images can be considered fine art photography. Photos can be published and sold without express permission from the person appearing in them if the primary purpose is fine art. In the US, case law upholds artistic expression as a form of First Amendment free speech in most cases.

Kashgar, China
Images with news value, such as this one made of a Uighur girl in Kashgar’s Old Town days before her home was to be demolished by the Chinese government, may be published and sold for editorial purposes with no requirement for a signed model release. Buy this photo

When you do believe that a model release would be helpful given your intended future use of an image, it is quite a simple task to obtain one. Some photographers carry printed forms with them so they can ask a subject to sign their release as needed. I use an app on my smartphone called “Easy Release,” which you can purchase for $9.99 on the iTunes Store: Easy Release app for iPhone. This app simplifies the process of creating a model release; getting it signed by your model, yourself, and a witness; sending it to others; and storing and managing it for future use.

Because “To Travel Hopefully” primarily treats the subject of travel photography, I want to share my own philosophy when it comes to asking for a model release while traveling. Even if you understand the laws of the country in which you are shooting, there are potential ethical issues in asking your subject to sign a legal document that he or she probably can’t understand. You may be able to get the text of the document translated into your subject’s local language, but even then the context of the agreement may not make sense to somebody from a very different culture than our own. I try to exercise good judgment when it comes to compensating the people I photograph when traveling overseas and to how I use the images later. You may want to read or reread my pillar post on photography as a bridge to local culture: Post on Travel Portraiture.

Many photographers, models, and publishers misunderstand the conditions under which a model release is or is not required, so there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Please consider my points here as just a starting point for learning more about this topic.

What are your best practices regarding when and how to use a model release? 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.

Happiness Quite Unshared [Encore Publication]: You’re back home from your trip and you’ve got your images looking great: Now what?

With the holidays approaching, I thought readers of To Travel Hopefully might enjoy seeing an encore of this early, pre-launch post with ideas about how to share your favorite images with friends and family.

Sometimes you just get that feeling. You know as soon as you depress the shutter button that you’ve just captured an incredible travel image. Over the course of your trip, you will hopefully amass quite a few of these images that you will be eager to share with friends and family. After the often laborious effort to cull your images and post-process the chosen few, it’s time to share these best photos with the world.

In olden times (pre-digital), there were fewer choices about how to share one’s travel photos. Many of us shot with color transparency (slide) film, sent all the rolls off to a lab for processing, picked out the top slides by hand, and stored them in a slide tray or carousel for future viewing. In the excitement just after a trip, we would likely invite a bunch of friends over, get them slightly inebriated, and subject them to a slide show using a projector and portable screen. This almost literally captive audience would feign enjoyment over, or perhaps even genuinely enjoy, viewing the large projected images and hearing our stories about the recent adventure. Then the guests would leave, and the slide trays would go back on a bookshelf to sit for months or years before anyone would look again.

In this brave new digital era, we have many more and better options for sharing our best travel photos. This being the Internet, I’ll offer up a Top Ten list of favorite ways to get my travel images in front of key audiences (Number 7 will amaze you!):

Social Media: While most social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are image-intensive, it turns out that they aren’t particularly good at sharing fine art photography. That said, these are important and obvious outlets for getting our favorite travel photos out to our friends promptly. Some even post while traveling, but I do not recommend this approach unless you are completely certain your home is secure while you’re away. Because these platforms encourage sharing, using them will allow your friends to pass them along to their friends, too.
Online Photography Sites: Specialized photography platforms, such as SmugMug, Flickr, PhotoShelter, and 500px, are tailor-made for sharing (and even selling) your best images. I use SmugMug to power my own professional photography website, but I also spend quite a bit of time browsing friends’ and even strangers’ photo galleries on the other platforms I mention here.
The New Home Slideshow: Who needs the clunky white folding screens and finicky slide projectors of yesteryear? Today most folks have a bright, high-definition display right in their living rooms, and it’s called a TV. Photos on a PC or tablet can easily be shared on a smart TV via WiFi or specialized connecting cables.
Your Phone: Today’s smart phones, whether iOS or Android, have easy ways to sync photos from your PC or tablet to the phone. Once on your phone, your photos are ready to show to anyone from your mom to a random stranger on a train. Not the biggest screen in the world, but it’s always with you and can store thousands of high resolution photos.
Send them the files: It’s sometimes desirable to send some of your original image files to a few trusted friends. Among the numerous methods for doing so are good ol’ trusty email (though attachment sizes are usually limited), Dropbox, and the download capability found in certain photography sites such as SmugMug.
Albums and Books: Yes, the photo album is still alive and well, and it’s never been easier to create one. Or you can go the extra mile and publish your own custom photography book. Many photo sharing sites allow you to create your own albums and books featuring your images.
Prints: The demise of the hardcopy print has been greatly exaggerated. There’s something special and timeless about the look and feel of a well-printed photograph on real paper. Do it yourself on a good home printer with high quality paper and ink, or send it to a professional lab, but a framed print on your wall or gifted to a friend to put up on their wall is a lovely way to share your very best images.
Cards: Greeting cards, birthday cards, holiday cards–these days it’s easy to customize them with your own images and send them to friends and family.
Calendars: Every year, I create a calendar with a photo from each month of the year just ended, and send copies to a few family members. I also proudly display this calendar in my home and office. What could be better than knowing you and your friends are viewing your photos every day of the year?
Keepsakes: Novelty gifts from pencil holders to jigsaw puzzles, to clothing items can be easily and inexpensively made using your favorite photos. We even have a cat food bowl sporting the likeness of our kitty. My younger daughter enjoys specialty socks, so I’m looking into ways of putting some of our images onto hosiery. Get creative!

Whatever methods you use to share your images with friends and family, I would encourage you to consider watermarking your photos. A watermark is a pattern or image placed across a portion of the photograph to identify it as the work of a particular photographer. While watermarks can be distracting to the viewer, they can be made quite discreet and they offer some protection against your image being stolen and passed off or even sold as the work of others. Many photo editing software packages and photo sharing sites offer the capability of attaching watermarks to your photos.

How do you share your travel images? Got a great idea for sharing that you’d like to add to the discussion? Please leave a comment in the box at the end of this post.

Focus on Sacramento Spartan Race [Encore Publication]: Covering a Spartan Race can be an endurance event

Some events are just plain fun to shoot from beginning to end. One of my favorite types of sporting events to cover is the Spartan Race. Basically a combination of long-distance running with a supersized obstacle course, a Spartan Race is an extreme athletic event that attracts thousands of athletes from elite to weekend warrior. I enjoy shooting these races because they offer so many exciting elements: color, drama, showmanship, grit, stamina, and humor. Adding to the photographic fun quotient are the glorious natural surroundings, the photogenic and extraordinarily fit athletes, and the wide range of athletic rigors required of them.

In this post I’ll present some of my images from this past weekend’s Super Spartan Race held near Sacramento, California. I will also share some tips on how to capture the best of a big and sprawling event like this one.

The Spartan Race organization recognizes and welcomes professional and enthusiast photographers more readily than do many US sporting authorities. For any large sporting event, I apply several weeks in advance for a media (or press) pass so that I can bring in all my gear, shoot in all areas including those off-limits to spectators, gain free or reduced-price entrance and parking, and access VIP areas. I’ve found the Spartan Race organizers to be quite helpful and understanding of what working photographers do.

Yours truly with media badge. This pass is important for the professional, as it allows access to otherwise off-limits areas and lets athletes and officials know you’re a working photographer.

One point to keep in mind when covering an endurance event spread out over long distances is that as a photographer, you will experience some portion of the rigors the athletes face. The Super Spartan Race traverses a course about 8 miles long over steep and often muddy hills, interspersed with a couple of dozen obstacles of different types. While I don’t typically try to cover all of the obstacles, it’s important to get a reasonable sample of the different challenges, so I do usually hike quite a few miles during the course of the day. Photographers with a media pass have access to the whole course, but there are no special roads or ramps to get us there. We have to trek up and down the same hills, through the same mud, and over the same terrain as the athletes do. So come prepared for a bit of a workout!

The starting line is a good place to set the stage for your photo essay. There is usually a DJ and music to get the athletes pumped up for the race. Everyone is fresh, clean, and excited at this early stage. Buy this photo

In addition to portraits and close-ups of individual athletes, it’s important to capture some establishing shots to set the context of the race. I like to get some images of large contingents of athletes running over the hills. I shoot from a distance, but often use a telephoto lens to compress the perspective and emphasize the massive scale of these races. Buy this photo

When shooting individual athletes on the obstacles, use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action and a relatively small aperture to blur the background. Buy this photo

Portraits of athletes don’t have to be in the cliche pose of standing, legs apart, on the ground flexing their biceps. Athletes are happy to pose in the midst of whatever they’re doing when they see a photographer nearby. Buy this photo

After finishing the course, athletes gather in the festival area. This is a great place to make portraits. The athletes are exhausted and muddy but in a celebratory mood. Buy this photo

Spartan athletes in the festival area display strength as well as excitement for having completed the race. Buy this photo

The finish line itself is a dramatic vantage point. In this particular race, athletes must jump over a line of fire to finish the course. I shot from a low perspective to emphasize the height of the jump, and used a fast shutter speed and small aperture to freeze the moment and isolate the athlete from the background. Buy this photo

This image works so well because the shooting angle looking upward from below emphasizes the athlete’s power, and because the timing captured her expression at just the perfect moment. I shot many frames to increase the likelihood of capturing the right moment, and, once again, I chose a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion along with a small aperture to blur the background. Buy this photo

The shower area at the end of the race was taken over by hordes of kids who used the hoses for water play. Humorous moments like this one lend a playful element to the day’s portfolio of images. Buy this photo

An iconic Spartan Race image. I captured the strenuous activity of carrying buckets filled with sand by shooting from a distance with a telephoto lens. This technique compresses the perspective to include more athletes in the frame while still showing the strain on their faces. Buy this photo

I like to seek out the athletes who have something special to say. This racer stopped for a moment so I could make a portrait. His flag makes a nice counterpoint to the rolling hills and featureless sky in the background. Buy this photo

Although Spartan Race athletes are fierce competitors, they also make an effort to support one another and cheer their fellow racers on. I enjoy capturing these interactions because these moments often tell a strong story visually. Buy this photo

What are your favorite sporting events to shoot? Do you have tips you can share for making great images of athletes?

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

Cards, Calendars, and Keepsakes: Oh, My! [Encore Publication]: Ways to share your images beyond social media and prints

With the holidays fast approaching, now is a great time to think about creative ways to share your favorite images as gifts for family and friends or perhaps to enhance your own home. Most commonly we share images via social media and, for more special occasions, as prints. Review this classic post for a list of 10 ideas for sharing your images: Post on Image-Sharing Ideas.

In today’s post, I discuss three of these methods that are particularly festive and well-suited to the holiday season: cards, calendars, and keepsakes.

A likeness of one of the earliest holiday cards my wife and I created. The original version was in black-and-white and had a humorous caption at the bottom. This version was made more recently using a modern digital process.

Cards: For the entire 31 years we’ve been together, my wife and I have sent our families and friends custom-made holiday cards. We created our first card in 1986, the year we started dating. The process was extremely complicated back then. We had to take the photograph using a film camera, send the film to a lab for processing, wait for the prints to be mailed back to us, select the image we wanted to use, cut the print down to the right size, tape it onto a printed template we had to design ourselves using a primitive word processor, and photocopy it onto card stock at a graphics store. It was strictly a black-and-white affair because color copying was very expensive in that era. Even for black-and-white cards, the cost was quite high.

Today, the process is vastly simpler and less expensive, and the quality very high. There are countless companies that will take your photo files and caption information, blend them with a design you choose from their library of sometimes up to hundreds of choices, and create an attractive customized card for a range of occasions. Shop around carefully before selecting one, because price, quality, and flexibility vary tremendously. My current favorite is Snapfish. Even though I no longer use Snapfish to host my image galleries, I continue to create and order photo cards from this site because it offers a good range of card designs, reasonably high printing quality, and affordable pricing. There are often very deep discounts available at Snapfish and other photo sharing sites. Try using a search engine to find discount or coupon codes. I rarely pay more than 60% of the listed price.

When creating a card on any platform, there are a few basic steps to follow. First, you choose the card design from a library of choices. There may be only a few designs for some types of occasions, but for the winter holidays there are usually dozens to choose from. Then you upload your images if they’re not already on the site, and select where you want them to go in the card template. Next, you add captions to customize the card. You may be able to include a return address on the envelopes shipped with the cards. Be sure to review your card carefully before ordering. The final step is to place your order by specifying the quantity (per-unit prices usually drop when ordering larger quantities), shipping address, and payment information.

Calendars: Photo calendars make great holiday gifts because they are personal, functional, and seasonal (the weeks before the start of the new year is typically when your loved ones will be looking for a calendar). Every year I create a calendar with images that present the past year in review. I send it to several family members and keep one for my own home and one for my office. As with cards, calendars can be ordered from a wide variety of companies with differing levels of quality and cost, so shop around.

Creating a calendar is similar to making a card. You choose a size and design, upload your images, and lay them out on the calendar template. Some sites allow you to further customize your calendar by including special dates such as birthdays, anniversaries, and other events important to your family or friends. The better companies let you include a photo to represent each special date during the year, and will save these dates for creating new calendars in future years. The ordering process for calendars is similar to that for cards: review the calendar and then place the order. Again, you may be able to find discount or coupon codes that will substantially lower your cost.

Keepsakes: These days, it seems that images can be reproduced on nearly any type of item you can imagine. This variety translates into a high likelihood of finding something for everyone on your gift list. I use SmugMug, the platform that powers my online professional photography business, for nearly all of the keepsakes I order as gifts, and my clients also have been happy with their purchases of these items. There’s a wide array of keepsake items to choose from, each customized with your image(s), including coffee mugs, coasters, smartphone cases, playing cards, desk organizers, and stickers.

To make a keepsake, simply upload your photo(s) if they’re not already on the site, select the type of item you want to order, ensure the image is cropped and/or sized appropriately for the item, and go through the checkout procedure.

This holiday season, get creative. Share your images on holiday cards, calendars, and a range of keepsakes. It’s never been as easy or inexpensive to make these items as it is right now, so have fun and experiment.

What are your favorite ways to share you images during the holiday season? Please add a comment with your ideas.

Want to read more posts about sharing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Sharing.

Focus on Bethlehem AD [Encore Publication]: Our neighboring town hosts perhaps the largest nativity scene reenactment in the US

I shot in Manual mode at 1/60 second for flash synchronization and at f/5 or f/8. I chose ISO settings from 800 up to 3200 depending on the subject. Buy this photo

To freeze the motion of these dancers, I used TTL flash (off-camera, connected via a 3-foot flash cord) and a shutter speed of 1/60 second. Buy this photo

All of these images were made using my go-to portrait lens, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8. Buy this photo

What are your favorite winter holiday events? Please share your experiences shooting around the holidays.

Want to read other posts about shooting ideas while traveling or close to home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

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.

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

Update: In the several weeks since I sent DMCA Takedown Requests to seven especially egregious offenders who used one of my most valuable images without authorization, I am frustrated to report that none of the sites has taken down my image. Most of the ISPs I contacted did reply promptly, but stated that they were not responsible for nor able to control the content published on domains registered under their names. In all cases, I made a good faith effort to find the actual owner/publisher of the offending pages, but thus far I have thoroughly failed in my attempts to have the offending sites take down my image. I’m not sure whether my experience is typical, but want to promptly share this update so fellow photographers will understand the DMCA Takedown process, while simple and cheap, is not a cure-all. I will be consulting with an attorney regarding next steps, and will report back to To Travel Hopefully readers soon. Below is my original post from a few weeks ago.

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.

Amazing Landscapes [Encore Publication]: How to make images that capture the spirit of the place

I love landscape photography. To create a really successful landscape image, several elements have to converge: the lighting must have a pleasing quality, objects in the foreground and/or middle ground should be intriguing, leading lines should take the viewer on a journey through the image, and (usually) the sky must be dramatic and compelling. I shoot a lot more mediocre landscapes than great ones, but when all the stars align (sometimes literally, during astrophotography shoots) and all those compositional elements are in place, the results can be amazing.

Let’s take a look at some of my favorite landscape images and talk about how they were made.
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While traveling in Svalbard to view the total solar eclipse of March 2015, my wife and I booked a safari via snowmobile to search for polar bears. We covered 80 miles by snowmobile, much of that after dark. The temperature averaged -5 degrees, with wind chill about 25 below zero Fahrenheit. We rode out to an area now used as a campground, where an early settler and his wife lived a century ago. This was glorious, otherworldly scenery encompassing ice fields, mountains, and the icy Barents Sea. Svalbard is located so far north (closer to the North Pole than to mainland Norway) that the sunsets last for hours, so I set up my gear at the edge of the Barents Sea, composed the frame so that the eye is led out to the horizon by the slabs of ice and the range of mountains, and waited for the best light. A polarizing filter added some drama to the sky. A very long exposure was not necessary because there was no point to trying in blur the frozen water. I shot several frames before the light became too dim and the temperature too bitter to continue. This shot was the keeper!

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This landscape was shot during a recent trip through Turkey and is a good example of how sometimes we photographers just get lucky. On arriving in the Cappadocian village of Üçhisar, we were thrilled to learn our hotel room was inside an ancient cave dwelling. We awoke at 5:30 AM the next morning to the sight out our cave-hotel’s window of hundreds of hot air balloons launching above the “fairy chimneys” that dominate the Cappadocian landscape. I got (mostly) dressed and rushed out onto our balcony, set up the camera on the lightweight travel tripod I carried on the trip, put on a wide-angle zoom lens, and started shooting as the sun rose. I bracketed the exposure but because the light was perfect in this one shot, I did not end up combining multiple exposures into an HDR (high dynamic range) image. Instead, this shot, one of the first of the morning’s session, was the clear choice.

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Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park is catnip for landscape photographers. There are so many glorious subjects here that you can go crazy trying to photograph everything. But Patagonian weather is notoriously changeable, and group travel doesn’t always afford photographers the chance to shoot at the right place at the right time of day with the right weather. Fortunately, on our second night at the lodge on Lago Gray, I could see all the conditions were lining up for an epic image. I skipped most of an excellent dinner so that I could set up my gear on the deck: camera with wide-angle lens, polarizing filter, steady tripod, and remote release. I framed the image with a nice balance between sky, mountains, glaciers, lake, and foreground foliage. And I started shooting. I bracketed the exposure with 7-shot bursts, each one stop apart. Later, in postprocessing, I combined a few of the shots from one burst into an HDR (high dynamic range) image using Lightroom’s photomerge feature.

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Closer to home, Yosemite is another photographer’s dream location. While hiking to Dog Lake in Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows area, a freak hailstorm hit. Suddenly the sky was hurling hailstones in biblical style and the formerly placid surface of the lake turned black with the force of the pelting ice. What’s a photographer to do? Start shooting, of course! A tripod was impractical under these conditions, so I used a relatively fast shutter speed and shot handheld. I took a series of bracketed exposures and combined them later using Lightroom into an HDR (high dynamic range) image. For me, this image works because of the tension between the peaceful foreground of tree trunk and reeds, contrasted with the ominous sky and turbulent water. The fallen tree and edge of the grasses provide nice leading lines from the peaceful to the violent portions of the frame.

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Another California landscape, this image was shot in the gorgeous Point Lobos reserve on California’s Central Coast. As sunset neared, I set up camera and tripod right on the beach, shooting down onto the rocks and Pacific Ocean. I used a neutral density filter to allow a very long exposure so that the water would blur. I also attached a polarizing filter in an attempt to darken the sky and add drama to the image, but having two filters on the wide-angle lens did lead to some vignetting (the blocking of light at the edges of the photo), which I had to crop out in postprocessing. This image was made from a single exposure with only minor adjustments to bring out the shadow details and saturate the colors.

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This year’s Perseid Meteor Shower was more active than we’ve seen in many years. At the peak night of the shower, I headed out to a spot where a break in the trees allows a view over Crystal Springs Reservoir and the Santa Cruz Mountains. We waited until about 2 AM so that the meteor activity was at a peak and the lights of the nearby towns were no longer bright. Shooting with a wide-angle lens and a heavy professional tripod, I framed the image to include a pleasing foreground with trees, reservoir, and mountains, with most of the frame covering the dark sky. I used a star finder app to shoot toward the galactic core of the Milky Way. I set the camera to make 25-second exposures at f/4 and ISO 1600. At this focal length, exposures longer than 25 seconds will cause the stars to appear blurry due to the motion of the earth. And then I just kept shooting, one exposure after another, for nearly two hours. Four meteors passed through the part of the sky in my image area during this time, and I combined the images that included them into one merged image using a software application called StarStaX. While I like this image a lot, it could have been improved by finding a darker sky area (the lights from a nearby city caused the orange glow at the top of the mountains) and by bringing out the Milky Way a bit more prominently. Now I know what to do during next year’s Perseid Shower!

A good wide-angle zoom lens is a must for landscape photography. Many of the images featured in this post were shot with my Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and I find it’s a great alternative (except perhaps for astrophotography where the extra speed is required) to the popular but very expensive Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8.

Want to see more articles on how to shoot travel images? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/shoot/

Now I’d love to hear from you! What are your favorite landscape images, and why? To what lengths have you gone to capture landscape photos? Please share your thoughts in the comment box at the end of this post.

Focus on Tourettes without Regrets: Adventures shooting a long-running underground performance event in Oakland

What are some of your favorite subjects to shoot in your neck of the woods? What events epitomize for you the area in which you live? Please share your thoughts here.

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

It’s All in the Telling [Encore Publication]: Sharing images as a photo essay can help tell a story

When we share our images from a trip or from an event close to home, we become more than photographers; we become storytellers. An individual image can tell a powerful story all by itself, and most of the best ones do. But presenting a series of related images in the form of a photo essay is a great way to share a story with your viewers. Each image serves a purpose in the structure of a photo essay, just as each sentence or paragraph does in a written essay. In this post, I will revisit last weekend’s Sacramento Super Spartan Race (see Post on Spartan Race), taking the same 12 images from the earlier post but rearranging them in the form of a rudimentary photo essay. We’ll discuss the purpose of each major type of image in creating the essay. [Note: I am borrowing some of the organizational concepts presented in CUNY’s Photojournalism course materials at this site: http://photo.journalism.cuny.edu/week-5/.]

Establishing Shot: Usually the first image in a photo essay, the establishing shot should draw in the viewer by presenting the big picture.

The establishing shot sets the context of the essay. Here I use an image of large contingents of athletes running over the hills. I shot from a distance, using a telephoto lens to compress the perspective and emphasize the massive scale of the race. Buy this photo

Alternatively, we could use the starting line image as our establishing shot. Some essays lend themselves well to a chronological telling, in which case it’s good to start at the beginning. In the case of this specific event, I prefer the establishing shot to be a big-picture overview of many athletes in the middle of their course.

The starting line is a good place to set the stage for your photo essay if you will be using a chronological method of telling the story. Buy this photo

Portraits: Often the biggest portion of the photo essay, portraits tell the story through images of some of the people who are involved. The portraits can be tight head-shots, full-body shots, or environmental portraits that show the setting as well as the person. I like to use a combination of all of these compositional methods. And it’s also fine to use a mix of posed shots and candids. Variety can improve some photo essays, although in other cases you may opt for a consistent look-and-feel for many of your images so the mash-up of styles doesn’t distract the viewer from the story.

This environmental portrait shows the athlete in the context of the monkey bars obstacle, with other athletes and the background included in the frame. Buy this photo

Not all portraits have to show the subject’s face. This environmental portrait works because it shows us what the athletes are doing from their point of view. Buy this photo

This posed portrait is framed rather tightly, showing the power and the elation of the athletes after finishing the race. The background, while bright and busy, is not overly distracting. Buy this photo

For powerful portraits, I like to seek out people who have something special to say. This racer stopped for a moment so I could make a portrait. His flag makes a nice counterpoint to the rolling hills and featureless sky in the background. Buy this photo

Interaction: Most photo essays can benefit from at least one shot showing the interaction between different people in the story.

This shot of kids playing in the shower area at the end of the race shows another type of interaction. Buy this photo

Close-Up: It’s helpful to include some images that show the little details. In the case of this particular event, I don’t have many close-up shots, so I’ll include this one fairly tight portrait as a placeholder. It would be great to include a true close-up shot showing just the athlete’s gloved hands as she grasps the rope, perhaps with part of her face in the background, for example. This could be done by tightly cropping this image.

This tight portrait shows great action and emotion. While it’s not a true close-up image, which ordinarily would show only a few details rather than the full person, it can serve a similar function in the essay by focusing the viewer’s attention on a small specific part of the race. Buy this photo

Closer: This will be the last image in the photo essay, so it needs to be a strong one. It could be a climactic moment or, if the story is being told chronologically, an image made at the end of the race. I’ll include two possible closing shots here. The first captures an athlete jumping over the fire at the finish line; it’s both dramatic and symbolizes the end of the event. The second shows a classic Spartan Race moment, where the athletes have to carry heavy buckets of sand along a muddy, hilly course; this image could make a good closer because it evokes a quintessentially Spartan Race sense of emotion.

The finish line itself is a dramatic vantage point. In this particular race, athletes must jump over a line of fire to finish the course. Buy this photo

An iconic Spartan Race image. I captured the strenuous activity of carrying buckets filled with sand by shooting from a distance with a telephoto lens. Buy this photo

Have you presented your images in the form of a photo essay? How did you structure it? What advice can you share for fellow photographers who would like to use this format?

Want to read more posts about sharing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Sharing.

Portraits from Irish Pubs [Encore Publication]: Ireland’s trad music scene is a visual as well as an aural treat

The Republic of Ireland has undergone tremendous social and financial changes over the last 20 years. It’s now indisputably a modern global society with a strong diversified economic engine. Yet it’s also a happy truth that today, as in days of old, the pub remains at the center of Irish social life. Far more than a simple watering hole, the local Irish pub, whether in the center of cosmopolitan Dublin or in a tiny coastal fishing village, is a gathering place where stories are shared, traditional music is played, old friends catch up, and new friends are made. Oh, and a pint or two might just be downed.

Many pubs feature live traditional, or “trad,” music on a nightly basis. The casual informality of Ireland’s pub scene allows local amateur musicians to sit in with seasoned pros and pass down the songs from old to young. Members of the “audience” (it’s hard to distinguish between performers and audience when the sessions are so participatory) are invited to step up to the “stage” (usually just a table covered with pints of beer) to sing a song at any time. This informality allows the travel photographer to get to know these wonderful musicians over a few pints and to make authentic portraits without feeling like we’re intruding.

Today’s post is a simple photo essay featuring portraits I made of musicians and fellow customers at a variety of pubs across Ireland (plus one in Scotland). I will forgo the usual technical details except to remind you that when shooting portraits in low-light settings where the use of flash is impossible, that a good fast portrait lens should be used along with a high ISO setting.

My current favorite lens of all 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.

This young singer and fiddler who we met at Dublin’s famous O’Donoghue’s Pub was already a seasoned pro. In this portrait I sought to capture her expressiveness with hand gestures. Even without hearing her sing, the viewer can tell that she is expert at weaving stories. Buy this photo

O’Donoghue’s is widely known as the spot where bands such as the Dubliners sparked the Irish folk music revival in the 1960s. This band carries on the tradition, sharing songs old and new. With a wide aperture comes shallow depth-of-field, so when photographing several people at one time you may have to choose which part of the image will be in focus. Here I wanted to place the emphasis on the guitarist, so the other players are in softer focus. Buy this photo

Another of Dublin’s great spots for trad music is the Cobblestone Pub. On this night they were holding a very casual session, where all musicians were invited to come and play some tunes together. The informality gave me a chance to get to know most of the players over the course of the evening and to make portraits without feeling like an intruder. Again, the shallow depth-of-field required artistic choices about which subject would be in sharp focus and which would be in softer focus. Buy this photo

In lively Kenmare, we wandered into a pub where a fabulous folksinger was performing many of the Irish songs I remember from childhood in Boston. I chatted with Pat during his set breaks and bought a couple of his CDs. He was a great subject for some expressive portraits, too. Buy this photo

We didn’t have to leave our hotel on our first night in Killarney to hear some wonderful trad music. This trio played many of our favorite songs right in the hotel’s pub, and they got most of the audience up to sing and dance along. Buy this photo

Surprisingly, we heard only one rendition of Cockles and Mussels (aka “Sweet Molly Malone”) during our whole stay in Ireland. This brave soul stood up in front of the crowd to sing that old standard. Buy this photo

There’s nothing like watching an Irish crowd respond to the playing and singing of “The Wild Rover” to get one’s blood pumping. Be ready to capture action in the “audience” as well as on the “stage.” Buy this photo

Our second night in Killarney brought us into the center of town to an old and lively pub. The table next to ours had four generations of a local family in attendance, each enjoying the musical set in their own way. The oldest generation was my favorite. Buy this photo

I got to know this fiddler over the course of the evening in Killarney. During the break between sets she was kind enough to let me make her portrait. It can be difficult in these crowded settings to avoid a cluttered background, but using a wide aperture for a shallow depth-of-field can help, as can careful post-processing. Buy this photo

Elements I look for when making a portrait are faces with character and colorful details. I found both with this accordion player and his beautiful instrument. Buy this photo

The tiny fishing hamlet of Dingle has a population of just 1900 people, yet it somehow supports 52 lively pubs. My kind of town! Over pints of ale and shots of local whiskey in this colorful old pub, we made new friends from across the street and from as far away as Newfoundland. This portrait of a musician was made almost entirely with light from the fireplace. Buy this photo

The Scottish traditional music scene is as vibrant as Ireland’s, as evidenced by this band we heard at Edinburgh’s Sandy Bell’s Pub. This place was bustling and extremely crowded. The cluttered background somehow doesn’t detract too much from the power of this portrait. Buy this photo

Have you traveled in Ireland or Scotland? Do you have favorite portraits of the generous and friendly people you encountered there? Please share your thoughts in the comment box.

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

Focus on SAFEhouse Resident Artist Workshop [Encore Publication]: Documenting three very different and exciting new dance pieces

Recently I had the privilege of shooting both the tech rehearsal and first performances of three new dance pieces by very different, wonderfully talented, resident artists at San Francisco’s SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts. SAFEhouse is a unique program that incubates emerging artists by giving them studio space, expert guidance, and public performances so they can grow and develop new work. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each of the resident artists and having the opportunity to experience and document their pieces.

Each artist and work created a very different emotional affect, so I worked hard to shape my images according to how the performances made me feel. As photographers we have the capability, like a painter or poet or dancer, to create our art in accordance with our emotions. This is a point that is too easily forgotten when we’re out in the field shooting. Today’s post shares a few of my favorite images of the tech rehearsal and performance for each of the artists, along with some brief discussion of how the images were made.

Dancer mia simonovic rehearses her highly improvisational new piece, “residue1”. I loved her brave and fluid expression through motion of the feelings and sensations that were passing through her in the moment. This work requires not only real-time improvisation but also the courage to be completely vulnerable on stage. To capture the spirit of her piece, I made a series of images (one of which is shown here) of mia dancing with her own shadow. I felt this image would be expressed most authentically in black-and-white, so I made the conversion to monochrome during post-processing. Buy this photo

Seeking another method to capture the elusive and transient spirit of mia’s piece in a still image, I decided to try a series of images using a slower ISO and shutter speed to create some motion blur. To enhance this effect, during post-processing I increased the contrast and vibrance until the visual impact came close to matching the emotional impact I felt during her piece. Buy this photo

The next artist was Arina Hunter. Her piece, “Dyspnea,” was unusual in that, instead of using a prerecorded sound score, she accompanied her motion entirely with sounds made by her own body. Because these vocalizations and body percussion sounds were very soft compared to amplified music, I was able to make only a few images during her performance so as not to disturb the audience members. Fortunately, I was able to capture many nice images during Arina’s tech rehearsal. This one nicely captures her lovely expressive hand motions and facial gestures. Buy this photo

Arina’s piece was very physical and covered a wide range of moves, poses, and expressions. Here I captured her floor work by getting lying down on the floor of the stage myself so that I was shooting at the same level as her face. Buy this photo

The final piece was presented by Maligrad Contemporary Dance Company, directed and choreographed by Molly Fletcher Lynch-Seaver. This powerful performance spoke to me of violence and our complicity in standing by while it happens. I wanted to capture this scene the way I felt it, which was like a gang rumble out of the movie “West Side Story,” so I shot straight into the action, allowing the brick walls and girders to frame the image, and converted to black-and-white during post-processing. Buy this photo

This image was made near the end of Maligrad’s tech rehearsal. When composing an image in which there’s a lot going on, I find it helps to think like a painter, specifically asking myself, “what elements do I want in the image vs. not in the image, and how do I want to arrange them?” Buy this photo

During Arina’s live performance, I was only able to capture a handful of images due to the quiet sound score. This was a favorite, as it reflects her expressive gestures in face, hands, and body. Buy this photo

Because mia’s piece is so improvisational, it unfolded very differently in the live performance than in the tech rehearsal. Knowing this in advance, and also knowing I could not move around during the performance like I could during the rehearsal, I just let myself be moved by her work, capturing the moments that spoke most strongly to me. This image was made by shooting straight on but has a nice, soft visual appeal that matches her contemplative motion. Buy this photo

This image, made during Maligrad’s live performance, is another example of the choices we photographers must make when framing a scene that includes multiple elements at different distances to the camera. I chose to emphasize the dancer in the foreground by using a very narrow depth-of-field (low F-stop number), because I felt the story here was her pain at observing the warlike behavior of the background dancers. Buy this photo

The final performance of the new works by these three artists-in-residence was Feb. 9, but if you live in the S.F. Bay Area you can follow their work and also look for other upcoming events at SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts. I hope you’ve enjoyed my images and that I was able to provide a sense of how to shape our images to match the emotional feelings evoked by a performance.

How do you transform your emotions into images? Please share your thoughts here.

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

Every Day I Write the Book [Encore Publication]: Even in the digital world, there’s a place for a hardcover photo book from your trip

In the brave new digital world, we have a lot of ways to share our travel photos after (and sometimes even before) we return from the trip: social media, on-screen slideshows, video montages, and of course the enduringly popular paper print. Even with all of these very immediate sharing options, one of my favorite formats for preserving my travel images is the hardcopy photo book, and today there are more choices than ever before regarding how to create these wonderful keepsakes.

Our living room bookshelf and coffee table are home to more than a dozen photo books, each one showcasing the images and preserving the often fleeting memories of the details of a major trip we’ve taken. Here’s why I love this method of sharing travel photography and how to create your own photo books.

The leather cover of a photo book showcasing our recent travels in Turkey.

Why create a photo book? Over time, new digital formats replace existing ones, and the very old ones become obsolete. Within about 20 years, it is quite likely that none of our present formats of storing data will still be readable. The printed page has much more staying power. It is estimated that photos printed on high quality paper using high quality inks, and stored away from direct sunlight, can last for 100 years. I’m a big fan of framed prints, as well, but a photo book is more cost-effective and space-efficient as a means to preserve many more photos than we could easily hang on our walls. And because photo books can include customized captions to accompany the included images, they’re a great reference source for refreshing our memories about what we saw, when, and where. Finally, photo books look great and are fun conversation-starters to tell the story of our travels when friends and family come to visit.

How do you create a photo book? There are a number of methods, but unless you are a scrapbooker or handy with bookbinding, all of them involve sending your specifications and images to a vendor that will print the book, bind it, and mail it to you. Some software packages, including Lightroom, have built-in modules for creating photo books. And most photo sharing websites, including SmugMug (a fabulous site used by many professionals including me), Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Apple Photos, allow you to create and purchase photo books from your images. These services vary in features, price, and quality, so shop carefully. Most of my past photo books were created using Snapfish, but I am transitioning to using Lightroom’s and SmugMug’s services instead. I will report on the results in a future post.

Good book-creation software should allow you to choose from a wide range of formats on each page to display one or several photos plus text.

The basic process works similarly for any of these services. You specify the book size, cover material, paper quality, printing quality, and other basic parameters for your book. Then, you fill the pages of the book with your photos, specifying the layout you want for each page. You can add captions for individual images or series of images, and you may be able to add various special effects. At the end of the process, you place your order for the book to be printed and mailed to you. Using the service offered by Blurb, which is available via SmugMug and Lightroom, you can self-publish a large or small print run of books and make them available for sale on Amazon or directly on your own website.

The process of creating a photo book using Lightroom’s Book module (shown here) is fairly straightforward. It’s even more intuitive using an online service such as Snapfish or Shutterfly.

When you receive your photo book a few days after placing your order, you’ll have a keepsake suitable for sharing with visitors and for preserving your own precious travel memories.

A two-page spread in our Turkey photo book showcases several images of the incredible rock formations in the Cappadocia region.

Have you created photo books from your travel images? Which service did you use and how was your experience? Please share your thoughts here.

Interested in reading more posts about sharing your travel images? Click here to see them all: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/share/.

Sports Roundup [Encore Publication]: How to get amazing shots at sporting events

Whether we’re traveling afar or close to home, sporting events make for exciting photography. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (credit: ABC’s Wide World of Sports), the heroic effort, and the little moments of humor and repose amidst the adrenaline rush of competition: all of these elements can be captured in images of athletic events.

While every sport has its own rhythm and rules, there are certain techniques that apply across a wide range of sports photography situations. Let’s take a look at a few situations and discuss how to get the best images given the inherent challenges. Note that these photos were all made during outdoor sporting events; there are special challenges with many indoor sports, such as basketball or hockey, because the action remains just as fast but there is less light to work with, and the artificial lighting can impart an unnatural color cast. But that’s a topic for a different post.

Whatever the sport, I like to shoot from different perspectives, from wide to very close. The wider views show the environment as well as the athletes, so these make good establishing shots. But often the most compelling and dramatic sports images are the tight compositions, because they portray the athletes in a very personal and relatable way.

Below are two shots of the same rowing crew during the same race at a high school regatta. The first image was composed from slightly farther away and with a less extreme focal length (300mm), so the resulting composition is more environmental. It shows not only all the rowers and the coxswain in the shell, but also the width of the river and the surrounding scenery. This shot establishes the setting and gives the big picture.
Environmental shot of a crew racing at a rowing regatta. Buy this photo

Now here’s the same crew, but captured from a closer vantage point and using a longer focal length lens (750mm). This perspective isolates the athletes from the background and shows their expressions and postures. There’s certainly more drama here, at the expense of some insight into the environment.

A tighter shot of the same crew in the same race. Buy this photo

There are exceptions, such as when you choose to blur the motion to give a sense of the athlete’s grace, but as rule you want to use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action in sports photography. Very often that means shooting at 1/1000 of a second or even faster. Choose the Shutter Priority mode on your camera to gain control over the shutter speed, and be sure to select a high enough ISO setting to allow the shutter speed you require. If your camera has different auto-focus settings, you may find it helpful to choose a single-point focus setting if you know where the action will be, or a dynamic focus setting if the location of the action changes very quickly. For this image of a professional beach volleyball tournament, I chose single-point auto-focus so I could select the exact spot where the players would be jumping. I also find the best way to capture a great image in fast-moving sports (as with wildlife photography) is to set the camera to continuous or burst mode and continue to shoot rapidly through the action. That way, you’ll have several different images to choose from, and with luck at least one will have caught that “decisive moment.”

A fast shutter speed and single-point auto-focus allow the fast action of a beach volleyball competition to be captured precisely. Buy this photo

My favorite sports images portray the human element in a very personal way. This photo from a Spartan Race (an extreme athletic event that combines long-distance running with a supersized obstacle course) captures the strength and the struggle of the athlete as he nears the end of a long race through the 100-degree California desert. Keys to success in making this image were shooting from a vantage point low to the ground, using a medium-length prime telephoto lens with a large aperture to soften the background, and waiting for just the right moment.

An endurance athlete completes an obstacle near the end of a Spartan Race. Buy this photo

The fun of shooting a sporting event doesn’t end when the competition is over. Be sure to capture the dramatic and often humorous moments during award ceremonies and downtime during and after the action.

These athletes have finished their Spartan Race and strike a humorous pose at the finish line. Buy this photo

Want to see more posts on what to shoot at home and while traveling? See them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/shoot/

What sports do you enjoy shooting? Do you have tips on how to get great sports images? Please leave a comment in the box after this post.

Focus on Sacramento Spartan Race [Encore Publication]: Covering a Spartan Race can be an endurance event

Yours truly with media badge. This pass is important for the professional, as it allows access to otherwise off-limits areas and lets athletes and officials know you’re a working photographer.

When shooting individual athletes on the obstacles, use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action and a relatively small aperture to blur the background. Buy this photo

After finishing the course, athletes gather in the festival area. This is a great place to make portraits. The athletes are exhausted and muddy but in a celebratory mood. Buy this photo

Spartan athletes in the festival area display strength as well as excitement for having completed the race. Buy this photo

What are your favorite sporting events to shoot? Do you have tips you can share for making great images of athletes?

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

Cards, Calendars, and Keepsakes: Oh, My!: Ways to share your images beyond social media and prints

In today’s post, I discuss three of these methods that are particularly festive and well-suited to the holiday season: cards, calendars, and keepsakes.

What are your favorite ways to share you images during the holiday season? Please add a comment with your ideas.

Want to read more posts about sharing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Sharing.

Black-and-White to the Rescue [Encore Publication]: Converting a noisy or strangely colored image to monochrome can save the day

In a recent post (Post on Circus Automatic), I shared several practical tips for shooting fast-moving indoor performances, using a circus performance as an example. While I was happy with many of my images from that evening’s shoot, I discussed how the single-colored LED lights now used at many indoor performances can impart an unnatural color cast to photos that can be hard to correct in post-processing. In today’s post, I show how converting these images to black-and-white can overcome some of the limitations of shooting under these adverse lighting conditions, with the added bonus that the noise imparted to the images (from having to shoot at a very high ISO setting) can also be less noticeable in black-and-white conversions.

First, a little background explanation on why these LED lights are so troublesome for the photographer to work with. When we refer to the resolution, or number of pixels, in our camera’s sensor, that number is actually the total count of three different kinds of pixels, each kind sensitive to only one of the three primary colors (red, blue, and green). Without going into the nitty-gritty technical details, suffice it to say that in most camera sensors, about 50% of the pixels record only green data, about 25% only red data, and about 25% only blue data. My camera (the Nikon D810) is said to have a resolution of 36.3 megapixels (MP), but if my subject is lit by a single-colored red LED, in reality only about 9 MP of resolution is recorded. The other two color channels will essentially contain no data. This is bad for several reasons, most notably because the image will be cast unnaturally toward the red color channel and because its effective resolution will be low.

There’s very little we can do in post-processing to recover from the loss of resolution during capture, but we can adjust the color temperature to try to correct a little bit of the strange color cast. Converting the image to black-and-white, though, can restore the image to a more natural appearance by masking the color cast. This can be aided by using Lightroom’s contrast and color control sliders to adjust the balance of the black-and-white version until it appears closest to a normal tone.

Consider the following two versions of the same shot. The first version is in color, and even after adjusting the color temperature and contrast, there is still a distracting red color cast. There is also some noise apparent in the image as a result of the high ISO setting required to freeze the acrobats’ motion.

The color version of this image appears unnatural even after adjusting color temperature, due to the lighting which consisted of a red-colored LED array.

Now, take a look at the black-and-white version of the same image. Creating this version required careful attention to the balance of each color and contrast setting to make the final image. The good news: the monochrome image appears much more natural to the eye than does the color version. The skin tones seem less artificial, and the curtain in the background does not distract as much. Furthermore, there is less noise apparent in the black-and-white version.
The same shot appears more natural and less noisy when converted to a black-and-white photo. Buy this photo

This next shot appears much more acceptable in its color version. During a live performance, the lighting often changes drastically from one moment to the next, and in this image the LED lights didn’t impart as harsh a red cast as in the previous image. Furthermore, the aerialist was dressed entirely in red and was working with red ropes, so what red color cast was present does not appear as unnatural.

This image is highly effective when presented in full color. Buy this photo

While I like this image for its dramatic power and strikingly vibrant red colors, let’s take a look at a black-and-white conversion for comparison. The monochrome version lacks the visceral impact of the strident red color, but it benefits from a more natural tone, a quasi-documentary look and feel, and a nice clean black background. In this case, the black-and-white conversion doesn’t so much rescue the image as change the kind of feeling it elicits. I like both versions.
The black-and-white version is cleaner and evokes a very different set of emotions than does the color version. Buy this photo

When you are forced to shoot under very difficult lighting conditions, try converting to black-and-white during post-processing. It just might rescue some of your images and can evoke a very different feel in other images.

For a refresher on the black-and-white conversion process and when you may want to use it, read this post: Post on B&W Conversion.

During post-processing, have you been able to rescue or improve images shot under challenging lighting conditions? Did you convert to black-and-white, or use different techniques? Please share your experiences here.

Revealing Portraits [Encore Publication]: Inspirational women of India are struggling to empower themselves and others

Travel photography is about more than simply recording what we see and do during our trips. It is more important even than creating art from our experiences while traveling. I believe travel photography also has an important role to play in documenting and communicating to broad audiences the present situation facing underrepresented, repressed, and abused communities, and advocating for change to improve on the present situation.

Today’s post illustrates this point. In a series of four portraits made during my recent travels in the north of India, I document several of the serious struggles faced by the girls and women of India–abuse of street children, poverty and lack of education, forced early marriage, and acid attacks–and show how these brave young women are working to empower themselves and others like them to end these abuses.

First, we meet a 17-year-old girl from the slums of New Delhi. Let’s call her Sheela (the NGO supporting her work has requested that I not use her real time in order to protect her identity). Sheela is the principal organizer of 10,000 street kids from similar slums across the sprawling city. She helped start a newspaper, called Balaknama, to give a voice to the street kids and expose their stories of child labor exploitation, police harassment, and physical abuse. Through her efforts and those of other kids from the streets, the editors who advise them, and the NGO that funds them, Balaknama has helped improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable residents of Delhi. My portrait of Sheela is set in Balaknama’s offices and shows her calm and inspiring strength. Lit by available light only, this image was made with a fast prime portrait lens, shot from a low angle so as not to condescend to the subject, and using a wide aperture to soften the background. The feeling this image evokes is one of quiet power and a strong drive to expose and right the wrongs of her society.

Sheela, a 17-year-old resident of Delhi’s slums, organizes 10,000 street kids and reports for a newspaper run by and for the street children of the city. Buy this photo

Next, we meet a girl who was born into poverty in Delhi and was forced at an early age to beg to earn money for her family. Let’s call her Anika. School was not an option for her. However, Anika found a way to earn more and to avoid begging by selling bead necklaces on the streets of the city. The portrait shows the contrast of her daily life: hopeful yet exhausted, bright yet uneducated, strong yet vulnerable. This portrait was made using natural light with just a touch of fill flash to accentuate the saturated colors of her outfit and her wares. The emphasis was placed on Anika by use of the fill flash, by exposing for her face, and by blowing out the overexposed background.

Anika is one of Delhi’s poorer residents. Unable to attend school, she sells beaded jewelry to make a few rupees for her family. Buy this photo

In a small village in rural Rajasthan, we met Parma at her modest house. Forced to marry at the age of 11, Parma had four daughters at an early age. She is fiercely committed to ensuring her daughters receive a good education so that they will have more options than she had. Parma made the brave decision to become one of the first women to join a cooperative formed to allow women of the village to learn to make handicrafts in order to earn money for their families. She and her husband faced considerable scorn from neighbors and relatives over her decision to earn her own income, but now many other village women have seen the success of this program and have also joined. Parma is proud to have learned to sign her name and read a few words, thanks to her older daughters’ having taught her. My portrait shows Parma in her kitchen with her third daughter preparing tea in the background and a neighbor child just in front of her. The image radiates beauty, dignity, strength, and resolve. In this environmental portrait, I wanted to portray Parma in relation to her home, her family, and her community, so I placed her in the center, exposing and focusing on her face, and allowing her daughter to be clearly identifiable yet slightly out of focus.

Parma, a child bride, vowed to educate her four daughters and works in a women’s cooperative to earn extra money to fulfill her promise. Buy this photo

Finally, we meet Rupa at Sheroe’s Cafe in Agra. Sheroes’ is a project founded by and for the women of India who are survivors of acid attacks. We were so inspired by meeting Rupa and learning about her story and her road to physical and emotional recovery after her brutal attack at the age of 15 by her stepmother. Through this project, Rupa has gained the confidence and independence to leave home, meet other survivors and activists, build a business as a clothing designer, seek legal justice against her attacker, and access the surgical care required to reconstruct her face. The courage and resilience shown by Rupa and the other women we met at the cafe moved us to want to help their cause to educate people and improve the treatment of India’s women. My portrait of Rupa is powerful because it doesn’t shy away from her scars but allows her courage, resilience, and beauty to shine through. I got in close to Rupa using an 85-mm prime portrait lens and composed a head-and-shoulders image from eye level. I exposed for her face and blouse, which she designed herself, bringing out the vibrant saturated colors. A shallow depth-of-field ensured that Rupa’s face would be emphasized while the background would be soft.

Rupa was brutally attacked with acid by a relative when she was just 15 years old. Rather than hide at home her whole life, she was empowered by the Stop Acid Attacks organization to live independently, fight for justice, and advocate to end acid attacks across India and Southeast Asia. Buy this photo

I hope this series of portraits of four brave young women in India will inspire you, as their subjects inspired me, to advocate for improving women’s rights in this part of the world. And more broadly, I hope you’ll recognize the power that travel photography has to give voice to the unheard and to fight for social change in the places where we travel.

Have you made the opportunity to advocate for change through your images? Please share your story here!

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

Focus on Bethlehem AD: Our neighboring town hosts perhaps the largest nativity scene reenactment in the US

I shot in Manual mode at 1/60 second for flash synchronization and at f/5 or f/8. I chose ISO settings from 800 up to 3200 depending on the subject. Buy this photo

To freeze the motion of these dancers, I used TTL flash (off-camera, connected via a 3-foot flash cord) and a shutter speed of 1/60 second. Buy this photo

All of these images were made using my go-to portrait lens, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8. Buy this photo

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What are your favorite winter holiday events? Please share your experiences shooting around the holidays.

Want to read other posts about shooting ideas while traveling or close to home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

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