Nomadic Vision

Archive for the ‘Travel Photography’ Category

“Local is lekker”, a popular phrase in South Africa is well worth embracing. To give you an idea of the meaning, the Afrikaans word for a sweet (candy) is lekker. So basically, local is sweet!

This weekend in London was one of the warmest in 100 years, perfect for a stroll along the Thames. Walking through London reminded me how sometimes the best travel locations are often in your own back yard. Local truly is lekker…

Also, check out Warren’s post from the same shoot.

A well known strategy for getting great shots is to work with golden light – that magic time of day when the sun is rising or setting. In an ideal world, I would photograph a location during both the sunrise and sunset, but as a travel photographer, I usually only have the opportunity for one or the other.  So which is better?

I struggle to get up early in the morning. I will milk every minute of extra sleep I can get in the morning. I also stay up far later than I should. All of this indicates that I should prefer sunset. The early morning alarm clock is a big con against shooting a sunrise, but as you will see a bit later, it is actually a pro.

Golden light is golden light, whether during sunrise or sunset. Sure, the direction will be different, but the colour and quality of the light should be the same. The appeal of working during the sunrise are the atmospheric conditions.

We recently spent a few days at Lake Bohinj in Slovenia. Conditions were perfect for a holiday, but the cloudless skies meant photography conditions were less than ideal. On our last night I shot during the sunset, lamenting the lack of clouds and dreaming of all the possibilities if I had a better sky. It was the end of a long trip and I was dead tired. I remembered reading that Bohinj is well known for morning mist, so in spite of a month of little sleep, I woke for the sunrise.

I shot in the same location as the sunset and had one the most productive sessions of the trip. The sun tried to break through the fog on numerous occasions without any success, causing a magnificent display of colour and light. Ordinary subjects looked magical under these conditions – I could point my camera anywhere and make a decent picture. Compared to my experience the previous evening, it was a different world.

The atmospheric conditions so often around during sunrise are almost never around during sunset. For that reason alone, I prefer working during a sunrise, but here are two more cases for the sunrise:

1. Most other people also enjoy their sleep which means you can experience a scene without any other tourists.
2. Early morning light is said to put people in a good mood (seriously, google it). Have you ever seen an angry jogger in the morning?

Sometimes successful photography means being prepared to work a bit harder than everyone else which unfortunately means facing the early morning alarm clock.

Most photographs take the majority of their images using automatic or semi automatic exposure mode (aperture priority). Even those using manual exposure mode use the built in camera meter to get a base exposure. The problem with using any of these modes is that the camera averages the exposure for medium grey. In other words, if the scene was converted to black and white and completely blurred, it would look similar to the image above – perfectly between black and white.

This trend is made even more pronounced in post production where we try bring out as much detail as possible in an image, flattening out highlights and shadows.

Whilst the medium grey approach provides a good starting point for exposures – I recently discovered the value of moving away from medium grey. Compare the following two images:

I created the first image a year ago where I was under the impression that more detail is better. Notice how much brighter the foreground image in the top photo is in comparison the the bottom image. Although the top half of both images have roughly the same exposure value, the darker foreground of the bottom image helps bring out depth, contrast and colour, making it a far more appealing image. The top image is closer to the original exposure where I’ve deliberately darkened the foreground of the lower image – making the image “imperfect” in order to make it more visually pleasing.

We’re off to Iceland and Slovenia for a month – I’m going to be looking very carefully at the way I exposure and process the images.

By the way, I’ve joined 500px. If you’re keen on adding me as a contact, here is my profile.

HDR is a process by which multiple exposures are merged together to flatten out contrast and thereby extending the amount of detail that can be shown in a photograph. It is a process that has been used (and abused) by photographers to create images with a distinctive look. Part of the reason HDR is popular is that the general public is not used to seeing “HDR” type images and therefore the images create quite a stir.

This scene demonstrates a common problem. I could clearly see detail in the cliffs and in the water, but when I took the image, I had to choose between underexposing the cliffs and correctly exposing the water or over exposing the water and correctly exposing the cliffs. Our eyes see a lot more detail then a camera can.

Photographers have long been frustrated by the dynamic range captured by film and digital devices. In short, because our eyes are capable of seeing a far greater range of tones then a camera, the results from a camera can be disappointing. For example, a sunset scene can look amazing in person, but often a photograph will either a great sky and silhouetted subject matter or great subject matter but a completely white sky.

There are many tools available to photographers to help them “extend” the dynamic range of a scene. Here are some that I use regularly:

• I use graduated filters to make the brightness level of the sky similar to that of the foreground.
• I use lighting, like flash, to brighten the foreground to make it similar to the brightness of the sky.
• I use lightroom tools like fill light and recovery to bring back detail in shadows and highlights.
• I use Nik Viveza to selectively brighten and darken areas of an image.

When I took this image, the sky was alot brighter then the land. By using a graduated filter to darken then sky, I made the photograph look like what the scene looked like to the naked eye.

These techniques help to compress the dynamic range of a photograph in a way that represents what I saw when I took the image. If you had to return to the scene under similar lighting, you would see something very close to my photograph.

I’ve never enjoyed the HDR method of compressing dynamic range. To clarify, this method takes multiple exposures and blends them together using some algorithm, leaving you with an image that has detail in both the shadows and highlights. Popular HDR software titles include Photomatix and Nik Hdr Efex. If you would like a visual reference, go to google images and type Photomatix HDR.

Until a few moments ago, I’ve never understood why I don’t like the method. It gets plenty of attention from the general public and would be a great way to get my pictures noticed, yet I’ve never been tempted by the look. After analysing a few HDR image, I realised it was the very detail that HDR attempts to rescue that made me not enjoy the look.

Photography differs from painting in that a painter starts with a blank canvas and adds to the canvas. A photographer starts with a complex scene and takes away from the scene through careful framing and composition. A constant problem photographers encounter is trying to fit too much information in a scene. Photographers who have mastered their craft are excellent at simplifying a scene to just the essential components, leaving the viewer craving for more rather then overwhelmed.

A rare moment where I was able to simplify.

This is an image of mine that shows a lot of texture and detail. Compare the above two images, looking at only aesthetics, which would you rather hang on your wall?

HDR introduces detail and texture to almost all regions of a picture. Skies take on a dramatic, doomsday effect. Brickwork looks three dimensional and shiny. Branches glow against a dark sky. It is all very impressive and dramatic, but it is all a bit too much. Whilst HDR is massively popular on the Internet, it has never taken hold of the commercial and print world. In my opinion, it is because of all the artificial detail present in HDR images.

As a caveat to the above, I have seen HDR done realistically, without introducing artificial detail and textures. If the artist did not mention that HDR was used, I would have never known. Which leaves the question, what is the point of HDR if realism is the final goal?

Over the last four years, Tina and I have written photography related articles for Pix magazine – South Africa’s most successful photography magazine. In doing so, we’ve collected over 20 articles related to travel photography. I’ve converted some of the articles into blog posts, but I’ve realized that a blog post is not the ideal vehicle for articles. Blog posts generally work best when they are short. As such, I am creating a section in this blog for articles. These will be the full Pix articles published here a few months after they are published in the magazine.

A have to apologise to friends and family in the design business – I’m responsible for the layout of these aticles (it is not how they appear in Pix) and I am a complete novice when it comes to magazine design and layout.

The articles section will be posted once I have a few articles ready, but for now, here is a taster (click on the show to view the full screen version)…

Recently, Sony ran a competition with four different categories – people, nature, travel and sport. Out of those four categories, sports is our weakest, as we hardly ever shoot anything sport related. Surprisingly, one of our sports submissions was selected as the winning image for that category.

Sony Photo Challenge Winner for the Sports Category

In another competition a few years back, we won a category for Man in Nature. Defying all logic, this was with another sports related image:

Winner of the 2007 Getaway/Fuji-film Man in Nature Photo Competition

Besides the basics, like lighting, composition and focus – a picture that is memorable needs to make an emotional connection with the viewer. Generally speaking, photographers can only make that emotional connection when they are emotionally connected to what they are shooting.

Looking back at these images, I realize what both of them have in common – the ocean. Growing up along the South African coastline shaped my life. The ocean played a massive role in my day to day life. Consequently, I’ve always had a strong emotional attachment to the ocean. The sense of adventure, excitement and often fear encountered before paddling out into the sea is one of the most addictive feelings I’ve ever encountered.

I’d like to think that both of these images capture some of those emotions and I suspect that is why both of them did well in competitions, even though sports images take up a fraction of our total portfolio.

If there is any lesson that I’ve learned, it is to shoot what interests you. If something interests you, it will probably interest others too.

I huge thank you to inspirational travel photographer, Julian Love for making us aware of the competition and to Sony for selecting our image.

This picture has nothing to do with the actual article, just thought it would help make the article look better.

I’ve recently had an interesting experience that made me completely re-look at how I deliver my work to clients. I commissioned Shane Rielly to create a new website for our commercial photography business. In my spec, I created screen shots in Photoshop of what I envisioned. The spec also had a wish list with various features that I thought would be useful, but probably not possible to create.

A week later, I received an email to let me know that the site was complete. As a reference, here is the actual site. From your side, the site should appear quite minimalistic. What you don’t see is the back end functionality. As someone who is fairly illiterate when it comes to coding, all I have to do to add photos to the galleries is upload them to a folder. The site automatically generates the code for each image.

Ultimately, Shane gave me exactly what I asked for. Where he thought any additions would benefit the site, he explained what each function would do and why it would work out well. I realized that I was so impressed with his work for the simple reason that he delivered exactly what I asked for and was willing to do more if necessary.

Applying that to photography, almost every time I shoot for a client I have a rough specification of what the client is looking for. As an artist, I’ll always try add some of my own vision to the final image, but I’ve come to realize, what the client wants is exactly what they asked for. This means spending the majority of my time working exactly to the brief. If there is time after nailing the image, I will try a few variations that I can offer the client in addition to the image from the brief.

Ultimately it is all about pleasing the client. On that note, I highly recommend Shane for any web related work. Take the time to check out his portfolio.

There is one obstacle that seems to keep almost all photographers from breaking through to that seemingly unattainable next level. The photographers who are thriving today all seem to have overcome it. Fear is that obstacle. It is fear stopping you from approaching that publisher, displaying your work publicly or asking that quirky but cool wedding photographer for a date.

Amongst photography circles, it seems most people fear approaching and shooting strangers. Craig Tanner hosts a workshop for conquering fears and just about all the photographers say shooting strangers on the street is their biggest fear. Now I’m sure most readers will have shot the occasional long lens grab shot or the sneaky wide angle, no look quickie, but the type of photo I’m talking about is getting right in some-one’s face with their full knowledge and permission.

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