Use Textures to Give Photos a "Touch" Factor

Because photographs only exist in two dimensions (height and width) and have no depth (the third dimension), it's important to emphasize textures to give photos a "touch" factor. There are all kinds of textures that can be brought out in a photo, from the slippery smooth surface of wet seaweed to the rough surface of a gravel parking lot. Bringing out the texture is largely a matter of getting close enough to it so that it shows clearly and then using lighting to exaggerate it. Light that comes from the side or the rear of your subject works best because that kind of oblique lighting creates lots of tiny shadows and highlights and it's that contrast that draws out the surface quality of subjects. Sometimes top lighting will also draw out textures, as long as the angle is steep enough. For example, I shot this old peeling carving of a Chinaman with the light coming from almost directly overhead and the lighting created a lot of shadows running down on the face--under the eyebrows, nose, lips, etc. And by filling the frame with just the face, the eye is drawn naturally to the textures. If you're bored someday while shooting, forget about subjects and go look for a texture--you might find that the texture alone is a good enough subject.

Photograph Flowers on Cloudy Days

Although we tend to think of gardens and sunshine and photography as going well together, in fact, the best time to photograph most gardens and most flower close-ups is on cloudy--even rainy-days. The problem with shooting on bright sunny days is that, as cheerful as they are, that bright sunlight tends to burn out the highlights of light-colored blossoms and it also creates a lot of contrast. Contrast is one of the toughest things to control in terms of exposure, so the more you can avoid it, the easier your life will be. I photographed this peony blossom in one of my side gardens and it was just starting to rain when I made the photo. A few things pushed me into making the photo at this particular moment: one was that I knew that the blossom was at its peak and that a heavy rain would probably destroy the flower (it did). But also, I'd been watching this plant for days hoping for a great shot, but the light was always so bright that I couldn't hold any detail in the petals. The heavily overcast sky of a rainy day was just what I'd been waiting for and it gave the peony a beautiful rich pink color with a minimal amount of contrast--just perfect conditions.

There are some tricks I could have used if I'd really needed to shoot on a sunny day (like putting a diffusion screen between the flower and the direct sun to soften the light), but I really just wanted a "straight" shot made with no extra gear. That decision was part laziness but also, I was using the picture to illustrate a book for beginning photographers--and they weren't likely to own diffusion screens (or the light stands to hold one), so it seemed more honest to shoot the photo in the simplest way possible. Anyway, even though it was raining when I spotted the blossom, I knew that it was a "now or never" shot and so I hauled out the tripod, set up the camera and shot. Good thing I did--the next morning the blossom was completely misshapen by the pounding rain that came during the night and I would never have gotten the shot. The thing I like most about the picture, ironically, is the soft light of the very heavy overcast skies.

So next time you get a cloudy day, head out to the garden and do some close-up work--you'll be pleasantly surprised at how uniformly nice all of your exposures are and just how much color saturation you get in the flowers.

Metering Hard Sunlight: Trust but Verify

One of my favorite places to shoot is southern Arizona. Not only are the deserts and mountains in that area beautiful, but the small towns have a great Southwestern charm. The only real problem with shooting in Arizona (other than that I have to fly to get there) is that at certain times of the day the light can be extreme and hard. And as much as I like to wait until the light is softer, shooting later in the day, for example, you can't just put the camera away for four or five hours and not shoot if your time is limited. Far better to look for subjects, like this pretty little storefront in the tiny town of Tubac, south of Tucson, that can hold up to the light.

Your next problem then is getting a meter reading that is accurate in such harsh lighting. Often because painted surfaces are so reflective, you think that you're going to get a good reading using a matrix meter and taking an overall reading, but you end up underexposing the subject. The camera simply thinks there is more light there than there is and, because it's determined to see all subjects as an average midtone, it turns the bright surfaces to midtones and banishes anything darker than that to deep black shadows. Not too attractive. The way that I handle this is to first just take a shot using the matrix metering and then looking at the LCD and the histogram to see how the test came out. If the histogram doesn't bunch up completely at either the left (the dark shadow area) or the right (the bright highlights) and concentrates most of its graph in the central area, you're fine.

If, on the other hand, the histogram does show too much shadow (there were probably a lot of highlight areas that fooled the meter into underexposing), you can simply add exposure compensation (I usually start with a full stop) and then check the histogram and LCD again. In this shot, for example, because the wall was close to a midtone, I trusted the matrix meter but the shot still came out about a stop too dark, so I added one stop of compensation and the combination was just about right. I was afraid to add more than that because the white doorway would have lost all detail. On this particular day I was shooting in RAW, so yes, I could have easily corrected the shot in conversion, but the closer you are to perfect in the camera, the less work you have to do later on.

In some extreme cases, if you have a large shadow area on a bright day, you may have the opposite problem, the meter may give too much weight to the shadow areas and the highlights will go too light (again, the histogram on the right end will have too much of the graph). In that case just do the opposite and take away some light using minus compensation. But again, unless you have a large shadow area, this isn't likely to happen.

In most cases I have a lot of faith in the matrix metering of my Nikon D90 and even in Tubac on a bright afternoon it provides great results. But like they say in the nuclear arms race: trust but verify. Unfortunately, we don't have a histogram to measure who is trying to fool us with their weapons caches! For a lot more about practical exposure options, check out my book Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent. Shutterbug magazine called it, "...possibly the best book ever written on the topic." Nice folks!

Need a Challenge? Illustrate a Concept

Sometimes the best way to push yourself to be more creative is to give yourself a challenge. One way that many art teachers do that is to have you illustrate a single word or concept, or a particular emotion. The word "quiet," for example, might be illustrated nicely by a person studying in the library, but it could also be illustrated by a harbor scene at sunrise. And while you can't see the wind, you can certainly illustrate the concept of wind--leaves blowing down the street, salt spray blowing off the tops of waves, etc.

Emotions are a great source of photo ideas. Think of the range of emotions that most of us go through in a typical day: happy, sad, pensive, blue, exuberant, excited, victorious, defeated, loved, lonely, etc. If you have young kids around the house you're likely to see this spectrum of emotions on an almost hourly basis and taking pictures of those emotions and moods is a great way to add depth to your family album.

Even if you don't know your subject though, you can often try to imagine the emotions they're feeling and then accent them using the tools of composition, exposure, color palette, etc. To me the photo above perfectly illustrates the concept of the word "alone" or "lonely;" though that is just my interpretation of the scene--there's every possibility that the person in the photo isn't feeling lonely at all. In composing the shot I used a normal lens and a very open framing so that the person standing on the jetty was engulfed in a huge area of sky and sea. I also shot on a somewhat overcast day and late in the afternoon so that the palette of the scene emphasized the solitary nature of the moment.

Interestingly, as I was composing this shot, I heard the lines of John Masefield's poem "Sea "Fever" (my mother's favorite poem) running through my head: "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky..." I'm not sure if I was thinking of the poem first or saw the potential image and that made me think of it, but either way, the word "lonely" was in my head.

What concepts does the photo conjure for you? Peacefulness? Serenity? Loneliness? Memories of summer? Wanderlust?

Challenges push you forward as an artist both visually and emotionally and finding ways to illustrate ideas and concepts is a great way to hone in on your personal vision. And if you have ambitions to sell your photos or become a professional, you'll find that most photographs are assigned, or purchased through stock sources, based on your being able to illustrate concepts rather than come back with photos of specific subjects. The photo here, for instance, could be used to illustrate a financial ad ("When it comes to investing decisions, you're on your own.") or a Hallmark card ("When you're away, the world seems empty."). Merging visuals and emotional concepts is precisely what the advertising world is all about.

Informal Group Portraits: Get Them to Smile!

Not everyone likes to get their picture taken (me emphatically included), but the trick to shooting happy portraits is to make your subjects look like they're having a grand time. And the secret to that is getting them to smile--and not just a 99-cent fake smile for the camera, but a genuine happy smile. The best way I've found for doing that is to have someone else doing the dirty work for you--preferably someone that your subjects like and have fun being around. In this case is was the father/grandfather who was kidding with the three women just a few feet off camera. By having someone else interacting with them, as opposed to you saying, "OK, smile" it gives you a chance to watch for nice moments and keep your face pressed up against the viewfinder (or looking at the LCD) and paying attention to camera controls. Also, it helps if you're shooting from a slight side angle because then your subjects are interacting naturally with someone off camera and looking directly at them rather than into the lens. By the way, all outdoor portraits work best when they're shot in open shade with just a touch of flash to open up the face. If you set the white balance to "cloudy weather" it will warm the flash up nicely too.

Don't Fight the Light

It's only natural when you walk up to a subject, whether it's a person, a building, a dog--or in this case a statue--and attempt to compose it from the front. The front view is, after all, often the view you see first and there is an instinctive human reaction that the front view must be the best view. After all, why does any object have a front if that's not the correct way to view it?

And in terms of casual observation, deciding that the correct way to view things is from the front is a pretty good assumption. But photography is not about casual observation; it's about exploring and discovering and finding the best angle for your purposes. More importantly, there are a lot of times when the lighting will dictate what is or isn't the best angle to photograph a subject and (unless you're shooting in a studio where you can change the lighting direction), there's no point in fighting the lighting just so that you can capture the conventional viewpoint.

Take, for example, this very moving Korean War memorial that I came across in Jersey City, New Jersey. The memorial is at the end of a long avenue and when you're driving up the street and see it approaching, it's facing you and it's very dramatic. There's no way that anyone could be driving up this street and not take a few minutes to park their car and pay their respects for a few moments. The problem the day that I visited, however, was that the light was coming from directly behind and the front of the sculpture was deep in shadow.

I really wanted to take at least a cursory photo of the monument though and there were a few different options. Because I was on my way somewhere else, waiting for the light to change wasn't one of them. So instead, I shot a few frames with exposure compensation to see if that would open up the front of the sculpture, but all it did was wash out the background and it did nothing for me artistically. I also tried flash (it looked artificial and was worse) and I tried shooting a few silhouettes by exposing for the bright sky behind but the shapes really weren't defined enough to handle a silhouette.

Rather than fight the light, I decided to circle around the sculpture and see if there were any good angles from the rear, where the lighting was far better. As I circled around it, I could see that the light was falling beautifully on the backs of the two soldiers and I really liked the view of the city street beyond them. I also really like the gesture of the mens' arms around each other--it was a very significant aspect of the sculpture that was hidden from the front, of course, and one that the sculptor captured beautifully. Even though the sculptor knew that most people's first view of his work would be from the front, it was the view from behind that really told the story of these two soldiers and of the camaraderie of war.

You can't change the direction of the sun's light, but you certainly can (and should) change your position relative to it--and you never know what better shots might be waiting for you when you do.

Plump Up Your Pumpkins with Side Lighting

I was going to call this tip "Steal Someone Else's Pumpkins" because that is pretty much what I did to get this shot. While visiting a pick-you-own pumpkin farm in Connecticut (Pumpkinseed Hill in Shelton, Connecticut if you're looking for a great place to shoot on an autumn day), I was too busy photographing pumpkins and people picking them to pick any of my own. As I was wandering around shooting though, I kept seeing people pulling wagon loads full of bright orange pumpkins and was wishing I'd had time to do some picking of my own just so that I had a wagon load to photograph.

Then, as if fate heard my wishes, at the end of the day as the golden late-afternoon sun was glancing the top of the hill, a woman parked her wagon full of pumpkins in a beautiful pool of warm sunlight right in front of me. While she stepped a few feet away to choose a few last pumpkins with her kids, I "borrowed" her wagon and photographed it. I wanted to tell her what a nice job she'd done arranging them but she had an armload of kids in tow and before I could get the words out, off she and her wagon and kids went, oblivious to my artistic larceny.

The thing that I like about this shot (other than the very nice arrangement that my anonymous accomplice created) is that the side-lighting coming from the late rays of sun is giving the pumpkins a nice plump round feeling of volume and weight. Volume is an important visual element, particularly in still life photographs, because in addition to creating a three-dimensional reality, it also helps the brain to imagine the size and bulk of objects. Unlike shapes which just describe the outline of an object (remember, silhouettes excel at describing shapes and they have absolutely no sense of volume), volume provides heft--the plump in the pumpkins, in this case.

The key to revealing volume is using oblique lighting (from the side or the rear, usually) to enhance the three-dimensional appearance. If you want to experiment with this concept sometime, just take an apple and a desk lamp and at first just light the apple flatly from the front. While the color and even the shape of the apple will be realistic looking, you won't get any sense of its fullness. If you move the desk lamp to the extreme side and shoot another frame, you'll see that the shadow side is helping to define the roundness and girth of the apple. Voila! Instant volume.

You can (and should), of course, use this concept to help create volume and three-dimensionality in much larger objects like trees and houses or even mountains in a landscape. By waiting until the light is illuminating your subject from the side (or from the rear if you have a high-enough shooting angle to see both the highlight and shadow sides of the object) you heighten the reality of the scene. Sidelight also enhances texture--in this shot you can almost feel the rippled surface of the pumpkins--and texture also helps to enhance the sense of volume.

All of this goes to show that you just never know when stealing someone else's pumpkins will help you learn a valuable lesson in vision. If only my friends and I had thought of that excuse when we got caught stealing pumpkins when we were kids! "I did it for art's sake, dad!"

Weather & Photography: Abandon Your Preconceptions

Preconceptions in photography can be a dangerous thing creatively. They can make you so focused on looking for the images that you see in your mind's eye that you ignore even better possibilities that are right in front of you and, even worse, they can cause you to get discouraged if you're not finding the types of images you wanted to find.

Preconceptions are especially problematic when it comes to weather because you simply can't predict (or change) it. As I mentioned in my last posting, last week I went to the Statue of Liberty to shoot pictures for several book projects. Lady Liberty is something I've always wanted to spend a day or two photographing and I had to make some pretty elaborate (and expensive) arrangements to make the weekend happen--car rental (simpler than driving my 20-year-old van in NY traffic!), hotel, ferry tickets, etc. The one thing I hoped for was a nice crisp blue sky on the days I'd be shooting. I'd done a lot of picture research leading up to the weekend and I knew exactly what I wanted: Liberty's green copper face against a rich blue August sky.

Naturally as the weekend drew closer, the weather reports were anything but encouraging (this is a perpetual pattern in my life) and, in fact, the weather people were calling for possibly the worst of all weather options: rain, thunderstorms and heavy cloud cover. Yuk. No blue skies were forecast. Surprisingly though, when we got out to Liberty Island the weather morons were wrong once again--the sky was perfectly blue with occasional puffy clouds giving relief from the intense sunshine. Yes, sunshine--and lots of it. In fact, the sun was so intense that after an hour of shooting around noon, I had to seek out the shade of a beautiful wooded grove.

As I was shooting though, I realized that the statue didn't look as great against a blue sky as I had thought it would--and the sunshine was creating really contrasty and unattractive shadows on her face. Then clouds started gathering and I lost the blue sky. As the cloud cover thickened I found myself losing the desire to keep shooting--and I nearly stopped. But determined to find good shots, I kept looking for new angles--low, sideways, from behind, etc. I was even able to shoot some silhouettes against the sun at one point. Sun and clouds began to mix and the sun started to hide more often than not (one point to the weather people). Then it became very apparent that a big storm was headed our way and the skies darkened and thunder and lightning began to scatter the crowds.

Suddenly though, with the sky getting darker and darker, Liberty's face began to take on a strange luminescent glow. Her face seemed to posses a far more soulful expression with the sunlight gone. It became clear to me that the beautiful sunny day shot I had envisioned wasn't the only great shot--and perhaps not even the best one. With rain and hail starting to pelt me, I kept shooting until the sky behind her crown was nearly black. These were far more dramatic shots that I had been looking for. Finally the skies opened up and I had to pull on a poncho and stop shooting, but I'd managed to get several shots that I liked a great deal.

Don't let bad weather stop your shooting and don't let your preconceptions of what "good" weather and good lighting is close your imagination to even better opportunities. You can't control the weather, but you can alter your creative vision to match the weather--and you certainly should.

Illuminate Night Shots with a Twilight Sky

Apologies once again for being away from the blog for a week, but I've been on the road (in New York and New Jersey) shooting for the revision of The Joy of Digital Photography and for another brand new book. I much prefer shooting pictures to sitting at a computer writing (though I like both) but photography is incredibly demanding, both physically and mentally. The reward, of course, is coming home with fun new pictures.

One of the things I wanted to photograph on this trip was the Manhattan skyline at twilight. I've always wanted to shoot it from the New Jersey shore along the edge of the Hudson River and as you can see, the view from Jersey City is quite an amazing view. (There is a beautiful boardwalk that runs along the entire waterfront in Jersey City that makes a perfect shooting location--it's a devastatingly beautiful vantage point.)

The trick to getting a good photo of the night skyline is not to shoot it at night, but rather at twilight. Depending on which direction the skyline faces (and where you're shooting it from) you can often get a beautiful mix of sunset colors, twilight sky and city lights all mixed together. It's incredible. Probably the very best time to shoot is just after the sunset and during a very brief magic window of opportunity when the twilight sky glows an almost turquoise blue and the city lights are beginning to come alive. The shot here was made a few minutes past the peak of the sunset and honestly I should have begun shooting about 10 minutes before, but even as the sun was setting there was a driving rain falling--it was a wild mixture of light and weather. In fact, ten minutes before I shot this the rain was pounding so hard that I almost abandoned the shot!

Even on the best weather days, this beautiful twilight/sunset light only lasts about 15-25 minutes, so you really have to be in place with your tripod set up and your camera all ready to shoot. Once the sun starts to set the buildings (at least with west-facing buildings like these) take on some spectacular colors and as the sky darkens a bit the city lights get brighter and brighter. If you can capture the exact moment when all of the lighting conditions are peaking, you'll get some fantastic shots.

You'll need to use a tripod to get shots like this because you're going to need a relatively small aperture and a correspondingly long shutter speed (this shot was made at f/10 at 2.5 seconds). At such long shutter speeds, I also suggest using either a remote control (wireless) or the self timer, and possibly also locking up the mirror. Even though this shot is pretty sharp, I'm not totally satisfied with the sharpness and I'm not sure if the softness came from the lens I was using (a Nikkor 24-120mm lens, which is not a particularly sharp lens unfortunately) or lack of depth of field. I'm going to go back and re-shoot this with a different lens and I'll probably begin shooting a bit earlier and also using a smaller aperture (probably f/22) to get even more depth.

You can, of course, continue to shoot after the blue has faded from the sky, but somehow skylines just aren't as pretty with a black sky as they are with that nice blue glow. Also, if you shoot much after dark you'll be using much longer exposures which causes the lights in scene to blur together and create pockets of bright glare.

Twilight is the primo time, so just get to your location well before sunset, choose your shots and then be ready when the worlds of sunset, twilight and city lights begin to collide--it's an absolutely stunning mix!

Soften Landscapes with Hazy Light

I'm as guilty as anyone of waiting for nice sunny days to go out and shoot pictures. Maybe its my inherent laziness that says if it's a bit too cloudy or hazy, I don't have to bother hauling out the cameras and shooting any pictures. But soft hazy light can be a real blessing, especially in landscape photography and it's far better to embrace it than use it as an excuse not to shoot.

The nice thing about working on very hazy or overcast days is that the contrast is dramatically reduced which makes getting a good overall exposure much simpler. I shot this photo in the aperture-priority mode (using a Nikkor 24-120mm zoom at f/18 to get good depth of field) and while I shot in RAW and could have easily tweaked the exposure in the conversion process, the exposure right out of the camera was fine. Another nice thing about hazy lighting is that you get those lovely muted and saturated colors that so often get blown away in bright direct sunlight. In fact, it was the many different shades of green contrasting with the red barn that caused me to slam on the brakes (literally--unfortunately for my passenger) and hop out to shoot the photo.

I shot this photo toward the end of the day with thunderstorms threatening and the sky turning deep gray behind me and, in fact, a few raindrops fell on me during the 20 minutes or so that I worked the shot. A deep sky might have looked nice in this shot and I would have included it had it fit the composition naturally. But I wanted the barn to dominate the scene and if I had zoomed back at all (to take in sky) it would have diminished its impact. Also, I really like the way the haze on the hill behind the barn provides a hint of depth to the scene.

Embrace the hazy light of cloudy or pre-stormy skies and you'll love the softness it lends to your landscapes and the nice rich colors you'll get in your prints.

Look Through Any Window

OK, if you're old enough to remember that song title (a big hit for the Hollies in 1966) then chances are you're as old as I am. The Hollies, of course, were singing about looking out through any window, but what I'm writing about today is shooting in through any window.

A few weeks ago I was wandering around a beach park in Connecticut and found a beautiful old carousel inside a large glassed-in building. The late-afternoon light pouring in through banks of windows was lighting up a few of the carousel horses beautifully from a slight side angle. Because the light was coming from the side, it was creating beautiful textures and shapes in the carved horse.

The only problem with the setting was that the sun was also creating so much glare on the glass (which wasn't particularly clean) that I couldn't get a clean shot of any of the horses without having a lot of reflections of the sky and beach behind me. Since my car was nearby I walked over and switched from my 18-70mm Nikkor zoom to a 70-300mm zoom so that I could get tighter shots and hopefully eliminate the reflections. I also chose a widow that was on a slight angle to the bright areas behind me so that there were fewer reflections. It worked. While there was still some glare (look carefully at the left side of the shot and you'll see some glass highlights--but that is a real out-of-focus window in the far background, not a reflection), it was minimized by using the longer lens and by choosing a different angle.

A polarizing filter is also a great help in these situations (I will blog more about them in an upcoming post) and all you have to do is rotate the filter to eliminate most glass-surface reflections. The only problem with using a polarizer is that they do suck up about a stop-and-a-third of lighting. I would have used one on this shot if it had already been on the lens, but the light was changing so fast I simply didn't have time to find and mount one. I was working at sunset essentially and the light was shifting very fast. In the minute or so it took me to change lenses several of the carousel horses fell out of the light.

I must be a snoop by nature because I love looking in windows and you can find a lot of neat stuff to photograph there. I love finding antique-shop windows after hours, for example, when the sun is lighting up the displays. If you find yourself in the same situation, just be careful to get as close to the glass as you can to block out most of the extraneous reflections and you'll find that you can get some cool shots looking not just out, but in any window.

And if you're old enough, you can hum the Hollies song in your head while you shoot.

Improvise Lighting for Night Subjects

The night-blooming cereus is one of the most beautiful and mysterious flowers I've ever seen. The flower blossoms are the size of dinner plates, they have a heavenly scent and one of their most fascinating qualities is that the blossoms only bloom for one night and then they're gone.

I have several large cereus plants growing in pots in my yard and you have to pay close attention as they get ready to bloom, because they only start to indicate (by a curling of the flower stem) that they're going to bloom on the night they bloom and they don't begin to open after dark. Then by dawn the huge flower heads are folded up and hanging limp from their stems.

Normally I try to keep a close eye on the plants and try to predict when they'll bloom, but this night I was taken totally by surprise when I went out to check on its progress after midnight and found this blossom almost totally open. I took this shot at 3 a.m. and because I wasn't expecting it to flower that night, I didn't have the energy to design and set up a real lighting plan. Instead I brought out an odd mix of small lighting components and reflectors and improvised a somewhat Rube Goldberg-like lighting set up. I tried just shooting with the built-in flash on my Nikon D70s for the first few shots but the light was, predicatbly, very flat and even. So I think placed a small Morris Digital Mini Slave Wide (it operates on AA batteries) behind and under the flower to separate the rear petals a bit. I also placed a silver-foil reflector (just aluminum foil on a sheet of foam board) in front of the flower to bounce some of that light back into the face of the flower.

The shots were better, but the blossom still looked kind of flat. Since the flower looked like it was at its peak and I didn't want to go find a better flash set up, I just grabbed the flashlight that I was using to find may way around in the darkness with and tilted its adjustable head to toward the flower. Because it had a fairly focused beam, I was able to point the flashlight across the center of the flower and just light individual petals. It's that flashlight that is creating the warm highlights toward the center of the bloom. It still wasn't the best lighting job I could have done, but at 4 a.m. with raccoons skittering around me and a skunk digging grubs in the next yard a few yards away, it was all the effort I was going to make.

Every year I promise myself that I'm going to design a multiple-flash set up and give these incredible blossoms the lighting they deserve, but every year the night they blossom takes me by surprise and I end up improvising again. But don't discount your ability to light things acceptably, even nicely, with whatever you have at hand--slaves, flashlights, penlights--they all provide light. Whatever your night subject is, all it takes is a little experimentation, some fresh batteries and a stick to keep the raccoons away and you'll create some really interesting night shots.

In an upcoming posting I'll introduce you to some of the coolest night photos that you'll ever see--and tell you about the fascinating guy that shoots them. Stay tuned!

Make Subjects Glow with Backlighting

Yesterday I was playing around in the front yard with the new D90 and trying to get some good close-ups of dandelions (I didn't) and just generally trying to get to know the camera. After I'd crawled around on the front lawn for an hour or so, I took a break and happened to look up and saw the late afternoon sunlight coming from behind my Japanese maple. I'd been out in the yard for about an hour and really paid much attention to the tree, but when the sun got low enough, the leaves and tiny buds just began to catch fire and it was very striking.

Strong backlighting and translucent subjects like leaves or flower petals are a great combination because the light makes them appear to glow from within. Exposure is straightforward as long as you keep the light source (the sun) out of the frame, but you can experiment with using exposure compensation if the shots look a bit too dark--try adding a stop to a stop and a third of additional exposure. The background was somewhat dark behind these leaves so I didn't have to use compensation because the darker background fooled the meter into thinking the subject needed more light. Had the background been brighter (a bright grassy lawn, for example), then I might have had to use compensation. Just experiment or bracket your shots and you'll find out what works.

Speaking of the D90, by the way, the one feature I don't like so far is the LCD--which seems far too bright to me. I dimmed it down to the -2 position (you can adjust the brightness of the LCD on this camera) and still it seems a bit light too me. I love the size of the LCD (about 3") because it's like looking at a projected image the size of a small print--very impressive. But I'm not happy with the brightness issue and I'm goign to ask around to see if anyone else has the same complaint. Let me know if you've noticed it. I never had the problem with my D70 cameras, so I'm surprised. I'm going to do more testing this week. Other than that though, so far I love the camera.

Exploit Lighting Contrast for Drama

One of the most difficult issues in getting a good exposure is contrast. The problem is that both digital sensors and film have a limited dynamic range--the range between brightest and darkest tones. When you go beyond that range you start to lose detail in either the highlights or the shadows (depending on which exposure decisions you make). If you expose for the bright areas you end up with shadows that are pure black with no detail, and if you expose for the highlights, you get whites that look very washed out.

Does this mean you can't shoot in very contrasty situations? No! You can actually exploit those contrast limits to create very dramatic images. Since there's usually not that much visual information in shadows anyway (there are exceptions to that), what I tend to do is to expose for the brightest areas where I want detail and let the shadows go dark. That's exactly what I did in this shot of daffodils: I took a reading (in matrix mode) with the flowers in the center of the frame and then shot at that exposure. I knew that the flower stalks and the greenery around the blossoms was going to go dark, but I like the way the lighting spotlighted the bright yellow daffodils.

I shot this photo in the late afternoon, by the way, just before the sun disappeared behind a hill. That late sun is very low angle, of course, so it helped with the spotlighting effect. The light, while it was fairly intense, was also very warm, so that helped too. By exposing just for that highlights though, it saturated the warm lighting and the colors in the flowers.

Next time you're faced with a contrasty situation that seems impossible to expose for, try taking a reading from the brightest object where you want detail and let the shadows go dark--it's a contrasty look, to be sure, but sometimes also very dramatic.

Learn Portrait Lighting from a Master

If you'd like to learn some of the secrets of professional portrait lighting, there are a few ways--most of them somewhat time consuming and a bit labor intensive. One way, of course, is to take lighting workshops or take a lighting course (if you can find a good one) at a community college or continuing education program. Or you could get a job at a studio--you'll learn a lot there! But a simpler and far more convenient way is to study one of the fine training DVDs that are on the market. These DVDs provide a great learning experience that you can study over and over again--when you have the time.

One of the best instructional lighting DVDs I've seen is Tony Corbell's Portrait Lighting on Location (Software Cinema). Rather than complicating location lighting, Corbell's DVD teaches great methods for simplifying lighting. And the results of his lighting techniques (you get to see a gallery of the shots from each segment) are brilliantly and creatively lit portraits. I am as impressed by the beautiful quality of his images as I am by his simple, straightforward method of teaching.

The DVD is divided into five distinct lighting lessons, including in-depth tutorials on: Controlling the Sun, The Daylight Studio, Portrait of a Physician, Amber & Abbey (photographing a mother and daughter at home) and Ambience and Flash Together Outdoors. There is also an excellent tutorial on image enhancing where Corbell shows you how he puts the finishing touches on his portraits (much of which involves Nik Software, for whom Corbell consults).

Each of these tutorial situations is a real shoot and you get to accompany Corbell on location and watch as he works with his models and creates his lighting set ups. His method of teaching is very one-on-one and feels very much like a personal workshop. Some of the tutorials are shot indoors using either flash and daylight or just flash (both portable and studio systems are demonstrated) and several of the outdoor shoots are created using just the sun and diffusion screens. In addition, Corbell demonstrates the incredible usefulness of acrylic mirrors in creating highlights and hair lights--something I've been trying to encourage students to use for years. (continued)

In the Controlling the Sun segment, for example, Corbell takes a model to a beach in San Diego where the ambient light is harsh, direct overhead sunlight--not the kind of lighting you'd use for any portrait. But by adding a single diffusion screen (I wish he'd mentioned what brand it was) and an inexpensive scrap of acrylic mirror, he manages to create a soft, dreamy quality of light that is absolutely beautiful. Using just two assistants (and you could use friends for this work, it's not complicated since there is no lighting gear) to hold the diffusion screen and mirrors, Corbell is able to exploit the brightness of the sun and yet control its intensity. The images you'll see him create are fantastic.

In the segment called the Daylight Studio he uses a similar set up to take portraits of a musician but also includes a painted backdrop--I love the idea of taking a painted background to a beach location. By using a huge diffusion panel Corbell is able to gently light both model and background and then uses the mirrors to add interesting highlights.

Corbell is a born teacher and throughout the lessons he comes across as a patient, very knowledgeable teacher who really wants to share his creative and technical skills. If you're looking for a very approachable series of lessons in portrait lighting you can do no better than this great DVD. It costs just $99 and it can be ordered directly from Software Cinema.

Watch the Quick Bounce Video

As long as we're on the subject of flash photography, my friend Quest Couch who owns a company called Lumiquest has come up with a really interesting flash-softening accessory called the Quick Bounce that will be of interest to anyone who shoots portraits with an accessory flash, but especially to those who shoot events or weddings. I'm trying very hard to keep this blog how-to oriented and not product oriented, but this product seems like such a useful idea I thought I would include it. Not to mention that there is a good video to watch!

Lumiquest really transformed the quality of on-camera flash years ago when they introduced a handy little diffuser called the Pocket Bouncer. That device (still a big seller) attaches to your accessory flash and provides a bounce surface that lets you soften the light falling on your subject. Most professionals prefer to bounce off of a white ceiling since the larger the bounce surface the softer the light, but there's rarely a nice low white celing around when you need one. The Pocket Bouncer works great and I wouldn't think of not carrying one, but if you're a wedding or event shooter and you're in one room that does have a ceiling you have to pull the diffuser off, then re-mount it if you go into a darker room without a good reflective ceiling. No big deal, but one more thing to do.

This new invention, the Quick Bounce, from Lumiquest solves that problem because it has little barn doors in the top of the reflector so that if you don't have a good ceiling, you just leave the doors closed and have all the light you need and a nice soft flash. But if you enter a room with a celing, you just pop the doors open and you can bounce about 80% of the light off the ceiling and use about 20% of the surface of the reflector to bounce the rest. It's really a pretty cool invention. Also, the unit mounts to your accessory flash along the narrow axis (you'll see this in the vide0) so that you can switch from a horizontal camera position to a vertical one without having to change the position of the Quick Bounce. Watch the video (just scroll down on that page), you'll see Quest demonstrate it.

By the way, if you don't own an accessory flash but use built-in flash, LumiQuest has another produce called the Soft Screen that mounts right over your built-in flash--kind of a cool and useful (and inexpensive--under $15) accessory.

Speaking of interesting products, I'm going to add a posting on the new Nikon Coolpix P90 camera in the next few days--it has an amazing 24X (equivalent of 26 to 624mm!) time zoom lens. It's not shipping yet, but I'm wondering if I can resist ordering one.

Enhance Textures in Landscapes with Backlight

Yesterday in my posting about using sidelighting to bring out textures I mentioned that you can often use backlighting to exaggerate textures in landscape photos. I was going through my files and found this shot and it demonstrated that point, so I thought I'd share it.

The scene is in a cemetary in Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts (New England, if you've never been here, is just full of historic old cemeteries) was shot one very cold winter day as the sun was sinking in the west. I was shooting directly into the sun (though the sun was a bit higher than the top edge of the frame.) You can see the shadows of the headstones pretty obviously, but it's the smaller shadows on the surface of the snow that are bringing out the snow's texture. Look at the areas in the foreground and you'll see a lot of texture in the snow and icy surfaces, but look toward the back where the sun has burned out a bit (overexposed) on the snow and you really can't see the textures as well.

Lighting direction is a really fun thing to play with, both in close-up subjects and in landscapes. But the most important thing is just to be aware of it so that you can either exaggerate or subdue textures at will.

Draw Textures Out with Sidelighting

Whether it's the smooth glossy surface of a bowling ball or the coarseness of a piece of sand paper, all objects have a texture. Finding ways to translate that texture in a photograph so people can "feel" the surfaces you're photographing is one of the things that makes photographs seem more real. Remember, the world is a three-dimensional place (height, width, depth) but a photograph only has two of those dimensions--you can't reach in and grab anything or feel it in a photograph (though I'm sure someone is working on that!).

The best way to accent textures in a photograph is by paying attention to the direction of the light as it strikes the surfaces of your subjects and the best light for drawing out textures is sidelight. Light coming from the side casts myriad tiny shadows across the surface of the object and gives it a three-dimensional look. I photographed this old door handle with really extreme sidelight (look at how long the shadow on the left is) and the lighting really brought out the rough-hewn surfaces of the wood and the hand-hammered metal.

Sidelight also works to bring out the textures of things like a sandy beach or a gravel parking lot in a landscape. Backlighting will do the same thing, to some degree, especially if it's late in the day and the light is scraping off the landscape from a low angle. In some situations you won't see as much texture with backlighting because some of those tiny shadows (like the ones cast by sidelighting) are hidden from the camera by other objects.

You can experiment with lighting direction and its effect on texture without much effort. Try photographing a rough-surfaced rock with the light falling on the front of it sometime and then move around the rock and shoot it so that the light coming from the side and you'll see the difference immediately.

Shoot Delicate Colors on Cloudy Days

I love to photograph flowers and I have a yard full of gardens so that I don't have to go far to find good subjects. But one of the problems that I often face in photographing flowers (especially light-colored flowers) and that you've probably encountered, is that bright sun tends to burn out the highlights and wash out the colors.

The solution to this problem is one that most professional garden photographers use all the time: work on cloudy days. On overcast days the gentle light quality tends to saturate colors and lowers contrast enough so that you can good a good exposure without the risk of blowing away the highlights and very light tones.

I actually photographed this peony (I wish you could smell it!) blossom just as it started to rain (if you look very close you'll see some raindrops). I had come home from errands and saw the blossom fully opened and knew that once the hard rain started the blossom would fall apart. So, tired as I was, I hauled out the tripod and camera and shot this close-up. I was very pleased with the saturation of the pink tones and the way the soft light quality held detail in even the most delicate tones.

Cloudy days are great for all kinds of subjects, including outdoor portraits, so don't despair if the sun doesn't come out or if clouds pass by, the lighting is just beautiful!

Shoot During the Golden Hours

Although I am on the prowl almost constantly for pictures, especially when I'm traveling, I would have to guess that I do 70-percent or so of my shooting during what photographers call the "golden hours." The golden hours are the first hour or so after sunrise and the last hour before sunset. During these times the sun is much lower to the horizon, making the light softer and more golden in color.

There are a number of benefits to shooting at these times. The sun is lower to the horizon during the golden hours and the warm color of the light is, of course, an obvious draw. I had been shooting this bridge late one afternoon and the light was very blue, very common and I was pretty frustrated. I had actually begun to pack up the camera and was going to look for another subject and then as I was loading up the car, looked back and saw the bridge transformed by this golden glow. I should have known better and waited longer! I had to quickly grab the tripod and head back out onto the dock I was shooting from and reframe the scene. It was worth it because the shot suddenly came to life and I've sold this shot several times to book publishers.

Light quality is another nice benefit of the golden hours. There is a softer quality to the light, which means that contrast is gentler, shadows are more open and highlights are less likely to be burned out. Also, because the light is raking across the land at such an oblique angle, there are a lot more textures brought out in landscapes. And if you're doing a portrait, you can place the low sun behind your subject and get a nice warm glow around the hair (turn on your flash in this situation to open up the faces a bit).