Techniques and Practice - Week 3 - Landscape Photography

Landscape Photography

Landscapes are the most popular subject for most enthusiast photographers. When photographed properly they can fill us with awe at the wonder of the natural world.

Location

When you arrive at a location, stop and think. Carefully observe the scene in front of you. Decide what you wish to portray.  Think about what needs to be included in the photograph and more importantly what doesn't need to be included. Usually its good practice to keep landscape photographs as simple as possible.

Generally speaking, your photograph may benefit with

• Leading Lines
• All corners tying into the image
• Balance
• Good exposure
• A main subject
• Front to back sharpness
• Foreground interest
• Appropriate shape i.e. Horizontal, Vertical, Square

 

 

Properties   F/Stop                  f/10

                   Exposure Time    1/160 sec

                   ISO Speed            100

                   Focal length         10mm

                   Polarising  filter   

 

Fill the foreground

When composing a landscape, filling the bottom of the frame with foreground interest, does the composition a lot of favours. In this picture (below) the skies were very dark and not throwing much light on the mountain behind, so I decided to focus on the rusting chains to fill the foreground. I then processed the photograph through Adobe Photoshop and added a HDR (High dynamic range) finish.

 

 

 

 

Properties  F-Stop                f/9

                  Exposure time    1/250

                  ISO Speed          100

                  Focal Length      32mm

 

 

Shooting moving water

The presence of water in a landscape offers creative possibilities, capturing the movement and blur in the water is a crucial part of shooting this type of scene.

Recording a scene of movement relies on using the right shutter speed.  A fast speed will simply freeze the water's flow, but a longer shutter speed will allow the flow of the river to be recorded on camera as a smooth, creamy blur.  The longer the shutter speed, the more blurred the water's movement will be.

The degree of blur caused by a particular shutter speed will vary according to how fast the water is flowing, and is hard to predict.  To take control over shutter speed, shoot in either manual exposure mode or in shutter priority mode if you want some degree of automation. As you try to get longer and longer speeds, you may find you have reached the minimum aperture of the lens and can't get a longer speed.  This is when you need to add a ND Filter.

 

 

   

 

 

          

Techniques and Practice - Week 2 - Getting to know your DSLR

Getting to know your DSLR

Exposure

Exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the camera's sensor as the photograph is made. The more light that hits the sensor, the brighter the image will be.

Exposure can be broken down into - shutter speed ( the time for which light is let through to the sensor), aperture (how much light is let through to the sensor) and ISO (the sensitivity of the sensor).

Shutter speed

Light is allowed to pass through the camera and onto the sensor by opening a shutter inside the camera for a moment.  How long this shutter is opened determines how much light passes through and hence how light or dark the image will be.  This is known as the shutter speed.

 

 

Aperture

You can change the amount of light passing into the camera by adjusting the size of the hole that the light comes through. The hole is known as the aperture which is called the f-stop.

Decreasing the size of the aperture by one stop halves the amount of light coming through it.

The sizes of aperture available, depends on the lens that is attached to the camera.

Physically large apertures have small f-numbers e.g.  f/2.8  f/4  f/5.6, while small apertures have large f-numbers e.g. f/16 f/22 f/32.

Each f stop lets in half the amount of light as the previous one.  You need to lengthen the shutter speed by exactly one stop in order to get the same amount of light through to the sensor and achieve the same brightness in a photograph.

 

 

 

ISO Sensitivity 

Altering the camera's sensitivity changes the amplifiers that magnify the signal as it comes off the sensor.  Doubling in ISO value means the sensor is now twice as sensitive to light as it was.

 

A typical scale

 

 

 

 



As the ISO  value increases so the picture quality worsens, with what is know as digital noise being evident in a photograph.  Noise is always there, but it is exacerbated by a higher ISO setting.

 

 

Putting everything together

 

Shutter speed, aperture and ISO have all been designed to work together.  By varying each by a stop, the amount of light entering the camera is either doubled or halved or the sensitivity of the sensor is doubled or halved.  This means that opening the lens aperture from f/8 to f/5.6 has the same effect on the brightness of a picture as lengthening a camera's shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/125 seconds.  Both actions let in twice as much light.

 

Likewise, lengthening the shutter speed while closing down the aperture by the same amount of stops will have no net effect on the brightness of the picture. 

 

 

Creativity in the studio

 

 

Low Key Lighting

 

 

You need a single light source and a dark or black backdrop, a reflector can be helpful.

 

Low key photography is when you take a photograph of a subject where everything except the subject is dark.

 

The ambient light should be as low as possible.  Low key light accentuates the contours of an object by throwing areas into shade while a fill light or reflector may illuminate the shadow areas to control the contrast.

 

 

 

 

Properties Canon EOS 7D

                  F Stop              f/5.6

                  Exposure time 1/25 sec

                  ISO Speed        100

                  Focal length     50mm         

 

 





Low key lighting photography relies on shadows, deep black and darker tones. Its usually sombre, mysterious and moody, dramatic or even ominous depending on the subject.  They tend to have a lot of contrast, with primary impact coming from the shadows.





 



 

 



 

Techniques and Practice - Week 1 - Natural Frames

 

Natural Frames

A framed photograph naturally draws the viewer into a picture leading the viewers eye towards a subject within that frame.

The frame does not necessarily fully frame the photograph on all sides, but the frame is part of what you have photographed.

Natural frames can include flowers, trees, arched bridges or doorways which are some of the things that are already in situ to be photographed.

This photograph shows a door being used as a frame to draw the viewer to the trees and seating beyond.

This photograph shows an image taken during a flight through the aircraft window, which provides the natural frame, to show both the wing of the plane plus a lovely sunrise.

Exposure

Light painting

Light painting is a photographic technique in which long exposures are made by moving a hand held light source.

A tripod is a must as attaching the camera to it lets you take photographs that can be minuets or hours long.

Light painting shots should be taken in the dark with little or no light ambient light. The cameras manual setting should be at BULB and the White Balance should be set to Incandescent.

This photograph was taken by myself in the Studio at Preston College using a remote camera shutter release, whilst also trying to write my own name (backwards) so it looked the correct direction in the photograph. Settings:-

  F/stop                 F22
  Exposure time    10 secs
  ISO Speed          ISO 100      

 

This Photograph was taken by myself outdoors using steel wool which is placed in a wire whisk and then attached to wire which can then be ignited and spun in a circular motion allowing showers of sparks to fall to the ground. Settings:-

F/stop                 F/8
Exposure time    27 secs
ISO Speed          ISO 100