Autmunal Workshops

Four workshops down and one to go for the Autumn and what a fun time it has been. Over the last two months we have been to a ton of different locations, made loads of new friends and just had a great time sharing photography with people. The last workshop for this utumn is going to be the best of the year so far so read on for more details...


The last workshop for the season is a four day trip along The Great Ocean Road. We will shoot some of the most dramatic coast scenery in Australia and explore the Otway Ranges. This is a workshop for the dedicated landscape photographer looking at advancing their photographic vision and skills. Taking the classroom into the field we will look at how to tame the vast contrast range that make shooting below the forest canopy difficult. How to maximise depth of field to create stunningly sharp images from foreground to infinity and seeing and shooting for black and white.

There are two places left on the course and we have great rates for non-participant partners. For more info and booking online click here


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Travelling as a Photographer

Travelling as a photographer is always difficult. These days one of the most difficult ways to travel is by air. You can read about how I avoid some of the problems associated with air travel in the April issue of Australian Photography Magazine (09).




With these increased difficulties of travelling with large amounts of photography equipment I prefer to travel by road if possible. No queues, no weight limits and no excess baggage. The only thing you do have to be aware of is time. On a plane you board the plane and then you get there. When driving you are your own captain and as a photographer if the light is good you are going to want to stop on route.


This is best described by my own recent record of six and a half hours to make a three hour drive. So make sure when you are preparing for your next trip to pack a few extra hours travel time so you can grab a few shots on the way.


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Software recommendations for nature photographers

I am often asked what software I use in the digital darkroom and the answer is loads. I use a bunch of different tools to get the job done, using whatever tool will best do the job. Much like lenses. You wouldn't just use one lens for every shooting possibility though with fantastic super zoom lenses like the 18-200 we are getting closer! What follows is a list of what I use to get he job done...

Digital Pro
This is my program of choice for reviewing, editing (deleting) and filing my images. I need to quickly store hundreds of images from a shoot with the ability to easily find them again when clients need them. DP is the best program I have found so far that does this. It is fast, has an auto renaming function that cannot be beaten and can talk directly with other editing applications to speed up the workflow.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
This is where I spend most of my time optimising my images. For the majority of my images I just apply contrast, colour and tonal edits and LR does a great job. It is fast, efficient and user friendly. It is non-destructive, has some database functions and great printing and web gallery options. It cannot do direct pixels editing but does 90% of what I need to do to all of my images.

Adobe Photoshop CS4
When there is something I cannot do in Lightroom then I reach for Photoshop. Image blending and panoramic stitching PS has the power to do far more than LR will ever be able to manage. I am using PS less and less but it is still a valuable tool for image editing. The new adjustments panel, GPU acceleration and the new mask panel make the upgrade worth it. Even better is the native 64 bit version allowing for loads more RAM for PS to access. Stitching and working with huge images just got faster.

Photoshop Plugins
I prefer to spend my time in the field shooting rather than in front of the computer and that is why if I can find something to help speed up my workflow and make things easier I am all over it. That is why I use a few plugins (filters) to speed things up.

Nik Sharpener Pro 3
No more trying to work out radius, amount and threshold, NSP does all the thinking for me and works out the optimum amount of sharpening for my images. It is expensive and is a little slower than the sharpening tools in PS but it is definitely worth it for the great results.

Nik Define
Now I am shooting with the D3 noise is all but a thing of the past but I have a lot of images that were taken with earlier model cameras that still show signs of noise. To fix this I use Nik Dfine, it like NSP, scans the image and automatically applies noise reduction in various amounts to to different parts of the images as needed.

Nik Colour Efex
While wildlife photography is a pretty straight art landscape photography is pretty free range when it comes to image enhancements. I use Nik Colour Efex to add creative enhancements and effects. While not used on every image I do like a few of the filters offered in this package to add a little extra. My favourites are tonal contrast, bleach bypass and skylight.

While Photoshop and Lightroom are obvious choices hopefully this list has shown you a couple of other options to help share your photographic vision.


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This guy really needs a tripod!

Seriously, this thing weighs is at 16kg! He could always look here, here and here for more info on selection a tripod.




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Ten things you should always have in your camera bag

I have been out shooting landscapes for the last week in Sothern Victoria and had a great time with fantastic locations, great light and awesome weather. Came across a few problems during the week but nothing that wasn't overcome in the field with a few trusty extras that I keep in my camera bag so I thought I would write a list of some of the more important bits in the bag to help you out when in the field shooting and things aren't going all your way.

1. A shower cap - I prefer the free ones that you get in hotels as they are A, cheaper and B, lighter. This is just the thing to throw over your whole rig when it is raining. You can even tear a hole in it to stuff your lens hood through to keep shooting in the rain.
2. An Allen key (that fits your tripod plates etc) and a small screw driver, things get loose when bumping round in the back of the truck.
3. A small cleaning kit including a blower and a lens cloth, very important when shooting at the beach and around waterfalls.
   
4. Spare batteries, even though batteries are much better now than at the dawn of the digital age (three batteries for one shoot!) I still like to keep a spare with me even if it stays in the truck, I know it is there with some AAs for the flash too.
5. Same goes for memory cards, even in the days of 8 and 16 Gig cards and dual slots I still like to keep a couple of extras with me just in case.
6. A Neutral Density filter, doesn't take up much room and you never know when you will need it. Comes in handy when shooting watery landscapes.
7. 10 meters off strong cord. Useful for tying off branches to get them out of the shot.
8. A cloth in a plastic bag, handy for cleaning your hands when you have been getting down and dirty to get the right angle.
9. A pen and paper. I use audio notations recorded with the image file a lot when a note relates to a specific image but sometimes it is handy to write stuff down be it a location to return to or a phone number.
   
10. Some food and a drink, maybe it is just me but I don't function too well without food in me so I like to take a muesli bar or two with me in the field to keep the energy supplies up.
    

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Practice Makes Perfect- Learning and Remembering Photography Part II

A quick follow up from the last post about working out my lighting set-up for an upcoming shoot beforehand. The reason I spent the time working out the lighting a week before the shoot was because I had a preconceived idea how I wanted the light to look. I managed to work out how to get the light I was looking for beforehand so I can spend my time on Saturday fine tuning it, not working it out in the first place.


This also gave me time to process the images and have a look at how they will look after processing. A few things came out of the shoot apart from where to put the lights and what power to have them on. After processing them in Lightroom I was happy with the light but not totally happy with the finished product. So one change I will make for the weekend is to shoot them at 800 ISO. This will do two things, firstly it will conserve flash power as I will be using 3/4 less power each frame which will conserve batteries big time. Very important when working in the field using three SB units and four pocket wizards for a total of 22 AA batteries (I will take 20 fully charges spares too). But the main reason for the ISO bump is to get a grainer look to the images. I will even go to the extent of slightly over sharpening the images to give a edgier look to the files.

Another think I learnt was about my camera. I use flash a lot, mainly off camera in manual mode. I rarely need to use the AF illumination where the flash sends out a few beams of light to help with the auto focus but as this will be shot at night the AF illumination will come in handy but I found out (remembered) that it doesn't work in continuous servo AF mode, it has to be in single servo AF. This only took a minute to remember that but it was a minute of staring at my camera thinking 'What's up?' Doing this in front of your waiting model is not good form so chalk that one down for next time.

So if you have an important project and have the time it pays to practice. ( I used to practice changing film to keep my hand in the game for shooting action and not miss any frames!) This is just as important as keeping you eye in too.

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Being prepared for photography

One important part of photography is being prepared. Knowing your equipment, knowing your subject, basically stacking the deck in your favour so you increase the chances of getting a great image. The best way to do this is practice and the easiest way to practice is to shoot locally and shoot what you know. I always mention that if you want to get better at shooting birds go down to the local beach (or cricket ground) and shoot seagulls. There are plenty of them, their white feathers help you learn about exposure (try terns if you can for an even better lesson in exposure with their black and white feather combo.) It doesn't get more local than shooting in the back garden and this image of my eldest Phoebe is an example of practising before the event so you can walk away pretty confident that you have the shot you are looking for.

I have a project coming up this week shooting portraits of climbers. This is for a magazine trying something a little different than the normal person clinging to a piece of rock that they normally publish (and I shoot). Without letting the cat out of the bag completely we are heading out to the sticks to a popular climbing venue to shoot the climbers who are there at the time. I don't want to be messing around with the setup when we get there so a quick half an hour shoot on the back decking with Phoebe and I have done my research for this shoot. All the details are written down so all I have to do when we get there is unpack the gear, setup as planned and away we go with the shoot. Easy as that. Today's shoot was made all the easier with my willing model loosing a tooth today to make here all the more eager to get in front of the camera.

For those of you who are interested in the lighting set-up it is all shot using Nikon SB units. One shoot through umbrella with a SB-900, camera left, high, as a main light. Two Sb-800s with barn door gobos, either side of subject and she is holding a diffuser (not a reflector, the reflector bounced too much light) to fill in the shadows. This is shot after sunset at f9 1/250 to kill all ambient light and give a totally black background.

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