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Terracotta Warrior Museum tips

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

These images are from the largest of the pits. Check out the range of colours – blue, brown, tan.

Photography tips. Bring the longest zoom you have as you’re quite a distance from the statues. No flash or tripod is allowed although people ignored the flash rule. Pits 2 and 3 are incredibly dark so increase that ISO and go for low F stop. I was on ISO1250, 1/15 sec @ F5.0 (remember this is handheld) Pit 1 is quite light (ISO800, 1/100 sec @ F7.1) and if you can get there early or late in the day, there will be direct sunlight on some of the statues which is great. If you visit in winter, it will be terribly cold as it’s basically a shed over a large area of ground, rug up.

Other practical tips. Use the toilets inside the actual museum buildings as they are free. But remember to take tissues as there won’t be any toilet paper. I found the walk from the front gate to the museum was gentle and easy so I didn’t hire any of the electric cars that are available. The photography etiquette seems to be a little different to Oz. You won’t be able to just walk up to the barrier to take photos at many times as it’s too busy. Once you’ve taken one photo, people seem to think they have the right to tell you to move so they can take a photo. People are quite impatient. Tour guides can talk for 15 minutes and no-one will ask them to move. But as a person taking a photo, you are only allowed one shot! When people did this to me, I smiled and motioned for them to take the place next to me that invariably had just opened up as no-one stays anywhere for more than a few seconds.

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Photography tip: What is HDR?

Friday, January 13th, 2012

The term HDR is being thrown around alot so here’s my attempt at explaining what exactly it is. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. OK, range of what? The range refers to brightness. Think about digital cameras – they capture everything as digital data. The brightness, the colours, everything is converted to numbers. A very bright object like the sun, has a high value for brightness while a dark corner would have a low value for brightness.

Imagine if every single piece of data in an image was graphed on a histogram i.e. brightness value on the x axis and number of pieces of data with that brightness value on the y axis. That’s the histogram that many cameras can display. The example histogram below shows that the image has a lot of dark areas and a very small area that is an “average” brightness. The triangle says that some areas are too bright or too dark to record any information at all. Infact this is an image of fireworks. The dark areas are the night sky and it’s perfectly OK to have areas where information is lost (data that falls off the x axis).

But let’s say you have a bright Pilbara sky (think middle of the day, no cyclone!), some light spinifex and a very dark cave in a rock wall. This scene has a big difference between the brightest and darkest things – the dynamic range is large. If you look at the scene, you can see everything with your eye. But you can’t capture it in a single exposure. Your eye can see a greater range of brightness than the camera can capture. For those that know what an F stop is, a typical DSLR can capture 9 F stops while your eye can see around 27 F stops (assuming it moves about and adapts to the scene). So two thirds of the things you can see in this type of scene, you can’t capture in a single shot.

If the dynamic range of a scene is more than the camera can capture, it is called High Dynamic Range. Techniques to deal with HDR are trying to generate an image that has a greater dynamic range than the camera can capture. There are a few techniques that are sometimes called HDR. A simple one involves shooting two exposures – one for the bright areas and one for the dark areas. The 2 images are loaded into software like Photoshop and combined using masks. This produces a single image made up of the bright areas from one image and the dark areas from another. If you do the maths, this technique doesn’t necessarily cover the entire range and can give some very unreal looking results.

In the last 5 years, software has been written that allows something called tonemapping. The photographer takes a series of exposures by changing the shutter speed that covers the entire range of the scene. It might be 2 images, it might be 5, whatever is needed. Within that series of exposures, there is a correctly exposed image for every part of the scene. What the tonemapping software does is squashes all of that data from those images into a smaller dynamic range and produces a single image (with data that doesn’t fall off the histogram). It’s very clever maths and getting a result you’re happy with is harder than it sounds. Like Photoshop, there’s lots of options of how to process the HDR image, it’s not automatically spat out of the other end.

Here’s an example – a rocky outcrop with a cave. The first 3 images show what is captured in a single exposure and the fourth is the HDR image.

When I first started using HDR software, the popular brand was Photomatix which I enjoyed using but sometimes got that psychedelic effect that gave HDR a very bad name. Nowadays I use HDR Efex Pro which is a Photoshop plugin written by Nik software. This software is promoted by Peter Eastway – possibly the most respected landscape photographer in Australia. It is very easy to use and the results are great. Personally, when I use the term HDR, I mean multiple exposures that have been tonemapped in software. It’s great for the high contrast we have in the Pilbara and even more necessary for the churches I shoot while overseas (think of the dynamic range of a poorly lit church with light coming in through the windows).

Hope that is helpful and hasn’t confused people even more!!

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Photography tip: Travelling

Friday, January 13th, 2012

After the huge amount of overseas travel I did last year (think Phillipines, Thailand, Singapore, France, Italy, UAE and Prague), I’m getting smarter about travelling with photography gear. Here’s some lessons I’ve learnt the hard way which will hopefully save someone some heartache.

The most useful thing I can do when travelling for photography is plan, plan and plan!! Have a good idea of what sort of photography you’re likely to be doing and only take equipment that you really can’t live without. I do a mix of interior, handheld work, landscape and street photography. For the interiors I need a light, prime, wide angle lens (20mm) and for cityscapes, I often need a zoom. But I can live without say a 300mm prime and most of the mid range zooms.

I can’t live without a tripod but I don’t take my normal heavy duty Pilbara tripod. I have a special, lightweight one that folds down small enough to fit into my suitcase. If you’re after one, look for carbon fiber if you have lots of money, or a 4 section (the norm is 3 section) tripod if you’ve not won lotto! By 4 section, that’s how many bits the legs fold into which determines how small it packs down. I choose to not take a flash as I mainly shoot HDR and really don’t need a flash.

When flying, I never check in camera bodies or lenses – they stay with me as hand luggage. As an extra precaution, I do have camera insurance that covers me anywhere in the world and is not as expensive as I thought it would be (only a couple hundred $). No, I wouldn’t get it if I didn’t have the business but it’s always an option.

The planning is not only going to save you weight on the flight (and most international flights are down to 23kgs total if you need more checkin baggage then Emirates have 30kg limit on economy) but also time once you’re at your destination. There’s never enough time at the exciting new location so it’s really important to know where you want to go. I like churches and also night cityscapes so I read travel guides to identify where I want to go. And then I have a look at images online to see what appeals. My upcoming trip to Russia is a good example. I’ve never shot in snow so I had a good look at what sort of images, how to shoot them, what time of day, etc. And I plan my day around the golden hours (sunrise and sunset) so that I’m always at a great location for photography when the light is awesome.

I am sensitive that some countries do not allow photography in places we take for granted. Likely candidates are military or government installations and until recently, even the metro in some places. Usually airports are no shoot zones (including parts of Perth International in case you didn’t know!). And socially, certain people are off limits. Be careful if you’re a male shooting women in some muslim countries. Conversely, be aware of shooting children in countries like America. Asking first will avoid these problems of course!

One of the most frustrating things is to arrive a great place (church or museum often) only to find that photography is not allowed. Or tripods are not allowed and I’ve lugged a tripod around the city all day for nothing. Most palces have websites that detail restrictions around photography (unless it’s Italy where rules are simply signs to be ignored hafl the time!). In some places, St Petersburg is one, you have to buy a permit for photography at the ticket office before entering.

Being in the Pilbara, we’re all aware of issues around shooting in hot weather. Cold weather presents different problems. Batteries go flat extremely quickly so I’m taking extra batteries on this trip. Also got a “do it yourself” set up for keeping the camera dry using a plastic bag and some laccie bands. And I’ve bought some very good quality lightweight gloves that give lots of movement but still keep my fingers warm. (Learnt that the hard way during my days as a survey assistant. Metal objects get really cold and make you even colder when you have to hold them!).

Special shooting techniques might be required. When shooting in snow, the camera’s light meter will often give a false reading resulting in dark images or blue casts. Using the histogram becomes vitally important. Being consciously aware of the “palette” has been helpful for me. The colour palette of the Pilbara is generally red, red, yellow and a bit more red. In Prague it was all pale green domes and orange roofs. Paris/Rome interiors had endless gilt giving it a yellow palette. I’m looking forward to St Petersburg having a very neutral (white/grey/black) palette when it’s snowed. Conversely I can’t wait for the Bladerunner feel of Hong Kong especially the flouro lights around The Escalator.

Happy travels and happy shooting!

 

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Photography tip: Developing as a photographer

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Firstly, the best tip anyone can give you as a developing photographer is to practise every second you can. Nothing beats shooting and processing as a way to develop. And of course no-one has reached the pinnacle so everyone is either improving or stagnating!

After a period of time shooting, I found I fell into a bit of a rut. A great exercise to help you move forward is to step outside of your comfort zone. My comfort zone is wide angle landscape shots during golden hour. So yesterday I took out the white lens (a 70 – 300 mm zoom) and forced myself to only use that lens. It taught me a great lesson. Often I shoot at 24 mm and crop which means I’ve been a bit lazy with my composition. I was very surprised to find many compositions with the white lens. I don’t need the entire 24mm or I haven’t moved in close enough to the subject.

So if you usually shoot in Av mode, use manual. If you usually have water as a subject, shoot some rocks. I met a photographer recently who always shot at a very high ISO so their challenge could be to only shoot at 100ISO. If you never use a tripod, grab one and see how much it affects your image composition. If you’re mainly shooting portraits, try some macro or sports shots. If you mainly compose horizontal shots, shoot only vertical. The possibilities are endless. Happy shooting!

Here’s my detailed shot.

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Photography tip: Take advantage of the light

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

An obvious difference between landscape and say portrait photography is that portrait photographers are usually manipulating the light or creating a new lighting environment with lights, reflectors, diffusers and other introduced doodads. Landscape photographers generally have to live with the lighting conditions of the moment. This means, I’m often getting up very early or going out shooting at very inconvenient times of the day and night. I’m also revisiting locations time and again waiting for the right light – very time consuming.

So you have to be adaptable depending on the light. Today is a great example. The sky is overcast giving very soft light. Ironically most of my photography relies on the burn of the sun and the awesome colours it produces. For today I decided to use the soft light to my advantage and do a portrait shoot of my dogs. Soft light is great for natural light portraits.It’s very flattering (for both humans and doggies) compared to the high contrast, washed out look of strong sun.

So here is with Hobi and Kaylee enjoying the dog’s life. Yes Kaylee is eating grass, I swear she thinks she’s a sheep!

 

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Photography tip: What is a recce?

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

What is a recce? The word itself is a shortening of the word reconnaissance which is used in the military for an expedition to inspect a location and gather information. Recce means a similar thing in photography – a trip to a location to see its suitability for a shoot. For me, landscape photography actually involves a lot of planning and often multiple visits to a site before the shutter release is pressed in ernest. This is partly because landscape is very dependent on the light and you have to be at the location at just the right time of day to get the great light.

For a recce, I will often go to a location at a time of day that’s convenient, such as the middle of the day, but is not the best time for the light. I’ll have a walk around and try to find a great composition while imaging where the sun or moon will be. Before driving out I will have checked the Photographer’s Ephermis to find out what direction and time the sun will be rising or setting. I’m trying to visualise the image before I actually take the camera out of the bag. That might seem like “overthinking” but I do subscribe to the “photography with intent” school of thought. To get a great image, a lot of planning is often required (on the other hand, some great images are very spontaneous and about being in the moment!).

During the recce I’ll try to get a sense of the personality of the location, much like a portrait photographer does with their client. I view the landscape as my client and having a personality. A good example of the image reflecting a personality was the Karijini workshop that I attended 2 years ago which was led by Peter Eastway, Christian Fletcher and Tony Hewitt.  There were 20 photographers shooting the same location and then processing the images producing 20 images of that same location. I was watching someone process an image of the area above one of the gorges and in that image I saw a very angry, almost petulent place. I asked the person why they had done that. Their response was “To give a bit of drama”.

I had a really strong (negative) response to the image as I didn’t see the landscape as being angry. For me, it’s a very consistent, long suffering and stable landscape that just doesn’t do “drama”. Geologically, this area is one of the least disrupted in the world so it is extremely stable (hence the lack of volcanioc activity, mountains etc). And the image I got of the area was actually titled “The Story of Time” and explored the ephermal nature of the organic beings (trees in this case) compared to the enduring nature of the rocks and the land. Neither interpretation is right or wrong. That’s just the way I see the personality of the land. During the reccie, I try to get a feel for that personality.

 

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