Through the Gadling Lens: great gifts for the travelling photographer

by Karen Walrond on

I don’t know about you, but this holiday season has completely gotten away from me (note to self: do not travel again anytime between Halloween and Christmas, particularly if Thanksgiving comes late in the year). We’ve managed to get our holiday decorations up, but we’ve hardly done any Christmas shopping so far, and time is running out and …

… *sigh*.

Anyway, if, like me, you’re starting to run out of time, and you happen to have a photog in the family who likes to travel (or happen to be the travelling photographer, and are looking for some ideas for hint-dropping purposes), here’s a list of some great gifts you might want to consider:
1. A camera bag. Even if your favourite photographer already has a camera bag, trust me, s/he wouldn’t mind another. The trick about buying a good camera bag however, is to ensure that (a) there’s enough padding inside to cushion the camera from any possible impacts, and (b) it doesn’t scream “camera” while walking in crowded public places or airports.

Personally, I enjoy my Crumpler backpack (shown here) — it’s got a padded section for my camera, my laptop, and a bit of room for other things — and it doesn’t look like a camera bag. In addition, Loewpro also has a great selection of camera backpacks and other bags, and some of them don’t look very distinguishable from any other type of non-camera bag.

And for those who use point-and-shoots, there are some great small padded pouches out there for you to toss in your bigger bags, but still keep your camera (or other camera-related stuff) safe. Check out Etsy for handmade, unique options.

2. A small travel tripod. Until recently, I thought of a travel tripod as a sort of gadgety luxury — but last month, when I taking a photograph of the Houses of Parliament in London at dusk, trying to balance my camera on a rain-slicked banister, and petrified the camera would take a tumble into the Thames below, I realized that perhaps a travel tripod might be something great to have at the bottom of my camera bag.

Travel tripods come in all shapes and sizes (and capabilities) — check out Pedcopods and Gorillapods for two more popular versions.

3. Mailable photo frames. This idea actually comes from one of my colleagues, Sarah, at Shutter Sisters — these handy little photo frames that are actually customizable postcards. Says Sarah: “When I was on vacation in September, I sent my daughter Cadence’s best friend custom postcards using the mailable photo frame from Photojojo (I’d print my shots at a local Wolf/Ritz and mail the postcard from wherever we happened to be).”

This seems like a great stocking stuffer for a loved one who is planning an extensive trip in 2009, and is intent on taking a camera along — a great way to receive very personal news from far away, and then display it immediately! Awesome.

4. A subscription to a magazine known for its photography. I don’t mean this in a read-Playboy-for-the-articles way, I’m talking about periodicals that are famous for their cutting-edge imagery and contributing photographers. Shutterbugs are always looking for inspiration, and I, for one, would love a subscription to a magazine like American Photo, National Geographic, or Vanity Fair, to name a few. Figure out what type of photography your loved one is inspired by, and shop accordingly. Not only will the magazine provide some cool ideas for capturing images, your recipient will have some good reading to take along with them on those interminable flights. Bonus.

5. A cool camera strap. Earlier this year, I went on a trip with 12 other women — we all rented a home on the Oregon coast for a 4-day getaway. As it happened, a large percentage of us were photographers — which meant that cameras were everywhere. I have to tell you, whether you’re a Nikon fan or a Canon fan or a whatever-other-brand fan: cameras look a LOT alike. At times it became damned near impossible to tell the difference from one camera to the next — and God help you if you just rested your camera somewhere for a minute. Sometimes I thought I’d never see my camera again.

A few of the more savvy of our group, however, had replaced their camera’s store-issue camera strap with some really distinctive straps, making it easy to spot their camera from 10 paces. When I returned home, I purchased a couple for my own cameras. I think they’d make a unique gift — and as with the camera bags, Etsy is a great place to find some unusual ones.

6. Picture frames. I have to say, I’m awful about displaying my photographs in my own home — yet there’s nothing I love better than visiting someone’s home that has tons of photographs around, chronicling their travels and their lives. If your favourite photographer is similar, why not buy a few cool frames to nudge her into showing her work with pride? And on a related note, consider a gift of this book, with all sorts of great ideas on how to display your photos. I purchased it a couple of months ago, and it’s truly inspiring. I haven’t actually used any of the ideas yet, but maybe if someone buys me some picture frames …

7. Practical paraphernalia. It’s not particularly romantic or clever, but photographers can never have too many memory cards or polarizing filters, batteries or microfiber lens clothes for their cameras — just make sure you know the size of their lenses or the make and model of the specific camera, and go for it. In the alternative, if you’re afraid that all of this sounds far too technical to trust to your own judgment, a gift certificate to a local camera specialty store would always be welcome.

8. Fun stuff. And finally, there are some really cool things out there that a photographer might not think to purchase for himself, but would love to t
ry. Consider purchasing a Lensbaby, a lens which focuses one point of an image, and then warps the outer edges, creating a cool effect (see Willy Volk’s example to the right). Or, how about a super-secret spy lens: this handy contraption allows you to point your camera in any direction, misleading your subject into thinking you’re taking a picture of something else. Fantastic.

And finally, although this is technically not for still photography, it’s unreal how many photographers I’ve spoken to who said they want the Flip Video Camcorder for Christmas. And starting at US$ 149.99, for a camcorder, this is a real bargain.

Happy shopping everyone! As always, keep sending your great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll try to tackle them in upcoming posts. In the meantime, keep clicking.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: your questions answered!

by Karen Walrond on

As promised, this week I thought I’d answer some of the really great questions many of you have sent in. I’m going to try to do this monthly, so keep sending in those great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com.

Let’s get started!

Question 1:

I have a nice Canon Digital Rebel XTI and I admit I mostly use it on the automatic setting. My question is… what do you do when you go in someplace where the flash is not allowed? For example, we went to visit Graceland this summer and I turned the flash off but almost all of my photos are blurry. My camera has a “flash off” setting then it autofocuses and auto sets the apertures and shutter speed.

Is it my lens? Is it me?

Signed,
Judy (a fellow Texan)
Hi, Judy —

You’ll be happy to learn it’s likely not you or your lens. It’s probably your ISO setting. You might remember in an earlier post, I talked a bit about ISO — the number of “light catchers” you might need to capture light. The more light you have, the fewer light catchers you’ll need; in less light, more light catchers are required. If you have your camera set to a low ISO (i.e., too few light catchers), the slightest shake is going to give you blur. In this case, you need to figure out how to really crank up your ISO — to, say, over 1000 — and the blur will likely disappear.

Once you’ve figured out ISO, you might find you prefer your shots without flash — they tend to be a much closer representation to what you actually see, rather than completely washed out in the light of a flash. The image below as taken in a dimly lit coffee house/art gallery here in Houston, without a flash:

See what I mean? A flash would’ve created a white light without any shadow nuances — but in the above, you notice the warmth of the available incandescent light, communicating the ambiance surrounding the painting far more accurately than a flash would. The above image was shot at an ISO of 1000.

Good luck!


Question 2:

I have a question. How much processing do you do? Do you crop a lot of shots (or otherwise process them) or do you WYSIWIG (“what you see is what you get”)? And do you rename them all or leave them numbered in your files on the computer?

Signed,
Wanda

Hi, Wanda —

The other day, I was surfing the web and came across a photographer who promised her clients “an hour of post-camera processing on each image.”

An hour?!?

Don’t get me wrong, her images are beautiful, but I can’t imagine what she must be doing for an hour on each image — I certainly don’t process my images that much (I spoke of how I process most of my images in my last post); I spend maybe a minute or two on each image — five minutes at the most.

As for cropping, I only crop for size, but not to edit. My reason for this mostly has to do with standard print sizes: in normal mode, my camera shoots images at 4288 pixels x 2848 pixels at a resolution of 300 dots per inch — all a fancy way of saying that if I want to print an image it sizes down nicely to 4 inches x 6 inches, with no cropping necessary. If, however, I want to print a 5×7 or an 8×10, some cropping will be necessary to get the size right.

I don’t, however, crop an image to get an objectionable item out of a shot — as I mentioned here, when I look through the viewfinder, I scan to see if there’s anything I wouldn’t want in the shot first, before I squeeze the shutter.

And finally, when it comes to archiving my photos, I pretty much leave them named as they are, and file them in a folder titled with the date I took the shot. And that’s it. Isn’t that awful? I am, however, in the market for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which I hear allows you to tag images and do all kinds of other wonderful things related to archiving — as soon as I purchase it, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Wanda followed up her question with another:


Question 3:

In your Gadling post, you talked about sharpening the images you take. Being new to digital photography and not having any experience with Photoshop … or the like .. I really don’t know what that means.

Signed,
Wanda

Hi again, Wanda —

Sharpening an image means what it sounds like: using Photoshop (or your favourite photo-editing software) to make the details of an image sharper, or more distinguishable. Paradoxically, however, in Photoshop, the way you sharpen an image is to “unsharp mask.”

I know, I know, it makes no sense.

To show you how it works, though, here’s an image of my friend Sam, taken late last week, before I sharpened the image:

Can you get over those eyes?

Okay, so here’s the same image, “sharpened” — a bit more than I’d normally sharpen an image, but I wanted to make sure you saw the difference. To sharpen an image in Photoshop, I go into the toolbar and click “Filter,” and then under “Sharpen” I click “Unsharp Mask.” After playing with the range a bit, I get this:

See how you can see more detail in his hair, his eyes, and each little freckle starts to pop? Sharpening an image takes some practice — too much sharpening, and the image starts to look downright scary — but done properly, it can make your images look really clean and detailed. It’s a lovely little photographer’s “trick.”

Question 4:

Can you give suggestions on how people can get pictures taken of them that don’t show that “deer in the headlights” look of complete and utter terror at being photographed because they hate how they look?

Signed,
Green Yogurt

Ah, yes, Green Yogurt, the age-old question: how to take a “natural” looking photograph. Unfortunately, I certainly can’t give advice on how to pose to have your photograph taken — people either tend to be comfortable in front of the camera, or they’re not. I
do, however, have a few tricks that I use when I’m taking a portrait to get people to relax:

(a) I lie.

I attended a conference earlier this year, and I knew my friend Kristin would be there. I wanted to take her photograph, and she describes herself as being “notorious for having that deer-in-the-headlights look” in photographs. I knew that I was going to have to make her feel a bit more comfortable in front of the camera in order to get a good shot.

So I lied to her and told her I wasn’t taking her picture.

Basically, I said something vague like, “Don’t worry, I’m not shooting now. I’m just testing the light.” And I kept talking to her, all the while furrowing my brow and fiddling with the camera after each shot, and pretending not to be paying any attention to what she was doing — in the meantime, of course I was taking the shot:

And I love how it turned out.


(b) I talk and joke incessantly.

This is related to the above: Once I’ve lied and told my subject I’m not taking their picture, I don’t ever tell them when I do start taking their picture. And then, basically we start joking, and laughing, and I’ll purposefully say something outrageous, and hopefully they’ll laugh in shock, and I’ll shoot.

One particularly memorable occasion was during a few days away with some friends on the Oregon coast, and I asked my friend Brené if I could take her portrait. She reluctantly agreed. We walked out on the beach, and were joking about nothing in particular. She sat down, we kept talking, and one of us said something outrageous. She threw her head back in laughter, and I took the shot — resulting in one of my favourite portraits ever:

(c) When it comes to children, I have them tell the jokes.

Everyone knows that when it comes to photographs, no one can do “Cheese Face” better than a kid. But I recently learned a trick: rather than me trying to tell a kid a joke, I have the kid tell me a joke. The image of Sam at the top of this post was taken while he was telling me a joke, and the image below? Taken last year while my daughter Alex was telling me something she found exceedingly funny:

The fact is, kids totally crack themselves up. (For what it’s worth, Alex’s joke wasn’t that funny.)

And finally:

Question 5:

I know that in an ideal world, I’d rather shoot in shade or filtered light, than in bright sunlight. But if I must shoot a subject (person, scene, etc.) at high noon with harsh light, what tips do you have for a successful shot?

Signed,
Jen

Hi, Jen,

You know what? While convention does say that you should shoot in shade, and in truth, overcast skies are lovely for avoiding weird shadows and that sort of thing, I’m actually a fan of shooting in harsh sunlight (see Brené’s image, above). In harsh-light circumstances, I think the best thing to do is embrace the sun as a tool, and use it to help create your image. A couple of ideas:

Have your subject close his/her eyes, and look into the sun:

Or use the sun to illustrate translucence:

Or better still, break all the rules and shoot directly into the sun, and capture some of that great lens flare, or a cool silhouette:

So I maintain it’s possible to get great images in harsh sunlight — it just means sometimes you have to get creative.

So, that’s it for this edition of Through the Gadling Lens — but please, keep sending your great questions to karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll try to tackle them in next month’s FAQ post. Next week, we’ll be back to our regular scheduled programming.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: SLRs vs point-and-shoots, and how to edit photos without feeling like you’re cheating

by Karen Walrond on

One of the common statements I hear from people is, “well, of course your holiday images are great — look at that huge camera you use!” The truth is that with as much technology as is crammed into those tiny little point-and-shoots these days, it’s absolutely possible to take images with a point and shoot of close to equal quality to an SLR.

Don’t believe me? Then let’s try an experiment: take a look at the following three pairs of images, all taken in Bath, United Kingdom, during my recent vacation. In each pair, one of them was shot with my Nikon D300 digital SLR camera (a serious bad-boy, if I do say so myself), and the other was shot with my Nikon Coolpix (a very respectable point-and-shoot). See if you can guess which of each pair was shot with the SLR. Ready?

(A) The Royal Crescent, Bath


(B) Susannah, a local artist and photographer


(C) The Circle

Have you guessed?

Here, I’ll give you a minute.

Okay.

So, in each pair, the first image was taken with the digital SLR, and the second with the point-and-shoot. Now you might argue that the colours are warmer in the images taken by the SLR than the compact camera, or you find that you notice more contrast in one set, but I’ll wager that in each case, the clarity of the images is on par with each other, and in fact, in the pair of the Royal Crescent, I think the point-and-shoot resulted in a better image.

Besides, issues like colours and contrast can be taken care of with Photoshop.

I can hear some of you already gasping in horror, and I admit, when I first started shooting with a digital camera, I was very anti-Photoshop. “Hmph,” I sniffed, “Photoshop is used by people who don’t know how to take photos. Besides, the digital manipulation of photography is just plain dishonest.” And then I would turn my heel and vanish in a cloud of self-righteousness, all the while secretly lamenting the fact that every photo I shot didn’t look anything like I thought it looked like when I first framed it in the viewfinder of my camera.

Then one day, I was at my local camera shop, confessing to one of the guys that I worked there that I really wished I could get the kinds of images other people got. “Like that one,” I said, pointing to the display image behind him. “Why don’t my photographs look like that?”

“That?” he smiled. “It’s a great shot, agreed, but you realize that that’s been digitally manipulated, right?”

“NO!” I responded, in horror. “Seriously? That’s not just the shot he took? How… how… disappointing!”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely confused. “There’s nothing wrong with Photoshop, Karen. It’s just processing – similar to what we used to do with chemicals, back in the olden days. I mean, do you really think Ansel Adams really shot those beautiful pictures without dodging and burning and manipulating the processing of the photograph?”

That’s when it dawned on me: digital processing doesn’t have to be about deception, and it can be all about artistry. It can be a tool to help communicate what you saw or felt at the time you took the image. But if you were amazed by the colours, or the sparkle in someone’s eyes, or the moodiness of the sky, then why not make sure that people who see your images are struck by the same things?

Eventually, over time, I’ve come up with a few unofficial rules for myself when using Photoshop (or any other photo-editing software) that helps ensure I’m using the tool as honestly as possible. Understand that I’m not suggesting that others using the tool in a different way are being dishonest — again, art is in the eye of the beholder. I’m just saying that for my own warped sense of morality, using Photoshop in this way feels the most honest to me — and in fact, once you read the following, you might feel that I’m the cheatingest cheater who ever cheated. I just offer these as a jumping-off point of discussion.

1. I don’t delete pixels. I was admiring the image a friend of mine shot when coming out of a Tube station in London a few years ago. “This is great,” I said. “Thanks!” he responded. “And the best part? There was a person standing right over here,” he motioned to a substantial portion of the image, “and I just Photoshopped him out!”

Now, obviously, this didn’t change the fact that the photograph he’d taken was still beautiful; however, for me, the fact that he’d removed an item from the image made the photograph feel a bit more contrived. So my rule is that I don’t remove objectionable objects from my images — I’d much rather check through the viewfinder before I take the shot to see if it there are people or things in the way, and fix it that way, before I squeeze the shutter.

2. I don’t blatantly change colours. Let me clarify: I do sometimes bump up the hue of a colour, or accentuate the contrast in an image — because frankly? Sometimes my camera just can’t capture how amazingly blue-green the ocean is, or how shockingly yellow the fall foliage happens to be without a little help. I won’t, however, change someone’s red sweater to blue, just because I think she’d look better in that colour. All colour-clashes remain as-is.

3. I do sharpen and increase the contrast of almost every image I shoot. Not a lot, you understand, but I think it pretty much enhances every image.

4. I sometimes manipulate the lighting so that the viewer focuses on exactly what I want them to focus on, creating a “vignette” effect.

To help illustrate my point, here’s how I processed a couple of images, step-by-step:

Ellie:

This is Ellie, my niece, sitting on a large rock on Maenporth beach, in her native Cornwall, England. This image was taken right out of the camera, with no processing whatsoever:

This is a perfectly acceptable image; however, the thing is, I know that in real life, when you see Ellie, you can’t help but notice her piercing blue eyes, possibly more than any other physical characteristic. For this reason, I think a bit of tweaking might help make this point.

First, as I do with every shot, I enhanced the sharpness and the contrast a bit:

The changes are subtle; however, the added sharpness shows a bit more detail in her hair, and her eyes are starting to look more striking — more like she actually looks in real life.

Finally, I’ll use a gradient tool to “burn” the colours around her face a bit more (i.e., warm up the colours around her):

The final result, while not drastically different from the original image, communicates a bit more about her spirit-filled eyes and the warmth of her personality. In my opinion, therefore, this is a far more “accurate” image of Ellie than the original.

One more, more elaborate example:

St. Ives:

Again, the following shot of the little town of St. Ives, Cornwall, was taken straight out of the camera:

Again, not a bad photograph, but really nothing special. Still, what I remember about the moment I took this picture is that after a really beautiful day, the clouds were beginning to accumulate, and we could tell we were on the verge of seeing the last of the sun, as the rain settled in for the rest of the day. The moment actually seemed rather magical, as we watched the weather in transition. And so, in processing the image, I wanted to capture the mood of that transition.

First, as with almost every shot I take, I enhanced the sharpness and the contrast:

Already, this photograph is starting to look a bit better to me — the clouds are beginning to capture the transitional mood, and the additional sharpness has brought out the detail in the windows of all the little buildings in the town.

But watch what happens when I pull out the gradient/colour “burn” tool again:

Now the image, with the deepened hues of the sky and the ocean, really communicates the moment when the image was taken: the sky was beginning to get gloomy, the sea was mirroring the sky’s atmosphere, and the town was dearly hanging on to that last bit of sunshine. It’s exactly as I remember.

The tweaks I’ve done above are relatively minor, but for me, they make a world of difference in honing the feeling I was trying to communicate with the images. In certain cases, I modify the images even more; however, the final results still feel very honest and true. So if you’ve been reticent about trying Photoshop (or Lightbox, or Picnik — which is free! — or any other photo editing tool), perhaps what you’ve seen here will make you consider trying to add some digital magic to your photos. And once you’ve handled that, if you start to feel like you’ve finally found the artist in you, there are some really wild things you can do with textures and filters and all kinds of other treatments — go nuts!

In the meantime, if you have any questions you’d like to ask, please e-mail me at karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in future posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: Tips for choosing which vacation shots to take

by Karen Walrond on

As I type this, I’m about half-way through my trip to England. It’s a whirlwind trip of visiting family, seeing long-lost friends, making new acquaintances and cramming in sight-seeing daytrips when I can — not to mention fighting a rampant case of jetlag. But through it all (and as you may well imagine), I’m taking a lot of photographs … which has got me thinking about how I choose the images that I choose to shoot. I mean, why do I take one shot over another? Is there a “right way” to shoot a vacation?

Obviously, the answer to that question is about as varied as the number of people who own cameras: the “right way” differs for each person. And in truth, the way I shoot for my own personal use (that is, to capture as many vivid memories of a trip as possible) is far different from the way I shoot for professional purposes. But I’ve heard time and time again from people who say “my vacation photographs don’t move me as much as my own memories do,” and I think that’s really unfortunate. So I thought I’d share some of the ways that I shoot my vacation, in the hope that perhaps it will trigger something for you.
1. Shoot the iconic shots. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many times I’ve heard friends say “I tried to shoot a photograph of myself in front of the Eiffel Tower, but I couldn’t get the tower and me in the shot!” First of all, don’t be afraid to shoot from weird angles (get someone to lie down on the ground and shoot up at both you and the tower, for example), but even more obviously, you could always forget about trying to get in the shot — just shoot the icon. Find something your destination is known for, and capture an image of that … just that. Remember, you’re going to be shooting lots of additional images, so it’s okay if some of them don’t include you or your travel buddies. And trust me, even if it seems cliche to you at the time, once you return home you’re going to wish you had that picture of the cable car in San Francisco, or Big Ben in London.

2. Get portraits of your travel companions. Again, this may seem like a given, but understand I’m not just talking about an image of your spouse standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon (although, done right, that would probably make a pretty good shot as well). I’m talking about getting in close and taking an actual portrait of your wife, husband or friends who are with you. I mean, if your holiday is going well, it’s going to show on their faces, you know? They’ll be relaxed, or excited, or thrilled — and nothing triggers great memories like capturing the emotions on their faces. So grab your camera (remembering what focal length lens works for portraits), get close to your companions, and capture their expressions.

And one more thing, while we’re on the subject: when it comes to taking portraits of your kids, particularly when they’re on vacation, it can be damned near impossible to get them to smile sweetly and look into the camera. Don’t let this stop you: just get down on their level, get as close as you can without getting smacked in the face by their flailing hands and feet, and take the shot. You’ll find that your kids just being kids will make far more appealing shots than posed images of them grimacing while shouting “CHEESE!!!”

3. Get portraits of total strangers. This isn’t about walking up to the locals and asking them to pose for a portrait (although if you’re brave enough, by all means do it — just remember to be polite and respectful in your request). For me, one of the easiest ways to get some images of the locals is to take images of buskers: people who entertain on street corners, in subways, or in parks. In fact, I’m always mindful to keep some change in my pockets for just this very reason — and then, armed with my 70-200mm lens, I can take nice, intimate portraits, and thank my subject with the equivalent of a few dollars.

4. Grab images when your travel buddies aren’t paying attention. This is sort of similar to tip #2 above, but different: in this case, you’re still trying to capture expressions and emotions, but this time your subjects have no idea you’re photographing them. In fact, on this particular trip, I’ve managed to capture some great images of my father-in-law and his wife, as well as my brother-in-law and his wife, and in both instances, they had no idea I was taking the shot. But I think both shots the atmosphere at the time I took the image and will certainly be wonderful reminders of how much I love being around them. Happily, they’re pretty pleased with the shots as well:

5. Be inspired by colour and texture. I don’t know about you, but I find some of my most vivid memories occur because of the vibrant colours and unfamiliar textures that a foreign land often has to offer. For this reason, I usually remain on the lookout for images which take my breath away, merely because I’m shocked by the colours: a vivid sunset, bright flowers, or crystalline oceans. If something makes me catch my breath because if its hue, you can pretty much guarantee that I’m going to grab a shot.

6. Shoot in situ. At some point in every vacation, I find that I have some down time: I’m sitting on the beach relaxing, or in a cafe watching the city wake up and start its day, or simply watching the sun set. Invariably, I grab my camera and just shoot what’s right in front of me — it may not be a perfect image, but it’s generally enough to remind me exactly what I was doing when I was really relaxing into my travels.

7. Let what you see frame what you see. I know this makes no sense, but perhaps the following will explain: the other morning, my father-in-law took me into the Forest of Dean so that I could grab some images of the amazing fall foliage that’s currently all over the English countryside. We drove into a public park called Cannop Ponds, and I got out of the car to walk into the forest.

As I was walking through, all of a sudden the branches of the trees parted, and I caught a glimpse of some swans gliding along a small lake. It was breathtaking. Now, I could’ve walked a bit closer and taken a shot of the swans, but really, what was amazing to me was the sudden appearance of these beautiful birds through the branches. And so, I took a photograph, letting the branches frame the shot:

Again, technically not the best shot in the world, but it captures a moment I’ll never forget.

8. When in doubt, don’t choose. Sometimes, when I’m taking a shot, I find myself a bit torn: should I take a photograph of this delicious margarita right in front of me, or the image of my husband and daughter snorkeling off in the distance? Or should I take just one shot of my kid cracking up? In these cases, I just shoot everything, and then let the diptych (or series of shots) tell the story:

9. Every once in a while, give someone else the camera. I’m actually horrible at this: I much prefer to be behind the camera, rather than in front of it. But if I’m honest, sometimes it looks like I never go on vacations with my family! For this reason, I’m trying to teach myself to hand my camera over to my husband, or to whoever else might be traveling with me. It takes an effort not to be self-conscious in front of the camera, but as time passes and I look back on the shots, it’s nice to be able to see how I was enjoying the experience myself.

With that, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my holiday. Please share your tips of how you choose your own images, below. Next week, we’ll answer the age-old question: can point-and-shoots really take as good an image as an SLR? And in the meantime, if you have any questions you’d like to ask, please e-mail me at karen.walrond@weblogsinc.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in future posts!

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: apertures and shutters and ISOs, oh my!

by Karen Walrond on

So, so far, we’ve discussed two things: how to pick a camera and what kind of lenses you might want to take with you on your trip. Today, I thought we’d talk about the exciting world of apertures, and shutter speeds and ISO.

Wait, where are you going?

Okay, I know that for a majority of you, you couldn’t care less about these sorts of things — you’d rather just pick up your camera, set it on automatic, and go. And I promise, going forward, we’re going to talk about less dry subjects, like shooting techniques and using Photoshop and the like. But the truth is, understanding ISOs and apertures and shutter speeds can help give you a lot of power over your resulting shots. So trust me on this: it’ll be worth it, even though the sketches that follow are a travesty to art.
So, basically, your camera, regardless of brand, whether it’s a point-and-shoot or SLR, or how simple or complicated it is, works like this: light comes into your lens, and passes through an aperture, then through a shutter before it finally hits the film (or digital sensor and storage media), and then it magically turns into a photograph. Obviously, there’s a lot more physics to it than that, but dude, I’m not a physics major, and believing that it’s “magic” is a lot more interesting, so go with me on this.

Graphically speaking, and viewing your camera from the side, it looks somewhat like this:

Now, I could try to draw exactly what each of those items actually looks like, but as you’ve probably guessed by now, sketching isn’t my strong suit. Nonetheless, it turns out that you really don’t need to know what they look like, but it’s sort of important to understand what they do. And to help illustrate what they do, take a look at this image:

I know this looks kind of crazy, but stay with me:

Your aperture acts sort of like a curtain: it decides how much light in total you want going into your camera.

Your shutter acts like a door that quickly opens and shuts, limiting the amount of actual light that gets to the film/digital sensor, regardless of the total amount the aperture actually let into the camera in the first place. Think of it this way: remember, back in the day when you had a film camera, the biggest catastrophe that could occur on your vacation was that the back of your camera would open up, and all that light would get in and ruin the film, rendering all those great images of you doing tequila shots in Tijuana completely useless? That’s because too much light overexposes the image. The shutter opens and shuts really quickly, so that only the right amount of light gets in, and the image is correctly exposed.

And finally, the film (or digital sensor/memory card) captures the remaining light and uses magic to turn it into a photograph.

Now, the very cool thing about your camera (and what you may not have realized if you’ve just been shooting on automatic this entire time) is that in many cases, it allows you to control each of the aperture, shutter speed, and film/digital sensor capacity. It’s almost like there are tiny little people living in your camera, just waiting for your command:

At the risk of your believing that I’ve finally lost it, I’ll press on.

APERTURE

As I mentioned above, the aperture helps control how much total light goes into the camera. Now, if you’ve ever heard the term “f-stop” or seen weird numbers like “f/1.4” or “f/16” on your camera or next to an image online, those terms are referring to how open or closed the aperture (or in our case, the “curtain”) is, and therefore how much light is going into the camera. There are, of course, mathematical reasons for the number designations, but really, knowing that isn’t necessary. Here’s the only thing you need to remember:

If the aperture number (f-stop number) is large, then when you take a picture, you’ll have more detail in the background of your image (i.e., your background will be more detailed, a “large depth of field“).

If the aperture number (f-stop number) is small, then when you take a picture, you’ll have less detail in the depth of your image (i.e., your background will be less detailed, a “small depth of field“).

Some practical examples might help.

Say you’re taking a vacation in the American heartland, for the express purpose of capturing an image of those “amber waves of grain.” Or, perhaps instead, you’re in Houston, in my overgrown front garden. Here are a couple of images that you might get, when playing with the aperture on your camera:

I shot the image above at f/16, which is sort of a large aperture number. Notice how you can make out the detail of each of the little slats in the black shutters in the background, and the foliage in front is just a jumble of branches. Everything, pretty much, is in focus, or you would say that this image has a “large depth of field.”

Now contrast the above with the following image:

This image was shot at f/4.2, which is, in comparison to the above, a small aperture number — the lens is the same, I’m standing in the same spot, and I took the image at the same time of day. In this image, you can no longer really make out the detail of the black shutters, and in fact, the only thing in focus is the branch at the very front. Everything else is out of focus, and therefore this image has a “small depth of field.”

Does this sort of make sense? Therefore and ergo, going back to your vacation in the American heartland, back to those amber fields of grain, before you take the photograph, you can think to yourself, “Self, do I want to show how vast the amount of grain is in this field, and therefore use a high aperture setting, so that all of the grain is in focus? Or, Self, would I rather just focus on this one golden reed of grain, and blur all the others in the background, so I should use a small aperture setting?” Then you’d set your aperture, you’d aim, and you’d shoot. No Photoshop required.

SHUTTER

Remember, this is the part of the camera that acts like a door, opening and closing quickly, to moderate the amount of light that actually gets to the film/digi
tal sensor at the back of the camera, and thus creating the best exposure. I will be honest with you — I rarely, if ever, try to control the shutter speed of my camera. I’m far more likely to mess with my aperture settings (the “curtain guy”) to control my depth of field (how blurry I want my background to be, described above), or my ISO setting (the “light catchers,” which will be discussed below), and let the camera figure out which shutter speed would be most appropriate. That said, there’s one application where you might want to play with your shutter speed setting, and that’s to control movement.

Here’s what I mean: you’ll find shutter controls described in seconds, or fractions of a second, otherwise known as “exposure time.” With a long exposure time, the shutter will be open longer, and movement will look more blurry. With a shorter exposure time, the shutter will be open for a shorter time, and movement will look frozen in time.

For example, this shot …

… was taken at a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second — notice how the water looks like it’s rushing over the rocks. There’s movement, it conveys what it felt and sounded like to be there on that beach in Cozumel, Mexico.

But in this picture …

… the shutter speed was at 1/250th of a second — much faster, making the water coming out of my backyard hose look frozen, and therefore more refreshing on a hot summer day.

ISO

Remember back in the day when you were buying film, the box of film would have numbers on it like “100” or “400” or “1000”? That was the film’s ISO number. ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization ” (I know that mixes up the initials, but I didn’t come up with acronym, so don’t blame me), and basically the ISO number has to do with the sensitivity of the film to light. Nowadays, with digital cameras, there are still ISO settings, and understanding how they work can help improve your images. To help me remember what the numbers mean, I like to think as the ISO number as the “number of light catchers” the camera needs to use:

In other words, remember this:

The lower the ISO number, the fewer light catchers you’ll be using to catch the light. Low ISOs work better in bright sunlight — no flash necessary.

The higher the ISO number, the more light catchers you’ll be using the catch the light. High ISOs work in overcast or low light — and again, no flash will be necessary.

For example — see that photograph of my garden hose, above? That was taking at an ISO setting of 200 — because it was taken in the middle of a hot summer day, there was TONS of available light. So I knew I only needed 200 light catchers to catch the light when the shutter (“door”) was open to let the light in. Contrast this with the following shot I took of my husband this past weekend:

This was taken just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. The light was low, so I knew I needed to employ as many light catchers as I could to grab any and all available light: this was shot at an ISO setting of 3200.

And finally, compare the above shot with this one:

This shot was taking at the same time, but this time the setting was at ISO 500. See how completely blurry and out of focus Marcus is? That’s because when I decided to shoot at 500, the Door-Opening Guy (the automatic shutter control) went, “SERIOUSLY? FIVE HUNDRED? In *this* nonexistent light? That’s so not enough Light Catchers. I’m going to have to keep the door open longer to let more light in, and expose the photograph properly.” So he did — the shutter was open for 2.5 seconds. The problem is that when the shutter is open for that long, the slightest movement — my hand holding the camera dipping ever slow slightly — causes blur in the resulting image.

Given all of this, it sounds like you’d never need a flash again, right? Just crank up that ISO setting, and bam! No flash needed! Well, not quite: the problem with using high ISOs is that while you might get the image you want, the image tends to be grainier then at low ISO settings (contrast the quality of the first image of Marcus with the image of the hose, above). So if you’re looking for a nice sharp image in low light, you might want to either (a) use a flash or (b) use a tripod with a low ISO setting — that way the camera (“Door-Opening Guy”) can keep the shutter open as long as necessary, without worrying about camera shake.

So that’s it — you’re now an expert (sort of) on apertures, shutters, and ISOs! Better still, that’s pretty much as technical as we’re going to get about the workings of your camera here at Through the Gadling Lens, so never fear. As it happens, I’m leaving at the end of this week for a two-week holiday to England, so for upcoming posts I’ll talk about planning for a trip, and executing photo shoot days. In the meantime, keep clicking those cameras!

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
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