Through the Gadling Lens: The 7 most common questions from new photographers

by Karen Walrond on

Last week, I mentioned that i was in New York City on a holiday. Part of the reason we chose New York is because my cousin got married their last weekend. Whenever I’m invited to a wedding, my standard wedding gift is an album of photographs that I take of the event, so as is often the case when I’m a wedding guest, I found myself walking around with my camera and huge 70-200mm lens, snapping photos randomly. Also, as is so often the case when I’m a wedding guest (and, I assumed, because of the scene the large lens makes), many people came up to me asking (a) if I was the official photographer, (b) if I was a photographer in real life, and (c) why they could never get their photographs to look decent. And so this week, I thought I’d share some of the more common questions I received during the weekend, and my answers.

And so, on with the show:
1. Why are my pictures coming out blue/yellow/green?

One of the most common questions I often receive occurs after someone has shot several shots, and the images that result all have a strange hue — often yellow, but sometimes green, or even blue. This problem is usually an easy one to fix, related to the adjustment of the camera’s white balance.

In essence, different sources of light have different qualities. Natural sunlight tends to be the whitest of lights. Incandescent light (from standard lightbulbs) tends to have a yellow hue. Fluorescent light, on the other hand, has a greenish tone. In order to correct for this, check your camera’s manual on how to adjust your white balance — the camera’s ability to adjust for the light illuminating your subject. In other words, if you’re shooting indoors under mostly incandescent light, set your camera’s white balance for shooting under incandescent lightbulbs. If you’re shooting under fluorescent light, ditto. The colour tint problem should go away.

What if your pictures are blue? Well, that’s probably because you left your white balance adjusted for incandescent light, but you’re shooting in natural light. Again, simply adjust your white balance.

2. Why are my photographs so grainy?

Occasionally, I’ll get a question about the graininess of a photograph — the photograph, even though shot in bright light, looks grainy in texture. This is a common mistake, and one, I’m embarrassed to say, I still occasionally make.

This has to do with the ISO setting of your camera. You might remember that the ISO has to do with the number of “light catchers” your camera is employing — the darker the surroundings, the higher the ISO should be. Unfortunately, the downside to upping your ISO is that photographs tend to become more grainy.

To fix this, when shooting in bright light, make sure to lower your ISO as much as possible — if it’s a truly bright, sunny day, you probably don’t need more than 250 ISO, when handholding your camera. If your shooting in darker circumstances, to reduce graininess, you can either (a) keep the ISO low, but use a tripod, to reduce camera shake (see below), or (b) use a flash.

The moral of the story: Always check your ISO before shooting.

3. How do I stop my subjects from getting red eye?

You know the issue: you’re taking what you’re hoping is a stellar portrait of someone, only to have the image return with a demonic red glow in your subject’s eyes. This is because either (a) your subject is possessed, or (b) the light from your flash reflected in your subject’s pupils, causing a red eye effect (and for some reason, this is more common in people with lighter coloured eyes, than darker ones). It’s annoying, but somewhat easily fixable.

To reduce red eye, you can do one of the following:

a) Turn off your flash. Make sure you actually need your flash before you turn it on — it could be that you just need to nudge your ISO setting up a bit (see #2, above).

b) “Bounce” your flash. If you can adjust the direction that your flash points, then point it up, to the side, even behind you — any direction except directly at your subject.

c) Less effective, but still often works: have your subject look slightly away from the lens, and not directly at the camera, when you’re using your flash.


4. I look at other people’s photographs, and they’re always so impressive. Mine are so blah. Why?

Your framing looks great. Your subject looks beautiful. You checked things like ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and they’re all appropriately set. So why does the resulting photograph look so blah, when other photographers can get images that truly captivate.

Chances are it’s all in the post-processing, my friend.

I’ve mentioned before that my views of Photoshop have changed — when I first started shooting, I thought that Photoshop was deceptive, a tool primarily used for making subjects look thinner, or less grey, or remove them from the image altogether. It wasn’t until a kindly camera shop employee taught me that really, Photoshop is just a 21st Century darkroom, and can be used accordingly, to simply enhance what you’ve captured on film. An example:

The following shot was taken straight out of the camera:

A decent enough shot, but not necessarily one I’d write home about.

Now, take a look at it after about 15 seconds of post-processing:

See how much warmer it is? And all I did was (a) sharpen it a little, (b) bump up the contrast a bit, and (c) add a bit of vignetting (i.e., making the outer edges of the image slightly warmer and darker). I didn’t remove any pixels or anything “deceptive” — I just used Photoshop to enhance the image in a way that conveys what I found beautiful about this bloom in real life.

Moral: don’t be afraid of post-camera processing. Photoshop is a common choice, but there are many, many tools out there to process photos, some of them online and free. See this earlier Gadling post for tips, tricks and a few other tools for processing.

And a warning: once you’ve become comfortable with post-processing, however, be careful not to fall into the trap of #5, below:


5. Can’t I just Photoshop it later?

Once you’ve seen the magic of post-camera processing, there’s a danger that you begin to use it as a crutch: you stop checking your white balance on your camera, thinking you can “Photoshop it later,” for example. Or you notice some ugly electric company lines in the background before you take the shot, and think, “oh I’ll just Photoshop them out when I get in front of my computer.”

My advice: fix the issue before you squeeze the shutter. Yes, you can adjust a lot of things during post-camera processing, but in my experience, it’s a lot more work to do it then, and frankly, I’m never as happy with the results as if I’d just ad
dressed the problem in the first place. So, before you squeeze the shutter, note the following:

a) Is the horizon straight? Nothing can ruin a good sunset-over-the-ocean shot like a crooked horizon. Fix it prior to taking the shot, it’ll take a lot less time.

b) Are all the vertical lines (building walls, etc.) vertical?

c) Is there anything cluttering the background that you don’t want? In other words, if there are electrical lines running through the background, or trash, or whatever, then adjust accordingly — you can simply move so that they’re no longer in the frame, or when you get really good, you can even play with your aperture setting, to ensure the background is out of focus — whatever. But fixing it ahead of time will be a lot quicker (and feel less deceptive) than trying to erase pixels on your computer.


6. Why isn’t the focus on my image sharp?

This can be the most frustrating thing about taking a shot — when you upload it onto your computer, the image is out of focus. Just so you know, I’ve been shooting for over 15 years, and this *still* happens to me. There are a couple of causes for this:

a) You’re camera isn’t set on auto-focus. Sometimes this happens — I have a couple of vintage lenses that are fully manual, and I think I’ve focused properly, but it turns out I didn’t. It happens. But if your camera autofocuses, by all means, use it. It’s just one less thing you’ll have to think about.

b) You didn’t focus the shot on the proper subject. Sometimes what you want to do is focus on something that isn’t actually in the centre of your frame — you’re trying to focus on something off-centre, or in the foreground. There are two ways to do this: first, you can read your camera manual to see how to adjust your camera to focus on something off-centre (most SLRs will allow you to change the point of focus pretty easily), or secondly, in some point-and-shoots, you can put what you want to focus on in the centre of the frame, push the shutter release halfway down to get it to focus, and then without lifting your finger, move the subject to the part of the frame you want it to be, and then continue to push the shutter all the way down to take the shot.

The upshot: check your camera’s manual to see how to manipulate the autofocus. But rely on the autofocus.

And now, a caveat: sometimes focus is overrated. Two of my very favourite shots I’ve ever taken were accidents, and completely out of focus:

See? So the moral here is: even when you take a shot that’s out of focus, try to look at it objectively. It might actually be the shot you never realized you wanted.

7. Why can’t I take a decent portrait?

Usually the way to take a decent portrait is to just practice, practice, practice. But a couple of tricks that I use to help enhance my portrait shots:

a) Get in close. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that they don’t get close enough to the subject to really take a lovely portrait. Fill your frame with as much of your subject as your lens will allow. And note that a lens in the range of 85-110mm tends to take the most lovely, magazine-cover-type tight portraits.

And finally, my favourite portrait trick:

b) Shoot a lot of photographs at one time. Often the reason portraits result in less-than-favourable images is because the subject isn’t entirely comfortable with having their shot taken. So one of my favourite tricks is to just take a ton of shots: let the subject pose, and take the shot. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then another. Usually, by this time, your subject will say something like, “Oh my GOSH! HOW MANY ARE YOU TAKING!” and start laughing. At this point, TAKE A FEW MORE. This is when you’ll end up getting the most natural shot.

Works every time.

So I hope the above tips help. As always, if you have any questions, you can always contact me directly at karenDOTwalrondATweblogsincDOTcom – and I’m happy to address them in upcoming Through the Gadling Lens posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: how I manage my photographs while I’m on vacation

by Karen Walrond on

Last week, I received an e-mail from Gadling reader Nick:

Can you spend some time discussing what happens after you get home from vacation – photographic workflows, etc? That’s one thing that seems to be missing.

As it happens, I’m currently on vacation: last week, we had friends staying with us in Houston, and this week my family and I are in New York City, so this topic is pretty timely. That said, I’m not entirely sure I’m the right person to be giving advice on this since:

1) I’m a photoblogger. I update my blog, Chookooloonks, often, and readers tend to expect almost daily photographs from me.

2) I take an obscene number of photographs. Really. Like hundreds, sometimes almost one thousand shots a day. Especially on vacation.

3) I’m generally not an expert on archiving photographs. Okay, honestly? I’m really pretty bad at it. But when I get back home, it’s at the top of my to-do list to sort out. So look for a post on that later.

So, anyway, unless your a pro photographer, you likely won’t feel the pressure to take as many photographs as I do each day, or feel the need to publish your images daily; still, my method of managing my shots when I travel for pleasure might be helpful to you, and provide you some tips and tricks to managing your own vacation shots. In addition, I’d love for you to share your own methods and workflows in the comments below (especially if you’re a professional photographer). And again, what I’m discussing here is not about photograph archival, just managing my current workflow. We’ll deal with archiving in a later post.

And so, on with the show:
1. I pack with photo management in mind. I’ve written before about how i pack for a trip, and those words from 8 months ago generally still stand: in addition to my camera and lenses, I take a very large memory card (a minimum of 2GB), and my laptop computer. In the last 5 years, at the very least, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a holiday of more than 2 days when my laptop hasn’t accompanied me. My sister laughs at me that I never leave my laptop at home, but the reason becomes more apparent, below.

2. Each day, I take tons of photographs. I can’t stress enough: i take a lot of photographs. A lot. Like, for every composed shot, I often shoot at least 5, sometimes 10 images. If my subject is in surrounded by constantly varying circumstances (like the water fountains, above), sometimes I take even more. It’s all about the law of averages: if I take 10 photographs of one subject, at least one of them is bound to be one I like. The same is true for any photographer, particularly if the photographer shoots digitally. That’s the beauty of digital cameras — you can see your work immediately.

Two notes about this, however:

(a) First, even though I’m taking multiple shots, don’t misunderstand: I’m not asking my subject to pose-and-readjust for each shot. These are shots taken in rapid succession, quickly squeezing the shutter. This sort of rapid-shooting technique is often easier to do with a digital SLR than a point-and-shoot, because point-and-shoots often have a delay in the shutter release. No matter. Still take more than one shot. Also:

(b) I rarely delete shots just by looking at the small display on the back of the camera — I actually only delete them if they’re OBVIOUSLY out-of-focus (and sometimes, not even then), or the camera misfired. You often never know what images you think are great (but actually aren’t) or which images you think are lousy (but actually aren’t) until you see them on a computer screen. Resist the temptation to delete. This, my friend, is the reason you packed that large memory card.

3. Each day, I download all of the photographs I take onto my laptop. Yup, that’s right: I download every day. Usually in the evening, usually with a glass of wine at my side. (Of course, I’m the mom of a young child, which means my clubbing-in-foreign-cities days are over, since our evenings out usually end at our daughter’s bedtime; however, if your night doesn’t end until the sun comes up, morning might be a better option for downloading your images). The upshot is that basically, I like to start each day with an empty memory card.

When I download the images, here’s how I do it:

a) I create a folder just for that day. The name of each folder that I create starts with the date of the day I shot the images, in yearmonthday format (e.g., today’s date would be captured as 090709). I do it in this way so that over the years, the days’ folders will naturally be in chronological order. Occasionally, I’ll add a little additional information — so the folder that contains the image of the Statue of Liberty, above, might be labeled “090707ladyliberty,” if most of the images shot that day were in and around the statue.

b) The day’s folder is stored in a general folder called “photography.” I could, I suppose, put each day’s folder on this trip in a folder entitled “New York City trip,” but I don’t. Generally, all my days’ folders are just stored in my photography folder, but I generally find them pretty easily, because of the steps that follow.

4. I scan the photographs I’ve just downloaded, picking some of my favourites, and doing some preliminary Photoshopping. I will admit that I might be somewhat singular in including this step — most people I know wait until they get home before they begin processing their shots. However, In the past I’ve mentioned how I use Photoshop as a tool of expression, rather than a tool of deception, so this generally means that I can edit my photographs pretty quickly. Besides, since I shoot hundreds of photographs a day, the thought of sitting down to finally go through my images at the end of a holiday is pretty intimidating — I’d rather just look through them daily, remembering particular moments at were funny and special, as well as critique the day’s work, so that I can remember not to make any similar mistakes on the following day.

5. If I have an internet connection, I upload some of my favourites. Again, because I’m a photoblogger, this often means uploading a favourite image or two onto my blog; however, even more importantly, this means uploading my images to my Flickr account. For those who might not be familiar with Flickr, this online service allows you to upload and store images onto your own private account (for free; or, if you’d prefer, in a paid pro account which allows you to upload unlimited images per day). You can set your account to be public (so you c
an show all the folks back home what you’ve been up to), or private, so only you (or your family or friends) have access to the images. Some notes about Flickr:

a) Flickr allows you to tag your photos with various keywords, as well as group them into various “albums” — so you can place all of your vacation photos in a group called, “My Excellent New York Adventure, July 2009,” for example. The beauty of this is that when, 4 years from now, I’m looking for an image of the Statue of Liberty that I took, I can simply do a search on my Flickr photos of “Statue of Liberty,” and it will pull up the images I took in July 2009, complete with the date that I took the shot (which Flickr automatically stores from the information embedded in the photo by my camera). I can then go back into my “photography” folder on my hard drive, and go to exactly the specific date I took the shots.

b) On Flickr (and in general, anytime I upload an image onto the web), I only share low-resolution images. There are ways on Flickr to protect your images from being taken, but frankly, it’s not that hard to bypass them. So while I save my post precious photos offline (or make certain images private on Flickr), I also limit the amount of use a person can make of one of my images by keeping them relatively low-resolution.

And that, my friends, is about it. Once I get home, I really cull through the photographs, finding ones that perhaps I didn’t notice before, adding Photoshop finishing touches, and deciding which ones I want to print — and this is relatively easy to do, because I’ve already organized the shots by day, and pretty much know where everything is. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have yet to really nail how I archive my photos once I return home and put on these finishing touches — but over the next few weeks, I hope to hone my process, and share it with you in a later post. In the meantime, I’d love to hear any tips you might have as to how your organize your photographs while you’re traveling. And, as always, if you have any questions, you can always contact me directly at karenDOTwalrondATweblogsincDOTcom – and I’m happy to address them in upcoming Through the Gadling Lens posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: enhancing vacation shots with macro photography

by Karen Walrond on

This week, I received an email from Gadling reader, Brenda:

I read your post on choosing lenses and I was curious as to how big exactly a macro lens is because all the other lenses were identified by their length in mm and I couldn’t find a precise range for the size of a macro lens by searching on google so im not sure what it is. I would appreciate it if you could clear this up for me.

This is an excellent question, and because I love to do it, I thought this week we’d spend some time on macro photography — what it is, why you need a special lens, and how it might enhance your travel shots.

And so, without further ado:
According to Wikipedia, “macro photography” is when “the image projected on the “film plane” (i.e., film or a digital sensor) is close to the same size as the subject.” Which, for me, is a bit technical. For those of us laypeople, macro photography is basically very-very-very-very-very close up photography. The beauty of this type of photography is that it can bring out the details of the subject of your photograph that you might not normally notice with the naked eye during the everyday.

In order to do macro photography well, if you have an SLR camera, you will likely have to purchase or borrow a special “macro” lens (or, if you use Nikon products, a “micro” lens — for some inexplicable reason, Nikon likes to call their macro lenses “micro,” but trust me, they’re the same). If instead, however, you’re in the market for a point-and-shoot camera and you’re interested in macro photography, be sure that you buy one with a “macro” setting — not all point-and shoots have them, and without it, you won’t be able to get a nice sharp macro image.

Here’s why the lens is important:

The following image was taken about 2 feet away from a bouquet of daisies I bought earlier this week, shot with a 50mm “normal” lens:

Now, if I went to get a bit closer to that yellow daisy, the closest I can get my camera with that 50mm lens is about 1 foot away, and still maintain some sharpness and focus:

But watch what happens when I get any closer — say, about 6 inches away:

See how I completely lose all focus? All you notice is a bunch of muddled (albeit pretty) colours.

Okay, so now I’m switching lenses — this time, I’m using my 60mm macro lens.

First, I’ll take the shot about 2 feet away, like I did with my 50mm lens:

You’ll notice that from this far away, the 60mm lens behaves like any other 60mm lens — petals are sharp, not just on the yellow daisy, but on the surrounding daisies, as well.

But! Because this is a macro lens, check out how close I can actually continue to maintain focus:

In the above image, I was actually holding the camera a mere 3-ish inches away from the daisy. This time, you can clearly see all the details in the centre of the flower. Without my macro lens, this sort of sharpness would be impossible to capture.

A few tips when it comes to macro photography:

  • You’ll remember that we talked about lens focal length; however, as Brenda noticed, there really isn’t a specific “focal length” when it comes to a macro lens — it’s possible to get 50mm macro lenses, 85mm macro lenses, 100mm macro lenses, whatever. For my purposes, I like macro lenses that are in the “normal” range — 50 to 60mm — so that I don’t have to worry about any wide angle or telephoto distortion in the resulting images.
  • When it comes to ISO, aperture and the like, the rules remain the same — just remember that if you’re focusing on a very small part of your subject, you’re concerned with light, etc., in a tiny region, so you’ll need to adjust accordingly. For example, the subject might be in bright light, but what you’re actually focusing on might be in shadow — so adjust your ISO for low light, rather than high.
  • The cool thing about macro lenses is that they can also be used as regular lenses — so, for example, when I pack my 60mm macro lens with me, I don’t worry about bringing another “normal” lens — the 60 mm macro will do the trick — I just have to stand farther away from the subject than I would when taking a macro shot. Make sense?

Okay, so now that you know what macro photography can do, here are some reasons why you might want to take a macro lens on your trip:

You’re going to a location with amazing flora.

As you can probably guess, macro photography is a great way to show the details of really exotic flowers — you can see the smallest details of petals and other characteristics of a flower that your naked eye wouldn’t necessarily notice. I always take my macro lens when I travel to tropical places, because the flowers are so unusual; similarly, if I’m going to England or, say, the United States Pacific Northwest in the summertime — places where the locals are truly passionate about their gardens — I make sure to take the macro along.

Some images which prove my point:

In the shot of the ginger lily, above, the macro lens allows you to really notice how the light falls on each individual petal, rather than just taking in the blossom as a whole. The resulting image shows a palette of cool pinks, reds and burgandies.


In the above image of the iris, notice how you can see the tiny little yellow hairs along the inside of the white petals.

And finally:

In the above image of this lilly, you can almost see each independent grain of pollen on the stamens — an aspect of the flower you might not notice (until you get all that pollen on your hands and clothes, I mean, or start seriously sneezing).


You’re going to a place with big bugs.

One of the most popular uses of macro photography is taking photographs of creepy-crawlies and other other-worldly insects. With a macro lens, you can see their little buggy faces, the hairs on their legs, and other details that a regular lens would miss.

A couple of a very accommodating dragonfly that I took recently, using my macro lens:

Notice the detail of his wings in the first shot, and his turquoise eyes (who knew dragonflies had turquoise eyes?). And in the second shot, is it me, or is that bug smiling?


You want to take really detailed shots of your travel companions.

Say you’re planning a beautiful, sunny beach vacation, or a strenuous hike in the mountains or desert. Carrying along your macro lens will help you take really focused shots of your travel companions’ Coppertone tans, or the sweat as it rolls off their brows after the hike:

Notice how you can see every little wrinkle in the skin at the base of my thumb. It occurs to me my hands don’t look that young anymore.

My husband, on a hot Texas day, after dousing himself with the hose.

You’re just in the mood to take some artsy-fartsy shots.

The very cool thing about macro photography is that sometimes you can get so close to your subject, it’s almost hard to tell what your subject is anymore. I love playing with my macro to get in close to subjects which have very vibrant colours or patterns — the results are often unrecognizable, but artistic enough that they find a framed place in my home:

You plan on eating.

Finally, an admission: I love to eat on vacation. And one of my favourite uses for my macro lens is to shoot images of food. Sometimes you just gotta get close to see how luscious everything is:

So get out there and grab your macro, and see what you can capture – sometimes, the very best way to remember your vacation is up close and personal. And as always, if you have any questions, you can always contact me directly at karenDOTwalrondATweblogsincDOTcom – and I’m happy to address them in upcoming Through the Gadling Lens posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: taking photographs at night

by Karen Walrond on

Recently, I received a note from a friend of mine who’d just returned from a vacation:

I just returned from a vacation in which much of our activity was at night. I didn’t carry a tripod, and I was dissatisfied with using either the auto setting on the camera (the flash burst overexposed my subjects’ faces) or the in-camera “night setting” (the subjects’ skin seemed blurry and everything in the background had a nuclear orange glow). Do you have any tips for making night shots easier or better?

Night shots are definitely tricky, and sometimes downright impossible without a tripod. That said, this week, I’ll share some of my tips and tricks to taking photographs at night.
1. First, turn off your flash.

As you know, I’m not a huge fan of flash, but even more so at nighttime. To show you why, I asked my husband to come outside with me last night to our little garden swing, so I could take his photograph. The swing is in a quiet part of our garden, and the only light we had was a citronella torch to keep the mosquitos away.

This first image, was shot using a flash:

You’ll notice that while Marcus is well-lit, and you can see all the details of his face, it’s quite obvious that there was a fake light source utilized to capture his image. I call this the “party pic” effect — using your flash is fine if what you want to capture is your friends at the club having a good time, just to prove they were there.

However, take a look at the following image, taken without the flash:

In this case, although the details aren’t nearly as sharp, notice how the mood is captured — this is much closer to what I saw as we were sitting in the darkness outside. Now, in this case, I’d cranked up my ISO to 3200, and was handholding the camera — this is why the image is as grainy as it is (tips on how to avoid that to follow). But the point is made: taking the shot without the flash captures the ambiance. And this is true, whether your subject is a person, a martini glass in a bar, or a street scene.

So now that you’ve turned off your flash, what should you do next?

2. Take your camera off manual mode. Don’t get me wrong: you can take nighttime shots on fully manual mode, but you really have to be an expert on aperture, ISO and shutter speeds. If you are an expert, than really, you probably don’t need to be reading this post — go forth and capture great images, my friend. If you’re not an expert, however, trust me, your best bet is to have the camera in automatic mode.

3. Consider your ISO.

Remember about 7 months ago, we discussed ISO, or the “light catchers” of your camera? Be sure to read that post before you go forward, because it talks about how ISO, aperture and shutter speed are all related. So go ahead, and read that. I’ll wait.

Okay.

So, in a nutshell, the general rule is as follows:

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.

Now, for the purpose of nighttime shots, this isn’t to say that you can’t shoot in low light with the a low ISO. And so, a corollary to the general rule above, is as follows:


For nighttime shots:

If you don’t have a tripod (or something you can use nearby to steady the camera), crank up your ISO as high as possible, hold your breath, squeeze the trigger, and hope for the best. This is not an ideal situation, because of the following:

1) Since you’re using a high ISO, this means that you have tons of “light catchers” working in your camera to capture your image with the low available light you’re letting into your camera through your aperture. This usually means that your image will come out looking grainy — the lower the ISO setting, the less grainy your images are; the higher your ISO, the more grainy. The shot I took of my husband in above was taken at an ISO setting of 3200 — a staggeringly high ISO, resulting in the grainy image that you see. Also:

2) Since you’re hand-holding your camera, the high ISO setting still might not be high enough to reduce camera shake. Remember, in low light, if you’re camera is set on automatic, the shutter will likely stay open long enough for your light catchers to capture your light — and when your shutter is open, the *slightest* movement will cause a blur. Cranking your ISO up to a high setting will shorten the amount of time your camera’s shutter stays open, but it might not be enough.

The following images are a couple of shots I took in London last winter at dusk (so not full nighttime), handholding the camera, and setting the ISO to somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1600:

Again, notice that the images are somewhat grainy — but still, the mood of London on that cold November night remains intact, without the distortion of a flash.

Now, if you do have a tripod (or a way to steady your camera close by), this is a much better situation. Here’s what you should do:

a) Lower your ISO as much as you dare. Again, you’re doing this to try to lower the amount of grain in the resulting image. Don’t get it too low — the shutter may never close — but somewhere in the neighbourhood of 400 — 640 might be able to do the trick. (An aside: your shutter *will* close if you set your camera on “shutter priority” mode, where you can set the time for how long you’d like your shutter to stay open. Once you’ve mastered shooting at night in fully automatic mode, try playing with shutter speeds, next.)

b) Affix your camera to your tripod, or whatever makeshift “tripod” you may have jerryrigged. Note — your tripod doesn’t have to be huge — there are tons of travel tripods (like the Gorillapod) that are out there which are sturdy enough to handle your camera, but small enough that you can toss it into your camera bag.

c) Set your camera on “timer” mode. Why do this? Because at a low ISO, even the act of clicking your shutter might cause enough camera shake to create a blurry image. By setting your camera on timer, this will give the camera enough time to settle after you’ve squeezed the shutter, and before the camera takes the shot.

d) Aim, focus, and squeeze the shutter. Now note well: if you’re shooting people, they’re going to have to stay VERY STILL while the shutter is open, or they’ll appear blurry. However, movement can be a nice effect if you’re shooting a busy city street — the buildings and lights around the people will remain perfectly in focus, and the blur created by the people milling around will convey the movement.

The following are some pretty stunning shots shared in our flickr pool captured at night:

This beautiful shot of an alley in Venice shared by Geir Halvorsen was shot with a point-and-shoot, and an ISO speed of only 400. I’m guessing that Geir had a tripod or a railing to steady the camera — as you can see, it’s a great shot.

In the above amazing shot shared by ohad*, the ISO setting was at a mere 100 — the kind of setting you’d have for broad daylight! In this case, the shutter stayed open for 13 seconds — which explains why the image is generally pretty sharp, but you have those lovely lights created by the cars below.

And speaking of lights, what about that “nuclear orange glow” that my friend mentioned in his email to me? That’s generally caused by the street lamps — because street lamps aren’t has bright as sunlight, they burn with an orange glow. Personally, I like the effect — it adds a coziness to the image — but if you find that it’s too much, try adjusting your white balance setting (often indicated by a “WB” on your camera, check your manual) to the “lightbulb” setting, and try shooting again.

So that’s it! As with every photography technique, the way to master it is to practice, practice, practice — go out in your own neighbourhood at night for a photoshoot, so you’ll be ready and know your camera prior to taking it out on vacation. And as always, if you have any questions, you can always contact me directly at karenDOTwalrondATweblogsincDOTcom – and I’m happy to address them in upcoming Through the Gadling Lens posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Through the Gadling Lens: photo gifts for Father’s Day

by Karen Walrond on

About a month ago, I shared some ideas for some last-minute gifts for Mother’s Day. Well, Father’s Day fast approaches (this Sunday, for those of you taking notes), and so this week, I thought I’d share some of the best gifts you can get Dad this special day. Now, I admit: the Mother’s Day gifts were easy for me to come up with, because, well — I’m a mom. So this week, I enlisted the assistance of some dads and other friends out there in cyberspace, and the following are some of the best ideas that they had.

I have to say: they’ve got pretty good taste.
For the sportsman: A GoPro wearable camera.

This suggestion came from my husband, Marcus: the GoPro wearable camera. My husband is an avid mountain biker, and an avid surfer — and like most people who love to do very active sports which require a keen amount of concentration, it’s very difficult for him to get up close shots of him doing his thing. The GoPro wearable camera actually allows you to mount the camera on your person or to your gear, so that you get some wonderfully intimate photographs (and videos!) of you being the daredevil you know you are. They’re impact resistant and water resistant, and I have to say — some of the images that are on the GoPro site captured by their cameras are pretty astounding:


Amazing images. The cameras range from US$159.99 to US$ 199.99, without accessories.


For the camera buff who doesn’t like the idea of a bulky SLR:

Recently, my colleague Scott Carmichael pinged me to ask what I thought about the new Olympus PEN four-thirds camera. “If you hate massive SLR’s as much as I do,” he asked, “would this camera be the best thing ever invented?”

Now, I love my SLR, and it’s pretty hard to convince me to lay out a lot of cash for anything less. But I have to admit this Olympus four-thirds camera is pretty great. With its retro design, it looks like a throwback to the cameras of the 60’s. And because it doesn’t have the mirror box of most SLR cameras, the entire camera is as small as a point-and-shoot (as shown to the left) — but! The lenses are interchangeable just a regular single-lens reflex. This, my friends, is huge. Couple this with the fact that the camera can record high definition videos, this baby is really a powerhouse.

That said, I have to say that its hefty price tag (starting at about $800 for a body and a lens, and rapidly going past US$ 1000 if you throw in a flash and a couple of spare batteries), I have to question if it makes more sense to just go ahead and by the SLR. But I’m willing to confess that I’m an SLR purist, and this could just be my bias talking. Scott ended up purchasing the Olympus, and is thrilled with it — you can start following his reviews here.

For the shutterbug who is always looking for inspiration:

When I asked the question on Twitter and other areas of the internet, I received a couple of responses related to great books for finding inspiration. One such twitterer (tweeter?), @Hugh_Resnick, recommended Camera Ready: How to Shoot Your Kids, by Arthur Elgort. Despite its dubious title, @Hugh_Resnick shares that the book is written by a fashion photographer who speaks simply and clearly about how to take pictures of children. I imagine that this would be the perfect sort of gift for the new dad, who just can’t get enough of taking shots of the new child in his life. And let’s face it: shooting kids is tricky. They’re just so wiggly.

I also received another good book recommendation from my friend Tracey, founder of Shutter Sisters. Her recommendation has a bit broader appeal (and might be easier to obtain a copy of): The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos, by Michael Freeman. She was pretty impressed with the book, as was the author of this book review, which provides a chapter-by-chapter roundup of the content of the book. The general premise of the book appears to help teach a photographer how to visualize the final image before actually squeezing the shutter and taking the shot.

Hmm. I think *I* might actually pick up a copy.

For the dad who’s always on the go:

You really can never go wrong with buying any photographer a new camera bag — or maybe that’s just me. Still, for someone who travels a lot and loves to shoot while they do it, a good camera bag can be indispensible.

When I look for a camera bag, there are three things that are important to me:

1) it’s easy to carry around while I’m rushing from one terminal to another (which usually means a backpack);

2) I don’t want to to scream “there’s an expensive camera in here!” — it preferably has to look like any other backpack; and

3) since I shoot digitally, I generally want to it also hold my laptop, since invariably, I’m going to spend my evenings on my trip with a glass of wine and Photoshop.

There are lots of great sites out there with really good camera bags, but for me, the brand I’ve found that most easily fits all of my criteria is Crumpler — and specifically, I own the Customary Barge. A warning — these bags aren’t cheap — but I love how they’re so cleverly designed so that zipped up, they look like any other standard sports bag; and yet, they have enough padding that the bag can fall out of the overhead compartment and I won’t (really) worry about whether my camera, lenses and computer will be able to withstand the impact. A great bag.

Again, there are lots of other great manufacturers out there, and I’m always looking for the next great bag. If you have a specific brand you’re pretty fond of, I’d love to hear it.


For any dad who owns an SLR — a new lens:

Let’s face it — if the father in your life is a bona fide shutte
r bug, he’s not going to turn down receiving a new lens. Of course, there’s always a risk to buying gear for someone who has a beloved hobby — you just never know if you’re going to get “the wrong” item. However, if you think that a lens is what Dad needs, here are some tips to purchasing them:

1. Make sure you know the brand of camera, including make and model, before you purchase the lens. Often only particular lenses fit particular cameras, so this knowledge is essential.

2. Figure out what sorts of lenses Dad already has — as we’ve discussed in the past, lenses are often defined by focal lengths and apertures. You don’t want to end up buying a duplicate lens, and knowing what Dad has (and what he’d like to shoot, or is fond of shooting) would be a plus.

3. Consider a fixed focal length lens. Often, lens kits come with zoom lenses, which are certainly convenient, but you can get some beautiful fixed-focal-length lenses with wonderfully low aperture numbers, which create great images and lovely, buttery depths of field. My favourite? A 50mm 1.4 lens (which I used for the photograph at the top of the post).

4. Finally, you can always purchase Dad a novelty lens. I recently received a Lensbaby as a gift, and I have to admit, while I likely wouldn’t have thought of purchasing the lens on my own, it’s sort of fun to play with, now that I own it. The Lensbaby allows you to manipulate your focus, so that only one part of your image is in focus, while the other goes to a funky blur. Like the picture of my dog, below, where only his nose is in focus:

It makes for a cool effect.

And with that, Happy Father’s Day, everyone. If you have any other photography-related gift ideas for Father’s Day, please leave them in the comments below, for those of us who are going to definitely be doing some last-minute shopping. And as always, if you have any questions, you can always contact me directly at karenDOTwalrondATweblogsincDOTcom – and I’m happy to address them in upcoming Through the Gadling Lens posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
Through the Gadling Lens can be found every Thursday right here, at 11 a.m. To read more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.