Mobile Photography

I’ve been shooting photos for 20 years. I’ve made my living in the profession for the last 15. I can count on one hand the number of times that everything lines up perfectly and a truly rare image was created.

Now, I don’t want to toot my own horn about this shot, but the fact that, during a 30 second exposure, after a 10 second timer (during which I hopped down from the roof of my truck where the camera was on a tripod, and joined the scene by the fire), a meteor (or so they tell us) would enter the sky EXACTLY in the corner of the frame and explode in the very part of the frame that needed balance, just as I had finally worked out the correct exposure and lighting to match the foreground with the night sky, is beyond rare. It’s a non-chance. There is no way to plan for something like this. No way to even hope for it.

But lest you get the impression that I’m subscribing to a lifestyle of reliance on freakish luck, there is a deeper game at play here. Namely this: If you shoot enough arrows, eventually you’ll pull a Robin Hood and split the arrow that was already a bulls-eye. When I took this shot, it was the final day of my project shooting fall landscapes in the American West. Five weeks previous, I had left Seattle in my truck with no mission beyond creating and sharing beautiful photography as I chased good weather almost all the way to the Mexican border.

Every morning, I was up shooting the sunrise. Every night, I was posted up somewhere scenic to shoot the close of another day in the great outdoors. From the Olympic rain forest to the Tetons, Yosemite to Zion, I was on an epic hunt. And, to be perfectly honest with you, toward the end of the trip, despite the thousands of images taken, and the extremely enthusiastic feedback from the world at large, I was disappointed that I hadn’t captured a single transcendent image; an image that would make me want to burn my camera, a la Jimmy Hendrix.

By Joseph Eckert The idea of taking photographs at night can be counterintuitive to the novice photographer. After all, photography is an art, a craft, a technology that is wholly built on light. 

Night, of course, by very definition lacks the pervasive light of day, and therefore doesn’t seem like a good time for photography. In the broadest sense, this intuitive understanding of light and its importance to photography is absolutely correct. Night does represent a more challenging time to take pictures, because we lack all those wonderful photons barreling down from the sun and reflecting off everything interesting and into our waiting lenses.

Take a moment, tonight, or whenever you have a chance, and go outside into the darkness long after the sun has gone down. Really open your eyes and observe, noting all the differences, all the unique things that set night apart from day. It is as simple as the lack of sunlight, but infinitely more complex than that breezy statement would suggest.

Pay attention to the way the shadows have deepened and pooled, how colors are muted or rendered differently by the artificial light of streetlamps or the exposed bulb on your backyard porch. Notice how things feel, how significant just changing the time of day can be. That old oak tree that seems so friendly and comforting in the day can turn into a gnarled, malevolent specter at night. Or a car that during the day is simple and boring might become a gleaming chariot in the darkness. The possibilities are endless.

I’m not going to categorically deny that you can take great nightscapes with a compact digital camera. I will say that using a point and shoot is going to make getting that fantastic image of your dreams a lot harder.

I recommend the following:

• Tripod, sturdy but lightweight enough for you to carry around easily
• DSLR
• Remote shutter release
• Relatively fast wide angle lens (the wide angle part is optional, but what I recommend to get the most dramatic shots of the architecture and streets of your city)
• Lens hood (to reduce lens flare from outside-the-frame light sources)

In the final part of our series looking at common problems that plague new photographers we turn our attention to composition and framing.

Unlike the more technical aspects of photography such as exposure or focusing, choosing how to compose and frame your shots is as much about personal choice as being right or wrong. Despite this, there are ways to improve the composition of your images. The classic habits to break are putting the main subject in the centre of the frame, and not getting close enough to the subject.

Below we’ll show you a couple images that don’t quite work for a number of reasons, and then slightly different versions of each that do.

Including subjects at the edge of the image:

You need to watch out for areas of the subject, especially at the edge of the frame, which draw attention away from the main subject. Before you press the shutter, try looking all around the frame for anything that doesn’t help the composition.

Uninteresting foreground:

Shooting with a wide-angle lens means that you will often include a large area of the foreground. So you should look out for interesting subjects or textures to make the most of this area of the image.

Use long exposures to create an ethereal atmosphere. Weather conditions are often thought of as static, but in reality they shift and change slowly.  In many instances these changes occur too slowly to be held in our visual memory, but our camera can record these changes. Misty, foggy or smokey scenes can be created with moving clouds, surf, etc.

We are often so rushed that we seldom pause to take note of slow moving subjects. Once you start to look for slow moving subjects you quickly open a door to a new world of photo opportunities. Clouds, shadows, stars, plants and even people or animals make great long exposure subjects.

While your camera shutter is open your sensor or film is in essence a canvas. Normally that canvas is open very briefly but with longer exposures the light running over your sensor acts a brush. If you let a scene unfold before you with your shutter open it is “painted” onto the sensor yielding blurs of light. If you work in an environment where there is little light you can manually paint light into a photo with strobes, flashlights, cell phones, etc. to create a unique image.

Everyone has their own reasons for taking pictures. All valid. But even so, photography is the world’s universal language. No need for translation. 

To Be Creative. Since it's inception photography has engaged some of the most creative minds. And some of the most bizarre, too. And although it was under pressure in the early years to justify itself as an art form, most museums today have photography collections and understand its historic and aesthetic contributions. Social networking sites like PicsArt, Facebook, and Instagram have opened up new opportunities to showcase

To document

There are not many truly creative photographs being made. Most people just want to capture moments of their new baby, wedding, graduation, gathering, party, “selfie”, etc. Photography serves as the easiest and most convenient way to remember. You do not have to know how to spell RAW or PhotoShop to get competent results.

To be trendy

Photography has been popular since Kodak made it easy. But the digital revolution has made it accessible for all. The cameras are simpler, cheaper. More pictures are taken with cell phones than all cameras. It is a universal hobby. Anybody can do it. Even hipsters.

To tell stories

It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional or an amateur. You don’t need formal training. But we can most accurately tell the big and little stories of our own lives, of those surrounding us and of those far away. The more we know about each other, the more we see, the better we understand and cope.

Helsinki-based Scoopshot announced today that it has raised $3.9 million in a Series A round of funding to continue growing its crowdsourced photography business globally. The company uses its growing army of 350,000 users to quickly get on-demand news photography for more than 60 publishers, including News Corp and the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Organizations such as Greenpeace also use the services to capture breaking events, as do brands like Nokia.

Scoopshot allows media and companies to crowdsource mobile photos in minutes, setting geolocation boundaries to indicate which photos they're interested in.

"In three years, Scoopshot has already become the clear market leader in crowdsourced images for brands and publishers," Chris Barchak, a partner at Conor Venture Partners, one of the Scoopshot's investors, said in a statement. "Its on-demand service completely changes how we think about digital image sales, combining the afforable cost of stock photography with the specificity of commissioned work."

The deal follows a $1.2 million seed round just three months ago by the world’s top-selling stock photographer, Yuri Arcurs.

“This … will strengthen our position as a market leader in on-demand mobile photography” said Petri Rahja, CEO and founder of Scoopshot. “Expanding our sales and marketing teams and establishing an expanded presence in the US will allow us to revolutionize the photo industry with our on-demand model.”

Yuri Acurs, the world's top-selling microstock photographer, will go to great lengths to prove he's right, and the video above is a great case in point for that. He wanted to prove that he could flash freeze a fighter jet at full speed, and he got that shot. ALl he needed was appromimately 30,000Wof filll flash... no big deal.

For those unfamiliar with how studio lighting usually works, 30,000W is as much as 100 times more flash than you're going to typically use in a regular studio setting. So muh flash power being thrown at this jet that the people on the ground can actully feel the heat from the lights.

Apparently, the project started as "A heated in-house discussion about flash speeds [and] ended up becoming a rather BIGGGG experiment..." An experiment that ended with Acurs getting his shot and proving his point.

Learn how to make any interior space shine with these expert photography tips.

Choose the Right Perspective. Interior Photography calls for taking a couple of steps back and shoot from one of the corners, or with the camera pressed against the walls. When you scope out the space you are about to photograph, try all different corners for a variety of persepectives, and only then choose to focus on the on that captures the room at it's best.

Wide Angles, when you want to capture as much of the space as possible, a wide angle is the way to go. For a good wide angle, you will need to use specialized gear. Most experts agree that a lens ranging from 16mm to 24mm will give you an optimal wide shot of the interior. Too wide will result in perspective distortion, through, so make sure you get a lens that is appropriate for the range of space sizes you intend to photograph.

Eliminate Blurring, even if you have the steady hands of a surgeon, there's no reason to risk blurry images. You want to keep your indoor photos sharp, so it's best to use a tripod. As an extra stabilizing measure, use your camera timer to make sure the shot it untainted by any movement that might be caused by your excited fingers.

A snapshot shows the world what your camera sees, but a thoughtfully composed photograph shows the world what you see. While composition can be complex, several basic strategies arise when making pictures of natural subjects.

One of the most effective ways to create a powerful composition is to use visual elements to lead the viewer's eye into the scene. Leading elements can be just about anything - lines, curves, or a progression of shapes. Leading lines that stretch from foreground to background are especially powerful, propelling the viewer into the scene.

Foregrounds add depth, and the best add punch, too. Providing a point of reference, they can simplify chaotic scenes. At this placid pool of water during a fiery sunrise, I backed up to incorporate the curving shoreline. Its shape frames the reflection of the mountains, enhancing the composition and adding depth to the image.

People are naturally attracted to patterns, part of our ability and biological need to organize our chaotic world. When the eye explores one, it tends to want to visit each and every repeated element; accordingly, the savvy photographer can use repeating shapes and colors to encourage the viewer to visit multiple parts of the composition. Visual repetition gets the viewer’s eye moving, engaging interest and creating compositional energy.
On the flip side, repetition can also help create harmony and balance, adding structure to a composition, as well as to create order in an otherwise chaotic scene.
You can also create effective images by making the pattern itself the entire focus of the composition, as I did with the quirky shapes and patches of color in the little pond seen here. The less dynamic shapes of the lily pads floating in the water fade to the background, providing general structure and order for an otherwise energetic, chaotic collection of visual elements.

At the end of last week, Canon Korea teased a new camera in an ad that showed what seemed to be a DSLR hidden behind a semi-see through sheet. Now, adding fuel to the fire (albeit a small fire) that the Korean branch of the company started, Canon Japan has released a teaser video about the same camera.

As teasers go, this one is a bit on the sad side. No deep message, no man in the Scottish highlands on a  "journey of self-discovery," just a pair of white lips wishing you a Merry Christmas. The title, however, does give something away.

The Canon Rebel DSLRs are known as the Kiss lineup in Japan, and so the video confirms this will be a new consumer-level DSLR (no $3,000 retro shooter from Canon..yet). The two main camera, and if you look at the photo at the top you'lll understand why.

Put together by dicahub, that image shows how the camera under the sheet in the original teaser perfectly fits the SL1's outline, with a few minor exceptions. Those exceptions could be the result of shooting angle, or hint at the fact that his is indeed a followup with some minor aesthetic tweaks.

Black and white photography is a rewarding and challenging field of artistic photography. Even people who don’t care about photography can find themselves drawn to a great black and white image. As a photographer, black and white can allow you to discover a whole new character in a familiar subject. For many digital photographers, black and white photography is nothing more than colour photography converted by software. It is a matter for your own judgement whether this is effective for your photographs.

Black And White Photography Tip #1. Choosing A Subject. Some subjects lend themselves to colour but are not nearly so effective in black and white. For example, sunset photographs rely on the colour of a great sky for their impact, and rarely produce a good black and white image. Colourful birds, flowers, fashion…there are many times when the only logical approach is to shoot your subject in colour. On the other hand, some subjects are ideally suited to black and white photography.

Because this is an ‘old-fashioned’ medium, it often works well with old-fashioned subjects. Rustic items like old farm equipment, a tumble-down shack, an old wooden fence can all be great subjects for black and white photos.

When photographing people, age can also be a factor. A close-up portrait of an aged face showing all the lines and creases of their years on earth can have much greater impact in black and white.

Ever wanted to take some high speed photos of flour flying through the air? 

PhotoExtremist has put together a very interesting tutorial about how to set-up, light, shoot, and edit a high-speed photoshoot using colored flour. It's a surprisingly basic setup for what amount to some pretty impressive looking images.

You can see the entire thing below, but it's essentially a pretty straight forward. The flour is colored using holi powder, and flung at the model by an assistant. The scene was lit with a beauty-dished strobe from the front, and teo rear speedlights slaved into the system. That provided enough light to capture a high-speed image of the flour flying.

Photographer Evan Sharboneau also went through the substantial editing he did with the images, often times radically changing the color and spahe of the photo in order to get the final image he was looking for.

So it you're up for a project that's going to require some heavy cleanup, but could create some fantastic images.

Steve Gosling Scottish Highlands Photography Workshop. Pro landscape photographer Steve Gosling will be holding a 2-day photography workshop in the Scottish Highlands.

Attendees will visit some of Steve's favourite spots in the Glencoe area and the event gives participants the chance to try out the Olympus OM-D camera and lenses as well as receive top photographic tips and advice from Steve Gosling. In addition, a discount voucher for Olympus gear will be given to all who attend.

The course runs from Tuesday 26 November 2013 - Wednesday 27 November 2013 and is priced at £100. Please note that accommodation, meals and transport are not included.

How it was done - zooming the exposure. Tips on how to create a fun and abstract image by zooming your lens during a long exposure.

Zooming during a long exposure tips

• Works well on night scenes and ones with many light sources
• Set up your camera on a tripod with a remote trigger or release
• Set your camera to Manual mode
• Set your focus by zooming in all the way, then lock the focus (using either back button focus or focus using Auto-focus and then switch it off to Manual focus)
• Zoom out so you can see the whole image as you want it framed
• Then start your exposure and zoom your lens out while the shutter is opened (you may need to practice a few times to make it go smoothly)
• Experiment with different zooming speeds and timing, as example: if you exposure is 5 seconds do one with 3-4 seconds at the beginning, then zoom at the end; then do another when you zoom immediately and do most of the exposure at the end
• Exposure must be 2 seconds or longer to make this work, otherwise it becomes really tricky to zoom
• If it is too bright to get a 2 second exposure, make sure your ISO is as low as your camera goes and your aperture is set to your smallest setting (f/22 or f/32). If it is still too bright you may need to use a Neutral density filter to cut down the amount of light coming through the lens

This should be one of the most obvious things in an image yet many people have absolutely no idea as to where it should go. Most people take their subject and place it slap bang in the middle thinking that is the right place to go.

Despite what I have said in my intro about centrally placed subjects, there is a place for it in photography, just that it works in limited ways. Subjects ike people portraits can work well with a central subject. Other subjects or objects like buildings that are symmetrical work well as do cars taken from the front and subjects cropped tightly. Be careful though that you use central placement in a limited way in your photo taking.

If you want to place a subject in the middle of an image try to off center it just a little so that it's not right in the middle. This will help make a more pleasant image.

Take a look for yourself at a photo of travel magazine and see how many of the images use this rule. But, not only do these points help create a great image but the vertical or horizontal lines do the same. If you have a tall object or a person standing up then place it or them on one of the two vertical lines. The same goes for a landscape image with a horizon.The horizon should always lie on one of the horizontal lines and not in the middle, creating a striking landscape photo.