| As I am writing an instructional article on landscape and wildlife photography, I have to tailor the image to specific subjects. One planned subject is the use of long exposures to add a certain something to the image and how they can also work as leading lines. One benefit to shooting at sunrise is that you can obtain quite long exposures without having to use filters. On this day, we had a very cloudy start and so there wasn't a sunset like the one I wrote about in the previous blog (click here to read that blog). Although I would always take a colourful sky to the one you can see here, it gave me a chance to talk about longer exposures and how they can help an image. So the composition is fairly simple, there are converging lines on the bottom left third which then flows into the image and up to the large tree on the upper right third. |  Nikon D800e w/ 24-70mm F/2.8 F16 - 5" - ISO100 |
The use of a long exposure means that were the water was meeting the there was this cloudy/streaky effect, which helped to emphasise the leading lines. The problem I was having was that the sky was grey and this was reflecting on the stream. To get around this I bought out my circular polariser for the first time in a while (although I have found myself using it more and more). By applying about half of the full polarisation you can see the orange start to appear in the bottom of the stream, because a polariser cuts out the reflection (or quite a lot of it at least). Here is a comparison between polarised (left) and normal (right):
Changing subjects to the wildlife subjects now, Bissoe gave me a great opportunity at the end of summer to improve my dragonfly and damselfly photography. For the first time, I managed to capture a Dragonfly in flight! It isn't an amazing image, but I'll still post it as it was quite an achievement for me (click on it to see it larger).
Nikon D800e w/ Micro-nikkor 200mm F/4 F/8 - 1/160th - ISO320
To start explaining the settings for this image above of a Golden Ringed Dragonfly, you need to understand what I wanted to capture. I love environmental shots of wildlife, these are images that show the habitat or at least give some clarity as to the scenery that the subject was photographed in. Some amazing examples of this can be found on Ben Hall's website (www.benhallphoto.com). Therefore to show some of the background I would want to use a slightly smaller aperture than usual, after some experiment exposures, I settled at F/8. Then, as I was hand-holding, I needed a suitable shutter speed. I got 1/160th of a second by using ISO-320. I didn't mind increasing the ISO as I was on a full frame camera (D800e) and so there wasn't going to be any compromise of image quality.
Nikon D800e w/ Micro-nikkor 200mm F/4 F/8 - 1/60th - ISO100
The final image to talk about is of a subject type that I have probably spent the least amount of time with - flowers. There are a couple more images from Bissoe that I could be talking about, however I chose to do this one as, firstly I really like the image, and secondly because the subject isn't going to run away and the light was pretty constant on this day, I had loads of time to use a few techniques which would make the picture as sharp as possible. So firstly, I came to have these have settings as I needed a depth-of-field that would include most of the flowers (F/8), a low ISO to remove noise and a shutter speed that would take most of the slight movement from the breeze out. I now had to ensure that there was as little movement as possible in camera. To do this I used live view, because this means that the mirror is already up when you take the picture and so you don't have the shake from that movement. I also used a remote shutter release to avoid my own movement shaking the camera. In the end I had an image which was the sharpest I could get it and in good lighting, giving me the best chance of a strong image after post-production!
I hope that this blog has given you some useful tips that you can use in your own work, thanks for reading and if you missed the first part of this two part blog then follow this link (Part One) and have a read.
Thanks for any likes, shares and comments!
I hope that this blog has given you some useful tips that you can use in your own work, thanks for reading and if you missed the first part of this two part blog then follow this link (Part One) and have a read.
Thanks for any likes, shares and comments!
