Travel – Page 13 – To Travel Hopefully

People Pictures Beyond the Selfie [Encore Publication]: Why selfies don’t make great images, and how to get really good pictures including yourself

Several times in the pages of “To Travel Hopefully,” I’ve emphasized the importance of including yourself and your travel companions in some of your images. Not only will you and your friends enjoy seeing yourselves captured in these travel photos, but the inclusion of people in travel images gives a sense of scale to the places you visited and tells a more compelling narrative than would be possible in photos without people.

The standard way of including yourself in a photo these days is to use your phone’s selfie camera, but there are a number of reasons why taking selfies is not the best way to capture your own likeness in an image. First, the sensor in the front-facing (“selfie”) camera on your phone very likely has a much lower resolution than does the phone’s regular camera, so the picture quality is lower. Second, it’s difficult to properly compose a photo when holding the camera out at arm’s (or selfie stick’s) length, let alone to smoothly release the shutter. Third, the perspective imparted to the image when the camera is held above in selfie fashion is distorted and often unflattering. It’s really quite unlikely that you’ll get professional quality images of people using the selfie technique.

A selfie doesn’t allow you to properly compose your image, is awkward to shoot, and uses a low-quality image sensor. Instead, mount your camera on a tripod, compose the image exactly the way you want it, and release the shutter remotely or with the camera’s self-timer. Or enlist the help of another photographer. Buy this photo

Fortunately, there are better ways of including yourself in your photos, and they’re not difficult to implement. The two most straightforward methods are placing the camera on a tripod and triggering the shutter with a self-timer or remote release, and setting up the camera for another person to shoot handheld.

The basic setup is the same for either method. Have the other people you want included in the photo stand in the desired location. If you’re the only person present, make a note of where your body will be placed in the composition. Then compose your image from the best vantage point, with the camera either mounted on a tripod or handheld. Configure your camera’s settings (focus, exposure, flash, etc.) the way you prefer, and test the settings by shooting a few frames without yourself in the image. Then move into your predetermined position in the frame and either fire the shutter remotely with the self-timer or remote release, or ask another person to push the shutter button for you.

If you do choose to have another person press the shutter release button for you, you need to be thinking about two things: 1) ensure they know how to operate the camera and won’t run away with it, and 2) be aware that in many countries and regions the person who pushes the button owns the copyright for the image even if they did not contribute artistically to making it. I prefer to use a tripod and remote release whenever practical, so as to have a higher likelihood of capturing the image I envision and to avoid any question as to who owns the copyright.

Do you have a favorite method for including yourself in your photos? Please share your ideas in the comment box.

Want to see more posts on how to shoot while traveling? See them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/shoot/.

A “Fixer” for the Rest of Us [Encore Publication]: How you can leverage local resources to shoot like a pro

How do professional travel photographers on assignment create those amazing, make-your-jaw-drop images? You know, the photos we see when browsing the pages of a major travel magazine or website? There are several advantages the pros have, including technique honed over decades of practice, state-of-the-art equipment (with prices to match), and the ability to spend a lot of time at the same location, returning again and again until the time of day, lighting, weather conditions, and subject matter are perfectly aligned for a great shot. But one advantage available to the pros can be borrowed, at least in part, by the rest of us who love travel photography, too. That is the use of a “fixer,” a local expert who knows the region, the language, the culture, and the way to get things done, and whose expertise helps the travel photographer get those incredible shots.

While we were visiting a carpet weaving collective in Goreme, Turkey, our group’s trip leader introduced me to this worker who was enjoying a cup of Turkish coffee during her break. Buy this photo

If you are traveling on a group trip run by a good travel company, you may already may have a fixer working to make your experience (including your photographic experience) as rewarding as possible. The operator will likely have chosen an itinerary that will get you off the beaten path and into the settings where unusual and powerful images can be made. They will have arranged your accommodations and transportation well in advance of your departure. The company should have planned some activities and excursions that will allow you to interact with local people and see how they truly live. And best of all, they have provided you with a local expert, often called a trip leader or program director, who knows the lay of the land, speaks the local language(s), and can facilitate your getting the kinds of shots you want. This is of paramount importance when you want to have lots of interaction within a culture very different from your own, which I believe is the best part of traveling as a photographer.

For example, I made the above portrait after being introduced to the young worker at a carpet weaving collective by our trip leader in Turkey. He translated so that she and I could get to know each other a little bit first, and then asked her if I could make her portrait. It is certainly possible (I’ve done this countless times) to ask for yourself by using sign language, pointing to your camera, and smiling a lot, but having a local person with you can be a great help.

Sometimes, knowing where to go to seek out authentic cultural interactions works magic. I captured this shot of our host family during a home-hosted lunch on an estancia (ranch) in Patagonia.

Our hosts, Chango and his extended family, were happy to pose for a portrait after we enjoyed their hospitality on their Patagonian ranch. A local guide and good travel company can help arrange these kinds of authentic interactions. Buy this photo

Visiting a rural elementary school in Tanzania afforded us the chance to meet kids in the classroom. This type of experience would be hard to arrange while traveling independently, but a good group leader or guide can facilitate meaningful interactions with local people. Buy this photo

When the trip is scheduled specifically to attend a special event, it is especially vital to have a good leader who is adept at working with local professionals to plan all the details. For example, it was quite a major logistical feat to get a large group of scientists and photographers into place to study and view a total solar eclipse in a part of the world as remote and forbidding as Svalbard. Our trip leader partnered with an astrophysicist who is a world authority on eclipses, beginning years in advance of the solar event, to ensure we had the best chance possible of clear weather conditions and the right vantage point from which to study and photograph the eclipse. This is the sort of value that an expert fixer brings when you book a trip with one of the top companies.

Our eclipse expert and one of his students set up their gear on the morning of the total solar eclipse in Svalbard. Buy this photo

To be sure, there are some compromises required for group travel, and having access to a shared program director is not the same as having a dedicated personal fixer to arrange your photo shoots for you. I like to travel independently in places with developed infrastructure and where I can readily bridge the cultural or language gaps myself. That said, I also love to travel in small groups run by excellent travel companies, in large part because their planning, coupled with the knowledge of the local trip leader, helps me make those memorable images.

Want to read other posts about planning your travel photography? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/plan/

Have you had a situation where you got your shot thanks to the knowledge of a local expert? How do you arrange your travel when you’re visiting remote parts of the world or when you want to have lots of interaction within a culture very different from your own? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences! Please respond via the comment box.

Baggage Claim: A photographer’s guide to how to pack for a trip

Special trips often require specialized gear. To photograph the total solar eclipse in Svalbard in 2015, I had to pack a heavy professional tripod, 500mm super-telephoto lens, a remote release capable of functioning in extreme cold, and a custom-made solar filter. Thankfully, most trips are easier to pack for. Buy this photo

Packing is never the most fun part of a trip, and the special challenges we travel photographers face can be particularly vexing. But with a few guidelines and some common sense, we can easily bring along just what photo gear we’re likely to need and still be able to make room for some socks and underwear. Here is my very opinionated guide to how to pack for any length and type of trip.

1. What type of trip are you taking?
  - If it’s a driving trip directly from your home, you can bring all the gear your heart desires. Just be sure not to leave valuables in plain sight in the car when you step away for more than a moment (thieves love camera gear), and make sure you have a shoulder bag or backpack to carry just what you need for car-free excursions.
  - If you’re flying (unless you have your own private jet, in which case you also need to make room for me on your next trip), you’re going to have to reduce the gear you carry to just the essentials. It is possible to customize the foam insert in a hard-sided case to hold your photography gear, and then you can check this bag in the hold of the aircraft, but this requires some effort to prepare the case for your specific gear and then you will likely find the case quite heavy to lug around for the land portion of your trip. And woe to you if your bag is misrouted, lost, or stolen. I recommend packing a carry-on item that meets your carrier’s size requirements and filling it with just the most essential gear you’ll need on your trip. More on that topic in a moment.
  - For most purposes, a backpack is a good packing solution. There are many styles available for photo gear, but my favorites are these two:
    1. For those times when you need to bring most or all of your gear on a trip, I like the Tamrac 5586 Expedition 6x Backpack. It carries a lot of gear snugly and flexibly, and it doesn’t look like a camera bag so it’s less likely to invite the wrong kind of attention. It is almost always accepted as carry-on, but it is a bit bulky and heavy for all-day, everyday use while traveling. I’ll often use this bag to get all my gear to my first destination, then pack a day bag for just the gear I’ll need for each day of the trip.
    2. My current favorite bag for day use for nearly any shooting situation near home or while traveling is the Manfrotto MB MA-BP-TRV Advanced Travel Backpack. It can fit a reasonable amount of gear while leaving room for non-photography items like a jacket or a water bottle (yes, even photographers occasionally have to drink or stay warm). It disguises your gear pretty well, has good rain protection, and even sports a special sleeve for carrying the Manfrotto Be-Free Travel Tripod.
2. What types of shooting will you be doing on the trip?
  - Will wildlife or astrophotography be involved? If so, you’re going to have to strain your back, anger the airline staff, and enlist your travel partner to help, because there’s really no substitute for a long and heavy super-telephoto lens in this situation. When I’m on safari or chasing a solar eclipse, I pack my massive 500mm lens into the larger of my two backpacks and accept my fate. You’ll realize it was worth the effort when you get home and are able to share your amazing photos of a leopard in a tree or the sun’s corona on full display during a total solar eclipse.
  - For most other types of trips, you won’t need to pack a really long lens. My general rule is to pack a range of zoom lenses that covers from fairly wide (about 16mm) through fairly long (about 300mm), including a couple of fast prime lenses for when the light is low and/or the very best optical quality is required.
3. How much redundancy do you need on the trip?
  - Always bring a backup battery (or several) and a backup battery charger. Murphy’s Rule as applied to travel photography guarantees that batteries will die just as you frame the shot of a lifetime. Bring at least one extra. And chargers are left in hotel rooms or in tented camps on the Serengeti with some regularity, and they tend to get fried when plugged into unusual power grids, so bring an extra one with you.
  - Don’t forget the little things. Pack several power adapters of the type used in the countries where you’ll be traveling. These get lost easily and can be hard to replace while traveling. Bring twice as many memory cards as you think you’ll require; it’s easy to fill them up when you get to shooting a mountain gorilla or carnaval dancers. If you plan to back up to a laptop or external hard drive, bring extra connecting cables. While traveling, I back up to a second type of memory card using my camera’s second card slot, so I bring quite a few memory cards of both types with me.
  - Lenses are heavy and expensive, but they sometimes stop working, so if you’re on a particularly important trip you may want to bring several lenses in overlapping focal lengths. That is, you could bring a wide-angle zoom lens and a wide-angle prime lens, plus a walkaround zoom lens and a “normal” prime lens (about 50mm for a full size sensor or about 35mm for a crop sensor), plus a telephoto zoom lens and a telephoto prime lens or two telephoto zooms with overlapping ranges.
  - If it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build your portfolio with very special and irreplaceable images, I recommend bringing a backup camera in addition to your primary camera. For a recent safari trip in East Africa, I brought two DSLR bodies as well as quite a few lenses so that I’d have a backup solution to any single point of failure. The more exotic your destination, the more likely that dust, wind, salt, extreme heat or cold, and heavy shocks or drops will damage your gear, so for those amazing one-of-a-kind trips I suggest biting the bullet and carrying backups for any gear that could fail.
4. What accessories do you need to accompany the rest of your gear?
  - Attach a UV filter to each of your lenses before you leave and keep it on to protect the front element of the lens throughout your trip.
  - Carry a polarizing filter and a range of neutral density filters in the correct diameters to fit at least your wide-angle lens and your walkaround lens.
  - For more on filters, read this post: Post on Filters
  - A flash unit is helpful to have on most trips, unless you’re sure there will be ample natural light or you’re willing to use your camera’s built-in flash.
  - A good lightweight travel tripod with a head and mounting plate that suit your needs is essential gear on many trips.
  - Don’t forget any special-purpose gear that you need for just this type of trip. When I travel to see a solar eclipse, for example, I need to be sure I bring my solar filter that attaches to my super-telephoto lens. I also need to bring my heavy-duty professional tripod instead of the lightweight one I typically carry on trips.
5. How will you be shooting from day to day during the trip?
  - If you’ll have constant vehicle support or won’t be going far from your hotel, you may be able to make do with just the bag you brought on the plane. Or you can bring along a small shoulder bag to carry just a few items for the day’s shoot.
  - Most of my trips involve considerable hiking and public transportation from day to day, so I either carry everything in my smaller backpack or bring it along in checked baggage during the flight. Then I can transfer just the gear I need for each day’s shoot into the smaller pack, which makes life easier when hiking 10 or so miles per day.

For a safari you will need a long lens to capture small or distant wildlife. I recommend bringing a beanbag for camera support instead of a tripod, as the latter cannot be used in a safari vehicle. Be sure to bring an extra camera and lenses, and carry more batteries and memory cards than you think you’ll need. Buy this photo

Of course, if you use a mirrorless camera with only a couple of compact lenses or an advanced point-and-shoot camera, you do not have to worry about many of these items, but still be sure to review the list above to ensure you bring all required accessories.

With an overall strategy tailored to your itinerary and shooting style, and careful attention to execution to ensure you don’t forget anything, it’s really not that difficult to pack just what gear you’ll need in a way that will allow you to enjoy your trip when you’re not shooting. After all, travel is about gaining experiences, and not all of those experiences can or should be photographed. Pack for your photography, but also for your overall travel enjoyment.

What are your hacks for packing your photo gear for a trip? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments box here.

Photography as a Bridge to Local Culture [Encore Publication]: Your camera is a great tool for meeting local people and learning about culture

I’ve heard certain travelers grumble that photography inhibits deep cultural learning and interaction when we visit new places. Our cameras, this line of reasoning goes, isolate us from the local people we’re trying to get to know. The lens, they believe, acts as a distancing device to turn locals into subjects and travelers into tourists.

I disagree emphatically! Your camera is a great tool for meeting local people and learning about culture, immersing yourself even more deeply in the spirit of the place and the lives of the people who live there. But only if you use it in the right way. Allow me to explain.

While the local customs and even the laws governing whom it is acceptable to photograph, and when or where it is okay to make an image of them, do vary from place to place, there are a few common-sense guidelines that will help us travelers engage in a friendly, curious manner instead of upsetting people and causing social discord. Here are a few key guidelines to keep in mind.

- The Golden Rule: If it’s not okay in your home country, it’s probably not okay in other parts of the world. Would you appreciate a stranger running up to you on your front lawn and shoving a lens in your face? I’m guessing, no. So please don’t behave in that way toward people in other places.
- Make a portrait, don’t take a portrait: Get to know your subject first as a person, even if just for a brief exchange. While there are occasionally situations where the moment or the expression will be lost by approaching your subject before shooting, I find that most of the time I make better images as well as have more meaningful interactions, when I say hello and ask the person first.

I chatted for a while with these samba dancers as they were celebrating just after San Francisco’s Carnaval parade. Getting to know them first made it easy to ask permission for a portrait. Buy this photo

- Approach children with sensitivity: Kids can be amazing photographic subjects! They are often uninhibited in front of the camera and they portray cultural practices and lifestyle in a relatable, endearing way. But it’s especially important to understand when it’s okay to make a portrait with them. While traveling in South Africa, I saw first-hand what can happen when travelers misunderstand social norms. A fellow traveler in my group saw a young boy playing near where we were waiting for a border crossing. She shouted excitedly, “Soooo cute!,” and rushed up to the child, camera extended toward his face, to take his picture. In an instant the boy’s father ran over, irate, and yelled at me (he mistakenly thought I was the fellow traveler’s father), “How would you like it if we came to your country and started taking pictures of your children?” A few minutes later I explained privately to the offending traveler why her actions caused a negative reaction. She had no idea this behavior wasn’t okay. When in doubt, refer to the Golden Rule, above.

We visited the old town in Kashgar just before the Chinese government began demolishing the homes there and relocating the mostly ethnic Uighur people. It was and remains a complicated social situation, but I was fortunate to be able to make this memorable portrait of a young Uighur girl in traditional clothing sitting in front of her soon-to-be-destroyed family house. I approached her mother first to make sure it was okay to photograph the girl. Her expression of pride mixed with apprehension is what I feel makes this image strong. Buy this photo

- Getting to know you: It may seem difficult to talk with a stranger from a very different culture who likely speaks a very different language from our own. For us introverts, it seems like even more of a challenge. But I’ve learned a few tricks and tips that make it much easier to get to know a person before photographing them. Learn a few words of the local language. Just saying “hello” or “good day” can be a great icebreaker. It’s a fairly universal gesture to point to your camera and extend your arm gently toward your hopeful subject to inquire, “Is it okay if I take your picture?” Just as happens in our home countries, a subject may say no, but most of the time people are happy to be photographed if you are polite, respectful, and try to interact with them first. A trip leader, guide, or local friend can often be a great help by introducing you to the person you’d like to photograph.

At the start of our trip through Turkey, I asked our trip leader to introduce me to people we felt would be good portrait subjects. With his help I was able to overcome the language and cultural difference and capture this striking portrait of an employee at a carpet weaving cooperative. Buy this photo

- How close is too close?: In most situations it is fine to make an image that includes a large group of people, none of whom will be too prominent in the photo. For close-up images, though, in which an individual person or small group of people will be the obvious subject, it is best to ask first.
- Money matters: When there is a commercial transaction between you and your subject, it often paves the way to ask to make their portrait. I’ve had good experiences photographing local street vendors, musicians, artisans, and shopkeepers after purchasing their wares or tipping them for their services. And of course it is usually fine to photograph singers, dancers, and musicians in a performance you have paid to attend, as long as local rules about photography are obeyed (sometimes you will have to pay extra for a license to photograph, and frequently flash is not permitted). But it can become a slippery slope when people begin to expect to be paid just for having travelers photograph them. In Peru we had many people, including young children, dress in traditional costumes and approach us to pose in photos for money. In an Argentinian mountain village we were even asked to pay to photograph a gentleman’s Saint Bernard dogs. In these situations, you’ll have to exercise your best judgment.
- When can you shoot first and ask questions later?: It’s rare, but on occasion you will encounter situations when the “decisive moment” will be lost if you ask for permission to shoot. This is another judgment call. Just like when shooting street photography at home, I consider several factors when deciding whether to make an image of a stranger in a different part of the world. When I do see an amazing expression, gesture, or moment and decide to capture it before getting to know the subject, I will usually approach them and show them the image on the camera’s display, attempting to query whether it’s okay. A smile and an easygoing, open gesture can help when approaching. If the response is clearly negative, I delete the image on the spot and in front of the subject. Again, see the Golden Rule, above, and keep in mind that courtesy and respect make all the difference.

This was one of those situations when I shot first and asked questions later. The proprietor of Maria’s Cafe in an eco-village in Cuba’s rural Vinales Valley was standing on a balcony above the cafe surveying the activity below. I loved the way her contemplative expression and relaxed gesture were framed by the saturated Caribbean colors of the doorway, so I made this image right from our table. Later, when Maria came down to talk with customers, I showed her the photo and she was pleased with it. Buy this photo

Beyond these general guidelines, there are local variations. Do get to know the customs that prevail in the countries and regions you plan to visit. For example, in some cultures it is acceptable to stand very close to others when conversing, while in other cultures the social boundaries are much more pronounced. Sometimes it is fine to approach a child directly, but in other cases the first contact should be made with the parent or teacher. There’s quite a bit of local variation in the amount of small-talk people engage in before getting down to business. Knowing the local customs not only helps you make better portraits of the people you meet, but will also encourage deeper interactions and mutual respect.

In my experience, the camera is a wonderful bridge that enhances, rather than detracts from, making meaningful cultural connections with people while traveling. Just try to do it the right way!

Want to read other posts about what to shoot during your travels? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/travel/shoot/

Do you have a good story to share about your experiences, positive or otherwise, in photographing people you met during your travels? What’s your approach to making portraits while abroad? How has photography enhanced your cultural interactions? Please post your thoughts in the comment box.

In the Nik of Time [Encore Publication]: Google’s Nik Collection offers leading-edge image editing tools for free

Note: Google has announced that they will no longer provide support for the Nik suite of tools. That means you can still download the latest version of Nik, but it may not work with the other software you are running; even if it works for you today, at some point in the future as you upgrade your other software, Nik will cease working for you. This is regrettable, because I still have found no other similar tools that perform as well as the Nik collection for most of its purposes. Please share your suggestions for replacement tools as a comment at the end of this post!

In 2012, Nik Software, a small company known for their image processing tools that emulated the look and feel of using old film, was quietly acquired by a somewhat larger company known as Google. This past spring, Google announced they were making the entire suite of Nik tools available for free to all users. I’m just getting around to testing this suite of image editing software now, and from what I’ve seen so far its capabilities are leading-edge and would be well worth spending hundreds of dollars to obtain. It doesn’t do everything, but what it does, it does better than tools such as Photoshop and Lightroom, each of which costs a good deal of money. That Nik’s great capabilities are available for download completely gratis is a wonderful gift from the folks at Google, and I strongly recommend you give them a try.

It’s important to note that the Nik Collection of software tools is not intended to be standalone image processing software. It consists of a set of plugins, each specialized for a different specific purpose, that must be accessed by a general-purpose image editing application such as Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture. I use Lightroom for nearly all of my post-processing, so I used that application to access the Nik Collection.

Once you have your general image editing application installed, then you can download the Nik Collection modules for free at this site: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/. When you are working in your application of choice, you will then have access to the various Nik Collection tools in the editing menus. For example, when I select an image in Lightroom, I can access six of the seven Nik modules by pulling down the “Photo” menu and then pulling down the “Edit In” sub-menu. One of the Nik modules, the HDR Efex tool, is accessed instead under the “File” and “Export with Preset” menu choices.

These are the seven Nik Collection modules included in the free download:

Analog Efex Pro

Explore the look and feel of classic cameras, films, and lenses.

Color Efex Pro

A comprehensive set of filters for color correction, retouching, and creative effects.

Silver Efex Pro

Master the art of black-and-white photography with darkroom-inspired controls.

Viveza

Selectively adjust the color and tonality of your images without complicated masks or selections.

HDR Efex Pro

From natural to artistic, explore the full potential of HDR photography.

Sharpener Pro

Bring out hidden details consistently with the professional’s choice for image sharpening.

Dfine

Improve your images with noise reduction tailored to your camera.

So far, I’ve played around with just three of these tools.

Silver Efex Pro did a very good job of converting my test images to monochrome. I’m pretty good at using Lightroom’s tools to convert color images to black-and-white, but they take a lot of practice to master. In Nik’s Silver Efex module I was able to make some good choices very quickly. For those who want to fine-tune their black-and-white conversions, there are very good tools for detailed control over the process.

I used Nik’s Dfine module to attempt to reduce noise in a favorite shot of the Milky Way over Yosemite Valley’s Half Dome. The results of my quick trial looked comparable to what I had done in Lightroom, but I suspect if I took the time to learn the Nik tool more thoroughly, I could end up with even better results.

Finally, I tested Nik’s HDR Efex Pro tool. This little gem is a joy to use. Just select the series of shots from which you want to build an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image, export them to HDR Efex, and click a couple of buttons to generate the base HRD image there. My default image looked pretty good, but the Nik tool has a wide range of presets that allow you to generate different HDR effects with the click of a button. I tried several of these presets until I found one that perfectly suited the scene. A few more small tweaks using the detailed adjustment sliders, and I was ready to save the HDR image back into Lightroom. In the past I have been very disappointed with Lightroom’s built-in HDR tools, and only slightly more satisfied with Photoshop’s HDR module, but the Nik HDR Efex Pro plugin does an amazing job. It’s both easier to use and generates better results than the other HDR software I’ve used. Specifically, the Nik tool does a much better job than the other tools at producing natural-looking colors and at removing the “ghosting” effects from when the underlying images are just a little bit different from one another. Now I’m eager to find the time to go back to some of my favorite HDR images and rebuild them using the Nik software!

For comparison, here is a favorite HDR image of mine, first shown after processing in Photoshop’s HDR tools and then shown after processing in Nik’s HDR Efex Pro tools.

This HDR image of Lago Grey with its glacier and the peaks of Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was processed using Photoshop’s HDR tools. The colors appear unnaturally saturated and parts of the image (especially the tops of the mountains and the brush in the foreground) show some ghosting effects.

This version was processed using the Nik Collection’s HDR Efex Pro tools. The colors look much more natural and all parts of the image appear sharp and free from ghosting.

I am looking forward to revisiting many of my favorite images and reprocessing them using the Nik Collection’s tools. I highly recommend this versatile, easy-to-use, and powerful suite of image editing modules. And the price can’t be beat.

Have you used the Nik Collection for your own photography? What do you like and dislike? Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about post-processing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Post-Processing.

Faces of Myanmar [Encore Publication], Part II: Showcasing the Diversity of Burma’s People

My wife and I recently returned from an amazing 2.5-week adventure traveling through Myanmar. Our itinerary took us from the main city of Yangon to the vast plains gleaming with ancient pagodas in Bagan; then to the former imperial capital and cultural hub of Mandalay; on to Kalaw, the gateway to many hill tribes of the region; and finally to Inle Lake, well known for its picturesque floating gardens and for the Inthe people with their unique traditional style of fishing. While it was wonderful to view Myanmar’s gorgeous landscapes and fabled temples, what made this adventure truly unforgettable for us was its many opportunities to interact with Burmese people from many ethnic groups and all walks of life: Buddhist monks and nuns, villagers displaced by a typhoon 10 years ago who are still living in temporary bamboo huts with no running water, the Paduang hill tribe whose women traditionally wear heavy brass plates on their necks, an octogenarian master of the dying art form of Burmese marionette theater, young boys celebrating their initiation as novice monks, and the delightful girls who have found a caring home at an orphanage in Mandalay. Burma is a photographer’s dream, filled with glorious pagodas, gorgeous vistas, and friendly, diverse cultures.

Yesterday’s and today’s posts showcase some of my favorite portraits, some of them not yet previously published, featuring a wide range of people we met during our adventure. The portraits will be presented as a photo essay, but I will include brief descriptions of each and occasionally some commentary about how they were made. You can click on any of these images to view or purchase them and many more from the Myanmar trip. Yesterday’s post featured Part I, and today’s post comprises Part II.

A fascinating visit to Myawaddy Nunnery, where we had the opportunity to meet some of the more than 200 novice nuns who study there. I composed this image to include the contrasting colors of the novices’ pink robes against the painted carved teak facade of the building.

Portrait of the abbess at Myawaddy Nunnery. The lovely “bokeh”, or soft quality of the out-of-focus background elements, is created by using a very wide aperture on a lens known for having this property (in this case, an 85mm f/1.8 prime lens). Even when traveling, it’s important to have the right lens for the right job.

The Mingun Bell, 13 feet high and weighing 90 tons, is the world’s second largest functioning bell.

A delightful visit to the Aye Yeik Mon Girls’ Orphanage. We were heartbroken to learn the stories of some of the abandoned girls who live here, but were uplifted to see the wonderful care and guidance they are receiving there now.

I had the opportunity to get to know 15-year-old Phyu Phyu at the Aye Yeik Mon Girls’ Orphanage. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, Phyu Phyu’s early life was challenging, but she has flourished under the care of the nuns at Aye Yeik Mon and is planning to continue her education and to enter a professional career.

We were invited into the Mandalay home of Oma and his family. His mother was a restaurant owner and chef for many years, so we were treated to an amazing Burmese meal. It can be challenging to make portraits of groups, especially when young children are involved. I shot several frames and chose one where the young boys are looking (nearly) directly at the lens, settling for some of the other family members to be looking elsewhere.

Kuthodaw Paya is called the world’s largest book because the entire canon of early Buddhist scripture is recorded on carved stone tablets housed in its hundreds of pagodas. These young local women wanted me to pose for a selfie with them, so I asked them to return the favor. Their brightly colored longyis (traditional Burmese attire) stand out nicely against the drab background of the pagoda behind them.

A quiet moment at the entrance to Shwenandaw Kyaung Monastery. I used spot-metering based on the woman’s clothing so as to achieve proper exposure given the much brighter background.

A stop at the Kalaw morning market to purchase the produce for our visit to Myin Ma Htie village.

We visited the village monastery in Myin Ma Htie and met with the monk there.

On arrival at Myin Ma Htie, we are greeted by villagers who will be our hosts. This portrait was carefully composed to provide nice soft natural lighting on the girl and to frame her in a pleasing way within the surrounding area.

Traditional spinning methods to create yarn from lotus plant fiber. I was struck by the symmetry and the bright color of the yarn in this scene.

A worker in a cheroot workshop demonstrates her craft. She makes about 1000 of these small and inexpensive cigars every day. To make this portrait, I used my go-to 85mm portrait lens at a wide aperture and added just a small amount of balanced fill flash to evenly expose the subject’s face.

The Phaung Daw Oo Paya is one of Burma’s most sacred sites. Dating to the 11th century, this pagoda houses the four remaining Buddha statues that enclose relics from the body of the Buddha. Worshipers add a little gold leaf to these statues when they visit, so that today the shape cannot even be recognized as that of the Buddha.

A fisherman on Inle Lake demonstrates the ancient style of fishing with a netted basket. I framed the shot through the fabric of the net to add texture and visual interest.

Meeting members of the Padaung ethnic minority, whose women are famous for wearing heavy brass coils to make their necks look longer. This 18-year-old Padaung girl proudly wears the brass coils on her neck as a symbol of ethnic identity. She told us her younger sister chooses not to wear the ornaments as she goes to a Burman school where most of the other students are not Padaung. The tradition was often scorned as backwards during the military regime, but now young Padaung women are again often choosing to practice it.

Have you visited Myanmar? What were your favorite photographic subjects? Please leave your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling? Find them all here: Posts about what to shoot.

All of these photos and many more from Myanmar are available for viewing or purchase here: Myanmar image gallery.

Missed Part I of this story in yesterday’s post? You can read it here: Part I of this story.

Faces of Myanmar, Part I [Encore Publication]: Showcasing the Diversity of Burma’s People

Today’s and tomorrow’s posts showcase some of my favorite portraits, some of them not yet previously published, featuring a wide range of people we met during our adventure. The portraits will be presented as a photo essay, but I will include brief descriptions of each and occasionally some commentary about how they were made. You can click on any of these images to view or purchase them and many more from the Myanmar trip.

Here is Part I, and tomorrow’s post will feature Part II.

A worshiper at Chaukhtatgyi Pagoda. I’m always on the lookout for ways to include local people when shooting monuments and other landmarks. The human element adds great visual interest to travel images and also personalizes the photo, transforming a generic scene into a story.

We were shown around the Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue by one of the 17 remaining members of Myanmar’s only Jewish community. Environmental portraits like this one include not only the person but also some other elements that help tell the person’s story, in this case the Torahs at the ark of the synagogue.

A worshiper at Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in all of Burma. At least 90% of the time I include people as a main element in my images, I obtain permission from them first. I find that this approach, as well as being friendlier than shooting first and asking questions later, tends to lead to better portraits as there is an interpersonal connection between the subject and the photographer. However, there are certain instances when asking first could interrupt the subject’s activities or negatively impact the dynamic being captured. For this photo, I made no attempt to hide that I was shooting the woman, but I didn’t interrupt her meditation, either.

Armies of volunteer sweepers make the rounds at Shwedagon Pagoda to ensure the temple is kept spotless. To shoot this large and fast-moving group, I positioned myself at a scenic spot, configured my camera’s setting in advance, then waited for the volunteers to move into position.

Rangoon’s Inya Lake, site of the former military junta’s brutal response to the 8888 uprisings and the Saffron Revolution, is now a peaceful place where young people picnic, make music, and go on dates. When shooting strongly backlit subjects, be sure to use spot metering or exposure compensation unless you’re trying to create a silhouette.

Street vendor in Yangon.

A fascinating visit to an informal housing settlement inhabited by people displaced by the devastating 2008 typhoon. A decade later they are still living in squalid conditions in bamboo huts with no running water. Here, children are filling containers with water from the lake and carrying 40 kg (88 pounds) of water, often more than their body weight, several miles to their families’ homes. This image is a favorite because it effectively combines the contrasting moods of the scenic beauty of the region with the hardship of the people living there.

As curious about me as I am about her, a young dweller in the informal settlement comes to say “mingalaba”. I used a fairly narrow aperture to create enough depth-of-field allow some of the background to be emphasized in addition to the girl.

A traditional Burmese dance performance showcases the dancers’ grace and the beauty of their costumes. Always look for an uncluttered background when composing and be sure to capture multiple shots so that one will be timed just right.

At the village market in Nyaung-U in the Bagan region. I introduced myself to the vendor and received permission to make her portrait. At first she appeared stilted and posed, but as she tended to other customers and got accustomed to my being there, she returned to a natural state.

Escaping steam nearly obscures a worker at a Bagan workshop where pone ye gyi (a popular flavored soybean sauce) is made. A portrait can become much more visually interesting when composed in an unexpected fashion.

The matriarch shows us around her family’s paper workshop where they make ceremonial fans for weddings and other events. I made this image using my classic portrait technique: using a fast portrait lens (85mm f/1.8) nearly wide open to emphasize the subject, and choosing a location with nice soft lighting and as uncluttered a background as possible.

One of the family’s daughters kindly poses for a portrait. She wears thanaka, the tree bark paste that most Burmese women, and quite a few men, apply to their faces daily.

We had been invited by villagers to attend a Buddhist initiation ceremony, so we rose early and traveled to their village. The boys in the back row are preparing to start their service as novice monks in a monastery. All Buddhist boys in Myanmar are required to perform this service at some point during their childhood. The girls in the front row are some of their sisters who are celebrating their ritual ear piercing.

The boys paraded through the village to the monastery on horseback, while the girls and some of the parents rode oxcarts. Another classic portrait using a fast prime lens at a wide aperture to soften the background, this image also was made with a touch of balanced fill-in flash to reduce shadows on the subject’s face.

During an excursion to Phaw Saw Village outside Bagan, we met this artisan.

Have you visited Myanmar? What were your favorite photographic subjects? Please leave your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling? Find them all here: Posts about what to shoot.

All of these photos and many more from Myanmar are available for viewing or purchase here: Myanmar image gallery.

Look for Part II of this story in tomorrow’s post!

Focus on Asha Stanford Holi [Encore Publication] : Capturing the colors, joy, and exuberance of an iconic Indian celebration held close to home

I love all aspects of travel photography, but the moments I truly live for are when I have the opportunity to experience and to capture images of the world’s most exuberant celebrations. The iconic Indian festival of Holi, celebrated annually throughout India in huge cities and small villages alike, is one of my absolute favorites. This year I had the chance to shoot a large and vibrant Holi celebration without the need to fly for 30 hours to get to India. As an official photographer for Asha Stanford’s Holi festival, I got to document all the color, joy, and revelry of a large, world-class Holi event, all within 20 minutes drive from my home. In today’s post, I share some favorite images from the event along with some brief remarks about how each was made. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and purchase on my website–get there by clicking on any of the images here.

With colored powder and often sheets of water flying everywhere, Holi is by design a messy and mischievous celebration. Protect yourself when “playing Holi” by wearing clothes you can part with after the event and by covering your camera body and lens with a rain sleeve. Here’s the one I use, which is excellent–inexpensive, easy to use and very protective of the gear:
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Note that even when using a high-quality rain cover like this one, the front end of the lens is still exposed, so be sure to protect your lens’ front element with a UV or Haze filter. And to be extra safe, I brought only one camera body and only a single lens, which was an inexpensive but versatile “walk-around” travel zoom lens.

Crowded festivals, by their nature, have cluttered backgrounds. When making portraits in such environments, I do try to reduce the clutter by choosing the background carefully, but capturing the moment is more important and in any case, it is futile trying to wait for completely uncluttered backgrounds. In post-processing, some of the clutter can be minimized through careful cropping and the application of just a bit of post-crop vignetting. Use too much vignetting, though, and the image begins to take on an artificial appearance.

To capture fast action, you obviously want to choose a fast shutter speed. That’s no problem when shooting in bright sunshine such as we had during this Holi celebration. Still, I choose a moderately high ISO (400) to ensure I could retain fast shutter speeds even when in the shade or when using a small aperture to maximize depth-of-field.

Get in close! Portraits often are most effective when they emphasize a specific detail rather than show the entire environment. To further emphasize that specific detail, try to select a wide aperture (low f-stop number) in order to obtain shallow depth-of-field. I had only a relatively slow “walk-around” zoom lens with me, so for close-up portraits I shot wide open at f/4.5–not great for isolating the subject, but better than shooting at an even smaller aperture. In typically less adverse environments, I would be shooting with a much faster portrait lens, most likely my favorite 85mm f/1.8 prime lens:

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When your subject is backlit (the main light coming from behind), as is often the case when shooting outdoors in bright sunlight, be sure to choose exposure based on the main subject. Here I used my camera’s spot metering mode to set the exposure based on the clothing of one of the people in the group, but it’s also fine to get your exposure by zooming in or walking up close to the group and then to set that exposure manually on your camera. You can also use your camera’s exposure compensation control to dial up the automatic exposure by about 1.5 or 2 stops, but I recommend not trying to use automatic exposure modes in general. If you use the exposure your camera’s auto mode chooses for you and your subject is strongly backlit, your image will be underexposed by typically 1.5-2 stops or even more.

I’m always on the lookout for great moments to capture. When I saw this dad playing with his young daughter, I composed the frame around the two of them and started shooting continuously so as to get a shot at just the right instant. During post-processing, I cropped the image to show only the portion that portrays the thrill and joy of the playful pair.

Careful composition is always important in photography, but it’s easy to forget this point during the heat of the moment when shooting in bustling and chaotic environments. To compose this image, I framed it to get the splash of color from the two friends’ “high-five” moment right in front of the big sign boldly pronouncing, “COLOR”. That’s a Holi moment.

One of the keys to successfully documenting huge festivals is finding the small, intimate moments. Big, sweeping crowd shots showing chaotic motion are important to document, but it’s capturing those small interpersonal interactions that really make your portfolio shine. I used as wide an aperture as I had available in order to cast the busy background in soft focus.

Performances are often a part of festivals, and these are wonderful fun to capture. I’ve posted many times on the techniques required to make great images of performing arts, so I won’t repeat myself here. Just be sure to compose appropriately, set the exposure correctly (challenging to do in direct sunlight), and shoot lots of images to be sure of capturing a few excellent ones.

The climactic moment of the Holi celebration comes near the end, when all the revelers simultaneous throw handfuls of colored powder high into the air. Be ready for these big moments by preparing all your gear and composing all elements of the shot beforehand.

To capture the sweeping scale of really big celebrations, sometimes it helps to make a panoramic image. Some cameras can do this automatically in-the-camera, but I find those images don’t turn out very well, so I make panoramas manually by shooting a series of overlapping images that span the scene. In theory this is quite simple. Just take a series of photos starting from the far left side of the scene, then panning the camera a little bit to the right so the next photo just overlaps with the previous one, and so on until you reach the far right side of the scene. You then use software such as Lightroom or Photoshop to stitch the separate, overlapping photos together into a single sweeping image. In practice, this can be quite difficult. I find the software often takes an extremely long time to process a panoramic image and sometimes even crashes while attempting to do so. If you have a more powerful computer than I have, you may have an easier time with this process.

Parting shot: When I see a great subject for a portrait, I will interact with him or her, get to know them a bit, then begin shooting with their permission. Over time and in the heat of a celebration, they will forget I’m even there, but the resulting images will be better for the time spent interacting with the person first.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this photo essay and brief notes about how to shoot festivals and celebrations. Whether we’re close to home or halfway around the world, such festive gatherings truly define the culture of the celebrants and make amazing photographic subjects. If you’d like to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling or near home, find them all here: Posts about what to shoot.

What are your favorite celebrations to shoot, and how do you capture images there? Please share your thoughts here!

“Building” Your Portfolio [Encore Publication]: Architecture gives local flavor and makes a great subject for your photography

Travel photography is exciting in large part because it encompasses all types of subjects. In a single day while traveling, we may have the opportunity to shoot landscapes of the scenery around us, portraits of the people we meet, wildlife images of the fauna in the region, night images after the sun goes down, and photos of the local architecture. I’ve already covered how to shoot most of these subjects in previous posts. Today we’ll focus on how to make compelling images of architecture, which includes both the exteriors and interiors of the buildings we encounter.

For architectural photography, it is essential to carry a good wide-angle lens. While I’m a big fan of prime (fixed focal-length) lenses, architecture is one subject where a zoom lens comes in very handy. That’s because it can be difficult to change our vantage point when shooting large buildings in crowded urban environments. And when photographing buildings, the widest end of the zoom range should be quite wide, indeed. I recommend a lens that can zoom out to 16mm (for full-frame cameras) or even wider. The lens doesn’t have to be particularly fast, because buildings do not tend to move quickly and we can use a tripod to steady the camera for longer exposure times, but it must be of very high optical quality for architecture photography. Cheaper wide-angle lenses are prone to several kinds of distortion that can lend an unprofessional appearance to photos of buildings. I recommend ponying up for a good professional quality wide-angle zoom lens with a range of somewhere around 16-35mm, or even a fast 14-24mm lens if you have the budget for it.

I use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens for architecture shoots. It’s got great image quality and is very solid and well built, but at f/4 it is not super fast, and it is rather heavy and bulky.

When shooting the exterior of a building with a wide-angle lens, we need to make an effort not to distort the lines of the building or its surroundings. A wide-angle lens, especially when pointed upward, has the tendency to exaggerate features so that parallel lines appear to be divergent. If you have the option of moving to a higher vantage point so you can shoot parallel to the ground instead of upward at the subject, this distortion can be greatly reduced. But for those frequent situations when you have no choice but to look up at a building from the street level, try to zoom out so that the entire subject can be included in the frame without pointing the lens too far upward. This image of a stately old building in Buenos Aires was made with the camera pointed nearly parallel to the ground so that even though a very wide focal length was required to fit the building in the frame, there is relatively little distortion of the perspective.
When using a wide-angle lens from street level, try to keep the camera pointed parallel to the ground to avoid severe distortion of the building’s lines. Buy this photo

In contrast, the next image was shot from a vantage point at the same elevation as the subject, the world’s northernmost church. I climbed a snowy hill in front of Svalbard’s chapel to attain the same height as the center of the building, so that I could hold the camera exactly level to the ground and still include equal amounts of the church above and below the center of the image. This minimized the distortion and resulted in a more natural rendering of this fascinating building.

To make this photo of Svalbard’s church, I chose a vantage point at the same elevation as the midpoint of the building, minimizing distortion. Buy this photo

I like to seek interesting colors and recurring patterns in architecture. The miners’ houses in Svalbard made an intriguing subject because they were lined up in an even line of identical structures, but they varied in color. To make the image more compelling, I moved across the street and shot with a moderate telephoto lens (65mm) to compress the scene and make the houses appear closer together. I based the exposure on the light reflected from the paint on the houses, so that the snow in front of and behind the buildings was nearly blown out. In post-processing I increased the vibrance slightly to bring out the bold colors in this scene.

Look for architectural scenes featuring interesting patterns and colors, such as this view of miners’ cottages in Svalbard surrounded by snow. Buy this photo

Sometimes the most effective images of architecture hone in on the details rather than including the whole of the building. I’m always on the lookout for a characteristic or unusual feature of the buildings around me. In New Orleans’s French Quarter, I framed this shot of a lovely wrought iron balcony using a long telephoto lens so that only this one feature of the building was included.

Zoom in on just the most characteristic or compelling features of a building to make an arresting image of the details rather than the whole building. Buy this photo

Shooting interiors of buildings poses some of the same challenges as shooting their exteriors. In particular, since a wide-angle lens is most often required and is frequently pointed upward, it is important to look at the edges of the viewfinder to try to minimize distortion of the building’s lines. To make this wide-angle image of the inside of a grand mosque in Istanbul, I kept the camera level using a tripod and the camera’s virtual horizon function. There was still a good deal of distortion around the edges of the upper part of the scene, but I was able to control this to some degree by adjusting the images perspective using Lightroom software during post-processing.

This image of the interior of a mosque in Istanbul shows some distortion, but I was able to keep it under control by shooting level to the floor and adjusting the vertical lines using post-processing software. Buy this photo

Do you have tips for shooting the interiors and exteriors of buildings? Please share them here.

Want to read more posts about how to capture amazing images while traveling? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

Focus on FREEdom DANCEfest [Encore Publication]: Images from the second annual free festival of new work by emerging artists

Whether I’m halfway around the world or near home in the San Francisco Bay Area, I love to capture images of the performing arts. Perhaps more than any other art form, dance distills the culture of its place and its time down to its essence. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to shoot the second annual FREEdom DANCEfest, a free festival showcasing new work by emerging professional choreographers and dancers. Today’s post presents some of my favorite images from the dress rehearsal and performance of the fifteen new pieces highlighted at the festival.

A few technical notes on how these images were made:

For fast-moving action in low light conditions, use of a fast prime lens is advisable in order to allow use of a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. I used two DSLR bodies, one fitted with a 50mm f/1.4 “normal” lens and the other with an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens.
A high ISO sensitivity setting and a wide aperture (low f-stop number) are often both required to allow fast shutter speeds in dim lighting. Don’t be afraid to boost the ISO to 3200, 6400, or even higher if your camera’s sensor can handle it. Any resulting digital noise can be reduced later during post-processing.
Always be aware of the background and lighting as well as the action of your primary subject. It is the interplay of all of these compositional elements that makes your final image. Most of the time the goal is a clean and uncluttered background, but once in a while (see the third image below, for example) the contrast between the background or lighting and the subject can actually enhance the impact of the image.
Shoot plenty of frames to ensure you capture just the right moments. I shot more than 5000 images of this one-day event and culled them down to about 100 that were delivered to the client.
Occasionally a slow shutter speed can be used to blur the motion intentionally as a creative choice. I’ve included a few such images in today’s post.
During post-processing of performance images, my most common adjustments are applying noise reduction, adjusting color balance and lighting curves, cropping, and straightening horizons. Sometimes I also apply a bit of post-crop vignetting to emphasize the subject and reduce clutter in the background.

I hope you have enjoyed these images and that they (along with my technical notes) will inspire your own performing arts photo shoots! While gear and technique do play a role in capturing great dance images, by far the most important element is the photographer’s eye. A great dance image should artistically capture a special moment during the performance and should emphasize the choreographer’s and dancer’s physical ability, grace, hard work, and joy!

Now it’s your turn. Please share your own stories and tips for capturing live performances in images.

Want to read more posts about what and how to shoot while traveling? Find them all here: Posts about what to shoot.

Luck Favors the Prepared [Encore Publication]: Tools for planning your shot

It was Louis Pasteur who said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” We usually hear the quote paraphrased as, “Luck favors the prepared.” For travel photographers, there is often a great deal of luck involved in capturing a truly great image, but there are some very useful tools that we can use to help us plan to be in the right place at the right time with the right gear. Let’s look at just a few of my favorites.

I’ll start with a quick review of the most obvious resources. I would never plan an hour-long photo shoot, let alone a month-long trip to a far-flung travel destination, without doing some research. What are the must-see locations, and what dates and times of day are perfect for each one? What are the events or activities that most authentically represent the locations I am visiting? Is there a livestock market, a street festival, or a religious celebration taking place while I’m in the region? How can I build an itinerary that best incorporates all of these locations? Great resources for this type of research include guidebooks (online and hardcopy), online review sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp, mapping and navigation apps (Google Maps is still my all-around favorite, but several others have their own advantages), and local weather sites. I like to build my itinerary by customizing an online map to show all of the locations I’d like to visit, then creating a routing that links the locations in the proper order. If travel by air, rail, bus, or boat is involved, I research those schedules and fares to determine the best way to get from one place to the next. Airline consolidation sites such as Orbitz can be quite helpful for finding the best flights at the best prices. If the itinerary has been pre-planned by a travel company, then I will still do most of this background research to better understand the locations we’ll be visiting.

Once I know where I’ll be going and what events I plan to shoot, I develop a shot list. Some photographers craft very detailed and specific shot lists, but I like to keep it quite flexible and informal, often simply jotting down my ideas in the calendar event on my phone that is associated with each planned shoot. After all, if I adhere too closely to a shot list, I will just end up with the same images that hundreds or thousands of other visitors have captured after doing the same research. Serendipity and the artist’s eye have their place in travel photography, too. The research phase can also inform me as to what clothing, gear, and other essentials I should bring to each location.

Now I’d like to introduce three smartphone apps that I consider indispensable for travel photography. First, there’s Photo Pills, an app that incorporates several essential tools into one package. I use Photo Pills for planning shots where I need to know how to get all the elements, including location, date, and time of day, to come together. For example, during the Perseid Meteor Shower, I wanted to find a dark sky location with a nice foreground and a view toward the galactic core of our Milky Way. This way, I could capture images including the meteor shower, the Milky Way, and the pretty landscape in the foreground. I had a location in mind, a beautiful spot where there isn’t too much light pollution and with a gorgeous view over a reservoir and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Planner tool in Photo Pills allowed me to visualize the foreground as viewed by my phone’s camera, superimposed against the Milky Way as it would appear on different days and times of day. I planned the shot for a certain time on each of several consecutive days, confirmed that the Milky Way would be rising in the desired direction and that the nearly full moon would have already set, and then waited for clear weather. The first night of the meteor shower was cloudy, but the second night was the charm, and I was able to capture this striking image.
Using the Photo Pills app on my smartphone, I was able to plan in advance for a location, date, and time that would maximize the chances of capturing the Perseid Meteor Shower and Milky Way over the lovely Crystal Springs Reservoir. Buy this photo

Here’s a screenshot of the Planner tool in Photo Pills that I used to prepare for this shoot.

The Photo Pills app has a number of tools to help plan and execute your shots.

Another useful app for planning the best locations, dates, and times for your shoots is TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris). I find this tool to be especially helpful for visualizing the path of the sun and moon across the field of view for any location I select. This app is very powerful, and I have only scratched the surface of what it can do to predict and prepare for photo opportunities.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) is a powerful tool for planning any outdoor photo shoots.

A final app I will mention here is called Easy Release. Sometimes (read this post for details about model releases), we need a model release when a person or several people are clearly identifiable in a photo. I know some photographers who carry hardcopy model releases with them wherever they travel, but I find this to be cumbersome and impractical when on the road shooting. Instead, I use Easy Release on my phone, so I’m always ready to quickly prepare a release for a new friend to sign when they appear in my images. Even though the app has the ability to translate the text of the release into several languages, there are situations in which it isn’t reasonable to try to explain to a local person what’s in the release and why it’s required. Furthermore, I consider it to be exploitative if the person can’t reasonably be expected to understand what’s in the document or why they should be signing it. But there are times when having immediate access to a model release that can be prepared, signed, and stored right on my phone is a big advantage.

Easy Release is a convenient tool for creating, signing, sharing, and storing model releases when a person is clearly identifiable in photos.

With proper planning using readily available resources and various apps including the ones I’ve presented here, we can be better prepared to maximize our chances of capturing memorable images. Happy shooting, and remember that luck favors the prepared!

Do you have a favorite tool you use to plan for your photo adventures? How have you used this tool to get your shot? Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about tools for planning your travel photography? Find them all here: Posts on Planning.

Focus on Dance Brigade’s “Gracias a la Vida: Love in a Bitter Time” [Encore Publication]: Creative approaches to shooting inspiring performances

Recently, I had the privilege of shooting the dress rehearsal for a new show highlighting 40 years of activism through the arts, presented by San Francisco feminist and multi-cultural dance company, Dance Brigade. Their work was extremely powerful and moving. Not only was it artistically and technically astonishing, but the show was truly inspiring as a testament to the power of artists fighting for social justice. In the current era we need this power to be wielded widely and wisely to balance the widespread injustice all around us.

When shooting work as inspiring as this, I often choose less traditional and more creative approaches to presenting my images. In short, the medium should match the message, so when the message is as powerful as Dance Brigade’s performance, I believe the medium should rise to the occasion. So, in addition to making some traditional documentary images shot looking directly toward the performers with an eye toward capturing the obvious, I also strove to capture some different and unusual perspectives on the performance. I present some of them in the post with short descriptions of my intent for each image.

The usual rules for shooting a live indoor performance still apply. Gain permission to shoot in advance directly from the show’s producer. Use a fast lens and high ISO setting so as to be able to preserve a fast shutter speed to freeze action while still avoiding use of flash, which distracts performers and crew. Turn off your LCD display and check your images only when there’s a break in the action. Use the quietest shutter mode your camera supports. And never use a tripod or monopod unless you have explicit permission from the producer.

Wait for the telling moment: There are instants during live performances that distill the overall message down to its essence. Seek those moments. Buy this photo

Tell a story: Just as a good performance is designed to reveal key messages to the audience at the appropriate time, so should the photographer capture images that disclose the underlying narrative. This image of the climax from a piece on the plight of refugees captures the essence of the story. Buy this photo

Find an unusual perspective: When shooting behind-the-scenes such as at a dress rehearsal, you have the opportunity to find just the right combination of vantage point and lens to make your images really pop. This image was made from the lip of the stage. I had to lean forward across the front of the stage and shoot upward. I love this shot because it captures the artist from her eye level just at a decisive moment in the drama. Buy this photo

Document the power of the performance: This piece started quietly and worked up slowly to a frenzy of pent-up anger and activism. I found the best vantage point and waited for the perfect moment. Buy this photo

Know when to break the basic rules of composition: Sure, most of the time you want to avoid cutting a performer’s head off. But I saw the latent energy inherent in the unorthodox framing of this image. By shooting from the static artist’s level and capturing only part of the jumping artist’s body, I transformed the image into a bolder statement that supported the message of the piece. Buy this photo

Gain perspective: Not every image needs to include the whole environment. Sometimes it’s more powerful to capture just the salient part. Buy this photo

Capture a moment of pure joy: Shoot lots of images so that you can choose the ones that really make an impact. The bold colors, shallow depth-of-field, and simple composition of this image work to emphasize the dancer’s aura of joyful triumph. Buy this photo

Use black-and-white: This image cried out for me to convert it to monochrome. Its raw documentary power and gritty, graphic nature are more compelling in black-and-white. Buy this photo

Don’t be afraid to use selective focus: It’s okay for certain elements of your subject not to be in sharp focus. I chose a narrow depth-of-field in order to obtain selective focus on just the performers in the middle of this triumphant circle. The soft focus on the dancers in the foreground and far background only serve to enhance the dramatic power of the image. Buy this photo

I hope this essay provides some ideas for how to shoot creative images that amplify the power of your message. Modern digital photography provides us with so many tools for making images that go beyond the pure documentary function to also enchant our viewers with imagination. A performance as moving as Dance Brigade’s “Gracias a la Vida: Love in a Bitter Time” deserves more than a straightforward narrative capture. I tried to make some images that supported their messaging with a creative visual style. Continue to capture the obvious message in your images, but keep shooting to go beyond the documentary. Go wild, and see what you can achieve!

How do you go beyond the obvious to capture images that pop? Please share your ideas here?

Want to read more posts about what to shoot while traveling or near home? Find them all here: Posts on What to Shoot.

When You Get Back Home [Encore Publication]: An introduction to the essentials of postprocessing

You may want to share some of your favorite images with friends and family right out of the camera while you’re still traveling, and as long as you’re not sharing so broadly that potential thieves may be alerted to your absence from home, that’s a fine thing to do. To enable immediate and easy sharing, you can choose the setting available on many cameras to shoot both RAW and JPG files; the JPG images will often look pretty decent for sharing when they come straight from the camera, and you still have your much more detailed image data saved in the RAW files.

But when you get home from your trip, it’s worth making the effort to catalog and post-process the RAW files of your favorite images so that they will look their very best and so you will be organized for finding them in the future. I’ll cover how to organize your catalog of images in a later post, but for now let’s take a look at the essentials of post-processing.

There are many software applications available to perform these tasks, but I strongly encourage you to check out Adobe Lightroom. I use this tool, and nearly all professional and enthusiast photographers I know also use it. You can license it along with other Adobe software on a pay-per-month basis as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, but it can also be purchased with a perpetual license (i.e., you purchase the software once and can use it forever), which is how I acquired it.

Once you have Lightroom installed on your PC, it’s easy to import your images from your camera’s memory card or from your PC’s hard drive and to organize your catalog of images using the software’s Library module. When your images are in your Lightroom catalog, the software allows you to perform all post-processing you desire using its Develop module. After shooting the image, my second-favorite part of the digital photography process is enhancing the the image in the Develop module. The software package even gets its name, Lightroom, as the new digital equivalent of the work we older photographers formerly had to do in the darkroom, such as dodging, burning, and cropping our film negatives to get the images looking their best.

As an example of how a little post-processing can dramatically enhance an image, let’s take a look at a night shot I made of Copenhagen’s Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament. Here’s the “Before” picture:

Lightroom’s Develop module

The beauty of Lightroom’s method is that it doesn’t actually change your original image files as you edit them. Instead Lightroom saves a roadmap of the various edits you make and stores this list of adjustments along with a pointer to the original file. This is called “non-destructive editing”, and it allows you to edit your images to your heart’s content without overwriting or changing the originals at all. You can go back as many times as you want later to revisit your edits and change them again and again.

Let’s look at this process in more detail. Here is the basic Lightroom Develop module screen:

lightroom develop module

The left bar shows a thumbnail of the image you’re working on and a list of the most recent edits you have made. The central part of the screen shows a larger version of your image and this can be zoomed in and out to work on details or the whole image. The right bar has a histogram (a graph showing how many pixels in the image are at each brightness level from totally black to totally white) at the top, then a toolbar from which you can choose some of the editing tools quickly, and then a large area with sliders (only some of which are shown in this screenshot) that you move left or right to adjust various elements of your image. The editing tools in Lightroom are comprehensive enough that I find I very rarely need to import an image into Adobe Photoshop to make really sophisticated edits; nearly all of the time, I can perform all of my post-processing using only Lightroom.

Some photographers spend a lot of time making major enhancements to their images, but I like to try to adjust my camera’s settings precisely enough that the image is made in the camera the way I envisioned it when shooting, so that I need to make only minor adjustments in post-processing. While the exact steps of post-processing will be different for every image, here is my basic workflow (note that for the most part, I work from the top to the bottom of the adjustment tools found in the right bar):

Adjust the white balance as needed. Remember my advice to always shoot in RAW mode. One of the advantages of RAW files is that you can adjust the white balance in post-processing, regardless of what your camera’s white balance controls were set for while you were shooting the image. In JPG files you have much less control over the white balance after the fact. Just choose a different preset white balance type (such as Daylight, Shade, or Flash) from Lightroom’s menu, or create a custom white balance yourself.
Adjust the exposure as needed. Use the histogram and the image preview pane to lighten or darken the whole image until it looks best.
Adjust the contrast as needed. Increasing contrast gives more separation between the darkest and lightest portions of the image, while decreasing contrast does the opposite. I find that most images require the contrast to be increased slightly to moderately.
Adjust the highlights and shadows as needed. Highlights are the brighter parts of the image, and I find that often these need to be reduced in brightness to regain some detail that may have been lost in the camera. Shadows are the darker parts of the image, and often these need to be made brighter to bring out lost shadow detail. After the highlights and shadows have been adjusted, you may need to adjust the whites and blacks (very brightest and very darkest points in your image) if there are extremes of contrast present. Most of the time I do not need to change the white and black points.
Adjust the clarity as needed. The clarity slider changes the contrast of the middle tones (neither the darker nor the lighter parts) of the image. Usually images need a subtle increase in clarity to bring out the details in the texture. Don’t overuse this tool or the image can become unnatural looking.
Adjust the vibrance and/or saturation as needed. Both of these sliders will change the concentration of the colors in your image, but vibrance tries to avoid changing the color of skin tones so images with people will often look more natural after increasing the vibrance than after increasing saturation. Occasionally you might need to make adjustments to both vibrance and saturation, but usually I find a subtle increase in vibrance is sufficient. Again, don’t overuse these tools or your image will start to look exaggerated and surreal (unless you’re going for those effects).
Adjust the concentration of individual colors as needed. Each color channel has its own slider to increase or decrease its saturation. I don’t use these sliders often, but occasionally you may want to increase or decrease the saturation of just a single color. For example, when shooting a landscape with sky or water, you may want to increase the blue saturation to bring out those parts of the image.
If you want to work on your image in black-and-white, the color channels area is the tool I use to do the conversion from color to monochrome. Click on the “B&W” tab above the individual color channel sliders, and then adjust the mix of how the colors are blended by increasing or decreasing each color’s slider to see how the black-and-white image looks. I find that I often have to readjust the contrast slider at this point to get the image looking its best in black-and-white.
There is some sharpening already applied to your image file by default, but if it looks too soft in the important areas, you can dial in some additional sharpening.
When the image you’re editing was shot at a high ISO (sensitivity) and/or a very long shutter speed, there will likely be some noise in the image. This can be managed somewhat in Lightroom’s noise reduction tool.
Under basic lens corrections I will usually select all three of the check box items. Lightroom knows how most camera and lens combinations work and can eliminate many of the optical glitches that would otherwise show up in the image. Under manual lens corrections, I may need to rotate the image if the horizon wasn’t level when it was shot.
All of the above adjustments affect the entire image. After completing these adjustments, it’s time to make any selective adjustments that affect only a selected part of the image. These selective adjustment tools can be found in the toolbar just below the histogram.
Of these selective adjustment tools, the most generally useful is the cropping tool, which of course allows you to remove unwanted portions of the image on the sides, top, or bottom. It’s always best to try to compose the image correctly in the camera, but cropping is often still needed in post-processing.
The spot removal, filters, and adjustment brush are more complicated selective adjustment tools that can easily be subjects of additional posts in their own right.

These steps usually won’t all be needed for any one image. If you have several images that were shot under similar conditions, you can select them all in the Library module and turn on Auto Sync, which then allows you to make the adjustments only once and apply them to all the selected images. Another big time saver is creating your own presets, which are saved routines that you can call at the click of a button to automate tasks that would otherwise have taken multiple steps. Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom was designed by Adobe specifically for photographers to use, so it is set up in such a way as to make life much easier for us to organize, edit, and share our images.

Here is the “After” version of our sample image of Copenhagen by night. You can see how a few simple edits during post-processing can really make an image pop.

Buy this photo

I hope you’ve found this very basic introduction to the essentials of post-processing to be helpful. Now it’s your turn. What are your go-to techniques in editing your images? Do you have tips and tricks that you’ve found make your life easier after you return from a trip? Please share your thoughts in the comment box at the end of this post.

Want to read more posts about post-processing your images? Find them all here: Posts on Post-Processing.

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