In your landscape photography you will find that the majority is probably with a tripod. But each type of photography uses different tools. Photographers that do sports photography like to use a hand-held strategy so they can get the shot quickly. The last thing they want is to be fiddling with a tripod when they could be shooting the football player who has just won the goal for their team. Instead, they’ll choose a monopod which has greater flexibility and gives them greater access to the series of shots they want.

Tripods are brilliant for nature and landscape shots. But sometimes they are bulky and cumbersome. When you are shooting your landscapes it can be a pain in the backside lugging the tripod up a mountain or a steep hill just to get to the top to get that perfect shot when the sun is just right. But as painful as this is, when you look at your photos afterward, you’ll most likely say “wow, it was worth it.”

One of the great things about tripods is that they allow you to capture that beautifully, gentle light you see during a sunset, just before twilight. Twilight has a sweet light, and just before that there are some pretty fantastic photographic opportunities.

You’ll no doubt find that as dusk blankets the land the more photos you take the more blur you get. There’s no other time of day that feels like light changes than dusk. It feels like light is just slipping through your fingers like sand through an hour glass. And it’s during this time that you need to keep that camera rock-steady.

If you are in the unfortunate situation of not having a tripod it is this magical time you can always boost your ISO from the mid range 400 to a higher 800. This will increase the light sensitivity quite a lot. You’ll find more noise that way but you can always fix this in Noise Ninja or other photographic post editing software.

A tripod is not only good for dusk and for very low light situations such as getting crystal clear night shots. Anytime you want to slow down your shutter speed a tripod becomes the necessity.

If you’ve ever photographed a waterfall you’ll understand why people go back again and again and shoot them. When I lived in Victoria, Australia, I would take a trip for a day or a weekend and shoot many shots of Stevenson’s Falls. If you are fortunate to live near the Rockies in Canada or American then you will have a fantastic time applying what I am about to show you through some handy techniques.

One of the important aspects about shooting waterfalls is knowing the waterfall itself. What I mean by that is knowing the lighting conditions at each time of year and day; knowing what time you are going to get your best shot.

Here are some useful tips for getting beautiful waterfall shots.
Lighting for waterfalls is best when it has just finished raining- such as s storm that’s just passed. You can take advantage of this to get great shots to get a soft and dim light that brings out the dramatic nature of the waterfall. In order to get a slower shutter speed on auto, you will need to capture the waterfall particularly at this time after the rain.

There are a couple of successful tips to get two types of waterfall shots. The first is the soft smooth flowing effect of water; such as water looking like a blanket of silk over the rocks. If you want to get this look, set your shutter to a speed of 1 to 2 seconds. To get the right exposure at this speed set your aperture at an f stop of f/16 or smaller say, f/22. You will notice that with these settings you’ll get a better, larger depth of field. The entire frame will be in focus this way, which is always a bonus. If you find you have too much light, just change your shutter to 2 seconds or just slight of that. You can also use a polariser or neutral density filter.
Filters for waterfall shots? I have found that a ND filter gives some fantastic effects. If you invest in one of these for your waterfall photos you will find that the amount if light on the lens is reduced. Once the light is reduced (provided you are shooting during the day on auto) the shutter speed will change accordingly. You will find no reduction of colour at all.

It’s also wise to use a tripod when taking waterfalls. When you are using a shutter speed of 1 to 2 seconds (depending on light), you must remember that this is a pretty slow shutter speed and you don’t want to take any chances. So many times subscribers have sent me photos if their waterfall shots with some significant blur, leaving them disappointed in the process.
Also, with such a slow shutter, try to get yourself a shutter release cable. A remote shutter release is even better because the chance of knocking your camera goes from 10% to absolute zero. It’s a must when taking such slow shutter speeds like this because even the most beautiful photo is ruined by the slightest movement.

If you don’t have a remote release cable, you can use the cameras self timer. This is something I’ve used a lot when I first started photography. This will get a similar, if not the same effect, as using a remote shutter release cable. When you set the timer, press the shutter, you still have a few seconds before the shutter will open and take the picture, During this few second window, you can take your finger off the shutter and then the picture will be taken after this set amount of time. (Usually three to ten seconds depending on what you set it at. Some cameras may have a pre-set timer for this window.)

Just remember that the time of day you are shooting your waterfall is very important- watch for stormy clouds to enhance colour and capture that beautiful water with a slow shutter speed of under 2 seconds. One more reason why its good to have low light is because water offers come high contrast on a photo when taken in the mid afternoon sun. The low light will soften any potential harsh contrasts.

If you do find that you have too much light during the day with the slow shutter, you can always adjust the levels on the Photoshop Histogram.

As always happy shooting!
Amy Renfrey

Photo by the lovely Jacqueline Fouche

Interview with Stephen Eastop with Amy Renfrey.

Thank you very much for your time today Stephen. Firstly I’d like to start off with saying how impressed I was with your photo. Can you tell me where the photo was taken?

The photo was taken from the top of Cook’s Look, the highest point on Lizard Island, off the north east coast of Australia near Cooktown. (Amy – great choice, a Lizard beach scene I shot just while waiting for the plane off the island gets heaps of downloads – its really pretty ordinary, this is in my opinion a lovely pic and it prints beautifully. Soon as I saw you were referring to this one I decided to do the interview – with pleasure!)

What camera and lenses did you use?
The camera is a Nikon D200 and the lens was a Sigma EX10-20mm, F4-5.6

What were the shutter speed/aperture settings? (Its okay if you don’t remember! I know it’s a big ask.)
Shutter speed was 1/50, I try never to hand hold with such a slow speed but I was obviously trying to get as much depth of field as possible whilst giving not risking too much camera shake. I imagine the aperture was about f11 to f16, ISO at 100.

Did you use a tripod for this shot?
The photo is hand held. Travelling to Lizard Island where I stay camping for 10 nights at a time requires you to carry everything in – tent, food, snorkelling gear etc so weight becomes an issue and it is impractical to take a tripod.

What time of day was it taken?
Taken about 10am.

What kinds of conditions did you work with on the day? (I.e cold, windy, hot.)
Lizard Island is also known as ‘blizzard island’ because during Australia’s winter from August through to December strong south westerly winds never seem to stop blowing, usually at about 20 knots. It’s hot at the top after a sweaty exposed climb.

Did you use a filter for the shot? If so what kind?
Standard UV filter although I would have loved to have had a circular polariser with me.

It’s a brilliant shot from a compositional point of view as well as technically; I mean, there is a really beautiful angle with the clouds and the rocks. It’s a great effect. Did you mean to set it up that way?
Absolutely, I tripped over many rocks and took a few falls on the way to the position the photo was taken from. There are lots of angles as the landscape suggests but to get the sun, clouds and foreground just right meant that this was the best location I could find. I stood on a rock to get some height so that the sea could also feature in the frame, without it the impact would have been lessened. Obviously the wind was in my back.

What has been your best experience with landscape photography?
There are very many ‘best’ experiences from managing to get home after being lost in Mootwingee National Park, to managing to get down after climbing in Mt Kaputar National Park to many experiences with eagles rising up cliffs beneath me. Too many ‘bests’. And many ‘worsts’ where the scenes were dramatic and the lack of film in the F4 equally so!

How did you start out in photography?
I asked my parents to buy me a SLR when they went overseas. I was 21. They came back with a Pentax ME, aperture priority camera. I was at first disappointed as I wanted a fully manual camera but it became my best friend, a beautiful camera to hold and for a beginner aperture priority allowed me to focus on just one aspect of things. Later I progressed to a Nikon F4, lens collection grew and then followed with a trip to New York to buy a quality black and white enlarger with cold head. Still have the ME and although its never used it still feels like gold.

What types of photography do you find easy/hard to work with?
Landscape I can do all day from the slow set ups to the quick grabs. Flash photography I am dreadful at. I take many thousands of photographs of children each year as I run a children’s camp. Some amazing images have come from that, both grabs and set ups. The easiest photography I find is when I am alone, time to relax and really search out the absolutely ideal spot.

Do you find that photography and a sense of adventure go together? Do you find that a successful photographer needs this to get good shots?
No, my children’s photos need a sense of fun. Landscapes are often what you make them. Best to have your camera with you at all times I believe. I can’t imagine not having a love of our world and managing to take good landscape photographs. Intimacy with the subject is as important to a landscape photographer as it is to someone doing portraiture.

What’s been your most significant memory in your life as a photographer?
Dismantling a whopping big enlarger and getting it through customs. The first print it produced. Making up my own chemistry. These were great moments. But the best – the moment I started telling people I am a photographer; letting that aspect of me come first or that journey down Swanston St in Melbourne on a tram when I realised I had stopped just looking at the world and started to see (read) it instead.

What started your interest in photography? How did you get into it?
My father had a passing interest. I recall him as a child coming down from the hole in my bedroom roof or out of a tiny linen cupboard where he had developed photos of my mother.

Is there any good tips/advice you can give to my subscribers about how to improve their landscape photography?
1. You can’t take a pic with your eyes – you just have to have the camera with you whenever possible.
2. If conditions aren’t right take a pic anyway but return later
3. Tripod whenever possible and get that depth of field happening with small apertures and slow speeds
4. No tripod – follow the 3 b’s = brace, be patient (let the wind die down), and breathe out just before taking the pic.
5. Don’t overdo the polarising.
6. Take one good photograph, not 50 bad ones.
7. Take a book of John Berger’s with you, perhaps ‘Ways of Seeing’ for when conditions just aren’t great.

Thank you very much for your time Stephen.

If you’ve ever wanted to do landscape digital photography then here is some good news. You don’t need powerful digital photography equipment, but what you do need is a good lens.

Sorry to say but a lot of (I didn’t say all) digital cameras can’t take clear and “big” landscape photos because they don’t have the lens that enables them to do it. Digital photography has come along way in recent years and is racing up to traditional camera quality. Due to this fact landscape digital photography still needs to be done with a good lense.

So what is a good lens for landscape digital photography? A wide angle is a good place to start. Like a lot of things in digital photography this rule is not set in stone like the ten commandments, but it will help you a lot if you have a lens that is able to take mountain and nature scenes with a good view.

Think of a lens as a pair of glasses. The digital camera has the eye and the eye needs glasses. Okay, bear with me here….

The eye needs special lenses to see things from certain angles. It needs a pair of binoculars to see far away distances up close (telephoto lens), a magnifying glass if it wants to see detail up very close (macro lens) and it needs to see a ‘wide’ if it wants to see a scene clearly (wide angle lens.)

Okay now I know you are not a silly person and you can understand more technical things that that! I am just meaning that if you want good, clear detail in your landscape digital photography then you need to assist your digital camera to do it. And a wide angle is exactly what it says; it gives you a wider angle to shoot mountain ranges, landscapes, seascapes and even astrophotography. (The stars in the night sky.)

It’s easy to get landscape digital photos, but without the right lens its not easy to get good, sharp and clear digital landscape photos. If you won’t have the right lens then your landscapes will be flat lines with no depth, and you’ll be frustrated. I know, because this happened to me. Until I understood that your digital camera acts like the human eye and sometimes needs a little help for it to “see” what you want it to see.

If you are not sure if your digital camera can even take good landscape photos, then try it out. Get yourself to a mountain range or even cityscape and take a few different angles. If you have a camera that has an adaptable lens then you will be thankful for ever! If not, don’t despair, you can always hire dlsr’s from camera stores for a pretty reasonable price. It will be entirely worth it for that brilliant, clear, sharp detailed landscape photo you can hang on your wall for the rest of your life.

Happy Shooting!

Amy Renfrey

Picture by Erica Burrell

Have you ever noticed that in digital photography there always seems to be photos of fork lightening that some clever photography enthusiast has mastered? The fact is that digital photography is a challenge and as soon as we develop the interest in digital photography we are challenging ourselves from the start. And a real challenge in digital photography is fast moving subjects. And when it comes to either traditional or digital photography catching electrifying fork lightening just is too much of a enticement to see if we can “win” the challenge.

So how do we apply our digital photography to sharp, brilliant streaks of colour over our images?

Getting great shots of forked lightening is not as difficult as you would think, or have been led to believe.

As a digital photography teacher I can honestly say that the first thing people do it buy way to much equipment for this exercise. You really just need a few simple things. A camera and a tripod are the main things.

The main challenge in digital photography when taking lightening shots is where to position yourself. I’ve had many a frustrating time, in the early days of my photography, trying to get the best angle, the best position only to find I had the camera pointed at completely the wrong part of the sky. And some of my digital photography lightening exposures were all wrong. I was thinking it was as hard as trying to predict a horse race with a crystal ball until I worked out the logic of it all and it started to become a lot of fun.

The first thing to keep in mind is to make sure your shutter is open. Lightening is sharp, short and sweet. Its important to get the most out of the long, open shutter speed by leaving it open for a long time. You can do this with confidence on a really black night such as being in the country on a dark night without any city lights or too many clouds around for the light to bounce off. In the country you may have the freedom to leave the shutter open for as long as 60 seconds.

However in the city it’s a bit different. What tends to happen is that due to other light in the atmosphere, light from buildings, streets and cars you can see this scene turns out much brighter on a 60 second shutter speed.

A quick way to get great lightening shots is to find a good place to set up where you know lightening is either happening or is about to happen. Take your tripod, camera and shutter release cable. The great thing about a shutter release cable is that once the lightening has struck there is no need to keep the shutter open and you can simply press it the shutter will close.

Try setting your aperture to about an f 8 or so and leaving the shutter open from anywhere between 10 seconds to 60 seconds. (Setting B). Set your IS0 at 100, set the focus to infinity and wait.

Digital Photography Safety

It’s a good idea, any time in digital photography, not to jeopardize your safety. Digital photography is intensely fun and incredibly educational and creative, but it’s not worth risking your life for. As much as it’s a beautiful spectacle, its much more wise to stay well away from lightening. It’s carrying enough energy to give your house power for two months solid, so be careful!

Happy Shooting!

Amy Renfrey

If you have ever wanted to improve your digital photography then you may want to consider learning about High Dynamic Range. If you have heard of this term in digital photography, but are not sure what it is, then keep reading because it will serious change the way you look at your digital photography images. What High Dynamic range does in your digital photography is simultaneously lighten your underexposed areas and darken your overexposed areas. Working with your Dynamic Range will aim to create digital photography images as your own eye would see them; even light all over the scene.

In the digital photography world Dynamic Range simply refers to the range of light (luminance) vales from the darkest to brightest. In the real world is really the range of dark to bright sections of light that you can see with the naked eye. This is transferred to digital photography and it given the name Dynamic Range. Digital Photography Dynamic Range is the range of light on your digital camera sensor that can be captured without having the higher light or lower light values altered or edited. In digital photography speak High Dynamic Range simply means a higher range of light values.

You will notice that after understanding Dynamic Range that your digital photography can be improved dramatically and, very fast. Digital photography Dynamic range can improve aspects of your image such as adding a sense of drama to your cloudy landscapes, giving detail to lines of colour, toning down some overexposed parts of light sections of a digital image.

You may find that when photographing things outdoors in your digital photography such as landscapes, beach and snowscapes etc, you have a lot of contrasting highlights that slow your progress down. To overcome sections of high contrast you can use ND filters, a polariser, exposure bracketing, post editing in Photoshop etc, etc, the list goes on what you can do in digital photography but really, to get a more accurate exposure working with your Dynamic Range will be more effective.

You can get a good idea of digital photography Dynamic when you go outside and look at the light. For example High Dynamic Range is the bright sunlight on a typical outdoor, sunlit scene. In saying that, a Low Dynamic Range may correspond to darker areas such as a dimly lit room.

Let’s take my Sony digital camera to use as an example. It has 6 stops of Dynamic Range. The Dynamic range’s objectives are to capture more dynamic range. While it’s easy to capture daylight scenes with the Sony, in some instances like landscapes, more Dynamic Range might be needed. So in this case producing my High Dynamic Range requires that I take some separate exposures. Then I place all of the brightness levels that I want in my final image that my Sony’s sensor can record properly. What this means is putting the darkest values no lower than in the mid-range of the sensors light sensitivity range.

In the wonderful Adobe Photoshop I may decide to take a handful of exposures to cover the complete dynamic range. In each photo exposure I keep the aperture the same (changing aperture changes the depth of field). My aim here is to create different photos making sure that in each I cover the available brightness levels in the landscape.

I take a collection of photos of my landscape at about 1 stop changes in each photo. I don’t do this by altering the f stop I do this via my shutter speed. To check whether I’ve got variation in my exposures I can check the histogram to see whether I have adequately captured the scenes brightness.

Once I have all my exposures in the camera I go home and check it out in Adobe Photoshop. What I should be able to do then is edit them and create a picture as my own eye would see; good lighting on the foreground and good lighting on the background, without over exposure of the sky or underexposure of darker parts of the land.

Have fun and happy shooting!

Amy Renfrey

This week one of my loyal customers asked me a brilliant question about Neutral Density filters. It was so good I just had to answer it via this article. You’ll most likely appreciate this digital photography tip as much as he will.

“A question, I want to get a graduated filter, however, all the one’s I see are graduated grey, are they still ND and will not affect the colour? Very best regards, Pete.”

What Pete’s digital photography question is all about is the common confusion of photography equipment looking like something different to what we first expect.

When choosing a filter for our digital photography its best to first look at them as tools. Firstly in order to maintain clarity about ND filters, firstly think about what you need then work your way from there. Pete’s a fantastic photographer and is ready to move to the next level with his digital photography equipment choices, which is where I come in.

The answer to Petes digital photography question is yes, they are still ND, but like all filters, the colour will be affected. I’ll explain. ND filters are predominately used to darken a bright sky so that both the sky and subject can be properly exposed. Graduated ND filters have varying degrees of “graduated grey.” The Graduated ND filter comes in a few different types, but can really be broken down into two main categories. They are; hard edge and soft edge.

As the name suggested a Hard Edge is mainly applied when there is a sudden difference in the luminance of the digital photo, such as an overexposed sky over a landscape. The soft edge filter is mainly applied to a digital photo that has less distinct over and under exposed areas such as the same landscape but perhaps taken at approaching dusk when the light is not do hard. A soft filter just gently tones down harder areas of light. It’s less dramatic and can often be used very well in black and white photography to give the digital photo a “boost” of the dramatic.

You can have a variety of ND filters that go from a weak graduated grey to quite a strong graduated grey. The “intensity” of graduated grey is described by numbers. So for example a weak graduated grey ND filter is known as “ND2X”. And the strongest is “ND8X”.

All filters affect digital photography colour whether subtly or dramatically. You can have an ND filter that’s quite soft but still darkens an area of the digital photography image. Even though it’s subtle, anything you put onto that lens will be affected. But it depends what we mean by “affected.”

If we mean the colours disappear and change completely…well a lot depends on that such as the intensity of grey, the colour at the time of day, the seasons etc. If you are using a Full graduation from top to bottom then your colours will most definitely change. They will become darker. However if you are using a less intense ND filter, then you’ll notice the change in colour is not as apparent. You‘ll notice that the lighter ND filters will have more of a polarizing affect, the darker areas being at the top and not so much shading at the bottom.

Graduated ND filters are brilliant in times of excessive brightness coming from the top of the sky for example. You can use an ND filter to darken an overly bright sky and keep the main subject’s luminance the same. It has a terrific influence over evening up unbalanced light. It can effectively tone down over exposed areas in your digital photography.

Happy Shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Did you know that one of the fundamental things that makes your photography work lines and shapes? One handy thing I did to teach myself about photography was to grab copies of magazines that feature architecture, advertising photos, portraits and sculpture and learn from what I was seeing.

Our composition is the placement of things in our digital photos. Lines and shapes are what give us our strength in our composition. So it makes sense to always examine your lines. Lines can mean how straight lines become curved, how curved lines become straight.

To demonstrate this point, think of a road running into the distance. You can emulate this strong composition in your every day photography by using this as a guide by the straight lines. In other words take the design of this type of photo and take shots that have featured lines too. You can start practicing using strong lines in your composition with every day objects such as knives and forks, paper, pens etc. Use the start of lines as main focal points.

It’s a good idea to look at professional photos to gain insight into your own photography. Even landscapes and beaches have beautiful lines and shapes you can study to improve your own photography. Portraits have some great lines in shapes of human bodies too.

And the best design of all? The simple design with a main line that creates direction is the best. Keep it simple and you can’t go wrong.

Happy Shooting!

Amy Renfrey

In digital photography you’re dealing with aperture, shutter speed, lighting and focus every moment. It’s a lot to manoeuvre. And one thing you are also working with quite precisely, whether you are away of it or not, is ‘space.’ Lets have a look at what this means for you to enhance and develop your skills as a photographer.

Negative space is defined as…”the space around the subject of an image.”

It means the empty space around your main subject. This kind of space seems like unimportant background space but it’s this empty space adds an important aspect to the composition.

Positive space is defined as the focal point of a work of art or shape of the work of art. The primary subject matter in a work of art, as opposed to the background or unoccupied spaces.

Okay so those are the technical definitions. So how do we apply this practically?

To start with, negative space is a huge element in your composition. Your negative space is the space around your focal point and having too much or too little can completely ruin a potentially good digital photograph.

So to improve your photography always look at how much space is around your focal subject. Even the slightest bit too much or too little can completely put your composition out of kilter. Particularly when your subject has a distinct point of focus such as a persons eyes or defining lines coming to a point or even an aspect of sharp colour.

Let’s examine these two photos to show you what I mean.

This picture has a lot of really interesting negative space around it. For starters the negative space is blue, which is quite different to our main focal subject. The dobs of white, which are the colours, seem to glide nicely into the main subject without distraction or hesitation. The clouds do distract our eyes from the branches momentarily but not in an inconvenient way at all. The negative space in this picture works very well to support the positive space.

Look at the picture now without the support of the right amount of negative space. Let’s edit some of this space out of the picture and see what effect we get.

The focal point changes due to a 3cm crop from the right. Removal of the negative space changes everything. Now, the end of the tree trunk is the main focal point. Our eyes don’t follow the branches outward as much as they did before. This change does not make the picture drastically worse, it actually ok. But you see how this negative space alteration changes a lot about the picture artistically?

If you have been taking photos with your digital camera and everything is right technically but you feel something is missing, then it could well be your composition. Pay close attention to what you are taking and the negative space around your main subject. Changing the slightest thing can improve or reduce the quality of your photos.

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey