Shooting Like a Pro class
Hello Everyone! It is my third day of a week long workshop I am teaching on thinking and shooting like a professional photographer. The class is full-10 people- and all are exciting and very enthusiastic. It is a long day for these poor souls (they have to listen to me blab and blab and blab)- we start at 8:30 and go to 5 everyday, most of the time sitting in a classroom. This is what we were talking about today- evaluating and trying out a potential area of focus for a project. Later today I am letting them out of jail and we are going up to the old farm I did my book on so they can get some sun and take pictures. Tomorrow we go around and begin to develop the student’s ideas they have for their projects. I’ll keep you posted. Project Development 1. Choose Project 2. Evaluate Project Are there well-defined parameters? Geographic, goals, time, vision b. Are there similar projects? None? Many? How current? What quality? c. Are there good information sources? Written, oral, pictorial, local, web, Local experts, organizations d. What is the marketing potential? In-place marketing: magazines, newsletters, websites, tourism companies, Supporting organizations: sponsorship, mailing list, support, presentations e. Image acquisition? Ease? Seasonality, commonness, effort, permissions, Variety? subjects, colors, sizes, kingdoms Appeal? Cost? f. Income Possibilities? Potential for: presentations, articles, calendars, magazines, book, tours, work shops Immediacy: Need 10/20 images to start Need 100/200 images to grow Need 1000/2000 to sustain 3. Envision Outcome(s) 4. Come up with working title 5. Start collecting information & contacts 6. Start courting organizations 7. Start collecting images Review and evaluate regularly
Fuzzy Bears
“Michael, that is a nice shot but you missed the focus on the bear. See how the background is in focus but the bear is not? I think the bear moved and you didn’t move your autofocus bracket to keep it on the bear so the autofocus grabbed the background and not the bear.” “My what?” “Your autofocus bracket” “What’s that?” “What’s what?” “What’s my autofocus bracket?” “The little box in your viewfinder, probably red, that tells you what the camera is focusing on.” “Oh, that is what that little box is for. I never knew what that was.” “How are you focusing if you are not using the autofocus bracket?” “Oh, I just let the camera focus where ever and then I tweak it by hand.” “So you let the camera autofocus and then you manually unfocus to focus?” “Right” “That make any sense to you?” “No, but the red box usually isn’t where I want it.” “Ah, but you can move the box to where you want it to be.” “I’ll be darn. That makes much more sense.” This was an actual conversation I had with a student during a critique in my last workshop. Please understand that the problem is not with the student but it is with me, the teacher. I am the one who is in the dark. Avoiding being in the dark is the essence of effective teaching. A good teacher has to be able to figure out what his or her student doesn’t know and then teach them that. If not the teacher is an idiot, teaching way beyond the student or way below them. This is what I have seen in many workshops; teaching based not on what the student doesn’t know but what the teacher does know. No matter if the participants need to be taught about composition or histograms or blinkies the workshop leader has a program to present and come rain or high wind, that program is going to be presented. A good workshop teacher tries to figure out what a student doesn’t know and then teach that. A good teacher fills in the holes, he doesn’t just heap more on hoping it will spread to where it is needed. This would be a good point to tell you that this was Michael’s second workshop with me. It wasn’t until my 7th or 8th day with him that I figured out he didn’t know how the autofocus worked in his camera. Not very sharp of me, huh? But this is the riddle of teaching. What don’t my students know? How can I figure out what they really need to know? What do I teach that will be most helpful to them? And what do they think they know that they actually don’t know? People don’t know what they don’t know. We are completely ignorant of the holes that exist in our knowledge because we paste over them with weak patches and move on to more interesting things. But eventually, there is going to be a bear in your viewfinder and you are going to have to keep it in focus as it shuffles around in front of you. Best to be prepared. Do you know what all the little dials and icons and buttons and letters mean on your camera? Do you know when they might come in handy and when you can ignore them? You don’t have to be a tech weenie you just have to have a general idea on what your camera can do. So next time you are out shooting with friends or on a workshop take the time and ask questions. The more you ask, the more you will know. Otherwise, your next furry bear will be a fuzzy bear and that isn’t good.
Old Haunt Hunting
Yep, I was back in Maine prowling around one of my favorite places- the little harbors of the coast. Why? I could tell you that since I am working on my next book, a photo book of the Maine Coast, going to the coast to take pictures seemed like a good idea. And while that is true the last place I need to go to photograph is a harbor because the really last thing I need is more pictures of yet another harbor. So, not letting reason get in the way of passion, off I went straight to the closest, nicest part of the coast I know- Cape Porpoise to Biddlefordpool. And what did I find on the way? An old lobster shack covered in old lobster buoys with old lobstermen inside! Just exactly what I don’t need and what I can’t resist! I did eventually get back on track and have a pretty successful photo trip getting many pictures I need for the book (see my next post) but I lingered at the shack first. Nobody has ever said I was a reasonable person!
Back to the Quarry!
Well, I went underground again, camera in hand, prowling the dimly lit cathedrals of blocky marble half a mile under Danby Mountain in my little hometown in Vermont. I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with the images but the place is intriguing and there are stories lurking, I just know it. Right now I am just exploring and giving myself time to begin to see what the possibilities might be down under. I am also giving the quarrymen time to get used to me being around with camera in hand. Both of these things are essential for any long term photographic relationship. This time I walked down into the deepest part of the working quarry and watched the guys cutting out giant 20 ton blocks of beautiful white and gray streaked marble. Some of the shots I took were examples of the operation so I could give to the quarry manager as a thank you and some were me just playing with the creepy dim light and seeing what I would get. The others were just plain awful, trust me. I”ll keep you posted on what ideas bubbles up in my small but perfectly formed brain. For now it is both fun and thrilling to be down there and that is good enough!
Pacific Rim Workshop gallery
Here are some more images form the Pacific Rim Workshop that Brenda Berry and I just finished. Looking back I think that this location may be the best workshop location that I have ever had a chance to enjoy and share with people. [nggallery id=23] It was a great workshop, I love going to Tofino and exploring the Pacific Rim Park. I love the long beaches, the giant old forests, the magnificent tide pools, the chocolate chip cookies at Breakers, the bear cruise through the back inlets, the chicken and bean burritos at Sobo, the skate park, the surfers at sunset, prayer flags on driftwood, winter wrens behind 1500 year old red cedars, bald eagles as common as crows, the working harbors, boat reflections and…did I mention the chocolate chip cookies at Breakers?
Fall Lightroom Class in Vermont
Lightroom Crash Course. This class is taught by my good friend and digital guru, Scott Rouse. I highly recommend this class. Plus it is in the fall in Vermont! How can you go wrong? Capturing your images is just the first step. Learning how to store, edit, develop, share, and protect our valuable image libraries is an integral part of the digital photography process. In this Lightroom Crash Course, you’ll learn from experienced photographer and digital professional Scott Rouse everything you need to get started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. Lightroom, as it’s commonly called, is the most popular application for managing image libraries and producing final projects from those images for both amateurs and professionals alike. Whether your images’ final destinations are the Web, a print, a slideshow, or some combination of those, Lightroom can help. This two and half day intensive course will cover all five Lightroom Modules: Library Develop Print Slideshow Web We’ll place particular emphasis on the importance of organization: Keywords, Collections, Labels and Ratings, and the like. Cost and Registration This intensive workshop is a bargain at $249. I’m offering an Early Bird registration rate of $199 for those registering before June 30 (or until the workshop is full). My beloved Lightroom Lab readers can get even more of a discount! Save $10 off of your registration by using discount code lrlabcrash. Just enter that code when purchasing your tickets, and you’ll automatically get $10 off either the Early Bird or Regular Price ticket. Click here to register for this workshop. When and Where: The workshop will start the evening of Friday, October 7, 2011 at 5:00pm for introductions and orientation. Plan for a very full day on Saturday. We’ll officially end at about 2:00pm on Sunday so those who need to can try to catch a late flight home. I’ll stick around until about 4:00 for an optional open lab session where I’ll be available to help with any questions that may arise. We’ll be meeting at the Inn at Willow Pond in beautiful Manchester, VT. You can book a room there to be right where the action is…well, as much action as there can be in this historic, sleepy New England town. More information on the Inn at Willow Pond is available at http://www.innatwillowpond.com. There are a number of other motels and inns in the area which are fine, as well. The Albany International Airport (ALB) in Albany, NY is the closest major airport at about an hour and half away from the Inn. Rental cars are available in Albany. The Rutland Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT) is a tiny airfield located less than an hour from the Inn. They do offer rental cars but require advance registration. Cape Air offers daily flights from Boston to Rutland. Don’t want to fly? Take this opportunity for a gorgeous New England Fall drive. Your whole family will love it. The Inn is about 160 miles from Boston and around 200 miles from Manhattan or Syracuse. What to Bring: Laptop computer — Computers will not be provided, and you’ll definitely want your computer so you can follow along. If you’re interested in purchasing a laptop, and you’re not sure what to get, feel free to email me for some advice. All necessary cables for your computer — No matter how good your laptop’s battery is, I assure you it won’t make it through the weekend. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 — You’ll want to have the latest version of Lightroom installed on your computer ready to go (if you haven’t already done so). If you don’t have Lightroom yet, you can find more information on where to get it here. Some of your images — I’ll provide sample images to work with in class, but it’s nice to have some of your own. Bring them on your computer’s hard drive or an external drive. External Drive(s) (optional) — We’ll talk about backup routines and best practices for storage. If you have one or more external drives you regularly work with, feel free to bring them to the class. Just make sure you keep a backup of all of your images at home or in another safe location. This article talks about using external hard drives with Lightroom. This is a practical lab-based class meaning that we won’t be outside shooting. If you want a chance to capture some of the great Vermont Fall color, check out the next section: Make it a Week: If you’re ready for a full week of photography, you should consider combining this workshop with David Middleton’sFall Colors in Vermont photo workshop. That workshop will be held October 12-16 in the exact same location. Click here for info on David’s Fall Colors in Vermont workshop. Questions: If you have questions about the class, please contact Scott at [email protected]. Registration Remember to use the discount code lrlabcrash to save an additional $10.
Pacific Rim Workshop review
Not quite home yet from the Pacific Rim Workshop that Brenda Berry and I led but I already miss the place. The combination of great subjects and a fun, funky town give this workshop a wonderful sense of place and makes for a terrific workshop experience. Everyone on the workshop got some really nice images. I know this because Brenda and I saw them in the critiques we did everyday and we talked about them longingly afterward. I know things are going well when I pine for the images my students are producing and I did a lot of pining last week! Even the weather, which is supposed to be cloudy and generally grumpy this time of the year (all the better for old-growth forests and tide pools) was amenable with sunsets the first three nights and clouds on the days we went into the forests. All the photos posted here were taken during the workshop. I’ll post more when I return to my office and relocate my head. And just in case you might be interested, Brenda and I will be doing this workshop again next year in May.
Homework Assignment
I know, you didn’t ask for homework this summer but then again who does? I remember getting homework for the summer, I think. I am sure that not only did I never do it I never had any intention of doing it. Summer is for hiking and swimming and reading the sports page. It is certainly not for homework. I mean really, who would do homework in the summer? You, for one! Here is your assignment. Next time you are out taking pictures and you are setting up a nice landscape stop, step away from your camera and examine the foreground. I bet that it is either not very compelling or not very close. Your homework is to spend some time finding the best possible foreground and then emphasizing it in your composition. The foreground is that part of your composition that is closest to your camera. For compelling landscape photos your foreground needs to be 3 to 4 feet (or even closer!) away from your camera. That’s right 3 to 4 feet. For foregrounds that have small things in them, say tiny flowers, you need to be even closer. If your foreground is dominated by a large object, say a stump or a clump of wildflowers then you may have to move back a bit, but not too far. The secret is to fill your composition with a great foreground. Look at the photo above. When you take a close look at it you will notice that half of the composition is within 5 feet of the camera. In fact, three quarters of the composition is within about 8 feet of the camera! I am emphasizing the pretty lupine and big driftwood logs. That is what I think is compelling about this scene so I made it a big part of my composition. The last one quarter of the composition places the lupine and logs on a beach. Remember, a nice landscape becomes a great landscape when the foreground is close, compelling and really cool. Take your time, great foregrounds are out there to be found.
A Question of Extension
I was asked a question about extension tubes a couple of days ago- What are they? Do they work? Are they any good? He then asked if there was a formula for figuring out the effect an extension tube will have for a given lens. Now we are talking! First, let me explain what an extension tube is. An extension tube is nothing more than a spacer between your camera body and your lens- it is a hollow tube. There is no glass, no anything in an extension tube- just space. The purpose of the extension tube is to push the lens farther from the camera- the farther the lens is from the camera the closer it will focus. This is why most lenses get longer (grow) when the focusing ring is turned to close focus. In lens-speak, when a lens grows it is called extension. Only lenses that have internal focusing don’t physically grow longer with close focus. On these lenses the glass inside the lens travels farther away from the camera when the focusing ring is turned. Either way, in order for a lens to focus more closely when the focusing ring is turned the lens glass must move away from the camera. Extension tubes are a bit old school these days. Back when I was a starting pro 30 years ago, extension tubes were popular because there were no macro lenses that focused all the way down to life size and the long telephoto lenses had minimum focusing distances that were too far to get close to small critters. In other words, there were no lenses that had enough built-in extension to allow them to focus as closely as photographers wanted. An extension tube solved this problem. Unfortunately, an extension tube also created problems. For every inch of length of an extension tube a stop of light was lost. For macro work, I often used an extension tube that was 2.5 inches long so when I looked through my lens (2.5 stops darker!) it was really dark! Also, back in the day using an extension tube negated any autofocus or the sophisticated metering modes. Together, this made using extension tubes a pain in the neck. These days most macro lenses and long telephotos have plenty of extension built-in to make extension tubes pretty much unnecessary. For any lens you might have that doesn’t focus quite close enough for you the far better alternative is to use a close-up diopter. A diopter looks like a thick filter and screws into the front of your lens like a filter would. When on, the diopter changes the optics of your lens to allow it to focus much closer than it otherwise would. You lose your infinity focus when the diopter is on but you gain close focus. The magic of diopters is that you don’t lose any light and your autofocus and metering systems are not comprised in any fashion. I find that diopters work great on 70-200mm or 70-300mm zoom lenses. When I travel internationally I often will take my 70-300mm lens and pop a diopter into my pocket when I go out shooting. It’s much easier than carrying around a separate macro lens. So what about the formula to figure out what effect an extension tube might have on one of your lenses? Okay, here goes, now pay attention. To figure out the magnification ability of a lens take a picture with it when it is at its closest focus. Then measure the dimensions of the area of the photograph. If the area you just photographed is 1” by 1.5” your lens focuses down to life size or 1/1 (one to one). If the area is 2” by 3” then your lens focuses down to one half life size or 1/2 (one to two). Many general lenses focus down to 4” by 6” or 1/4 life size. Many telephoto lenses focus down to 8’ by 12” or 1/8 life size. Now that we have that straight, the formula for extension is length of the extension over length of the lens. A lens that goes to life size has an equal amount of extension as lens length. So a 105mm macro lens that has 105 mm of extension built-in will focus down to life size. 105/105 = 1/1 = life size. A 105mm lens that has only 52mm of extension will only focus down to 1/2 life size- 52/105 = 1/2 life size. If you have a 200mm lens that can photograph an area 4’’x 6” (1/4 life size) than you have 50mm of extension in that lens. My 200mm lens is a 1/1 life size macro so it has 200mm of extension built-in. The actual question I was asked is about using a 12mm extension tube on a 200mm non-macro lens. We now know, using the above mathematics, that this extension tube won’t have much positive effect. Better to get a diopter that fits than use an extension tube that will be little help. So there you have it, everything you wanted to know and many things you probably didn’t want to know about extension tubes. I’m glad you asked!
Ephemerals
Those rascally spring ephemeral wildflowers! You wait all winter, your pulse quickening as March dissolves into April, eyes on the ground ever scanning for green hints of blossoms to come. And then when the time comes and the flowers are blooming, Poof! They are gone! Botanists call them ephemerals because they have a very short period of time to grow, blossom, get pollinated and set their seeds before the tree leaves overhead come out and diminish the early spring sunlight on the forest floor. Photographers call them ephemerals because they last in prime condition for what seems like seconds. Okay, they last for a few days but that is usually it. Once the flowers are out all it takes is an unusually cold night, or a stiff wind or a hard rain to ruin what was once, briefly, perfect. Arrrggggghhhh! Now for professional photographers who really don’t have anything better to do than hang around and watch a flower bloom this is not a really big deal. We can adjust our toothbrushing schedule to fit in a wildflower in prime condition. But to you, my kind readers of this drivel who are actually contributing members of society, a wildflower noticed on a Wednesday may not be around or in good condition on Saturday when you finally have a chance to grab your camera. So what do you do? There are a few tricks that might help you. If your patch of flowers is past try looking for more of them at a slightly higher elevation. In Vermont wildflowers in bloom now where I live will be in bloom a week later 1000 feet higher in the mountains. Also, wildflowers growing on north-facing slopes bloom later because north-facing slopes are cooler. This causes the season to be delayed a bit, perhaps not a week but certainly a few days. If you can find a north facing slope at higher elevation you will get an even longer delay. All of this speaks to the value of local knowledge. I’m sorry, I meant to write the incredibly essential value of local knowledge. If you go on a trip to a wonderful exotic photo locale and things just aren’t working out photographically for you, you are probably out of luck- you don’t know anything, or at least not enough, about the area to remedy the situation. But if you are in your home region you will know and you’ll be able to get the shot. Sounds like I am advocating doing most of your photography in your home region, doesn’t it? Glad you picked up on that. If you go on a trip just be prepared for some disappointment when (not if) things aren’t perfect. Of course, you can pay someone like me who has no life and is intimately familiar with lots of photo regions to show you around. But then you have to hang out with someone like me and feed someone like me and, well it just uglier and uglier. Get to know where you live. You’ll be rewarded many times over.