Last Saturday 9 people joined Photo-Africa at the Centurion Country Club for the Digital Photography 101 workshop.

Starting from the very beginning and working through all the technical ‘stuff’, artistic elements of photography and even a bit of post processing the day was not only a lot of fun but a huge success.

The approach Kerry and I use at the workshops is to not only explain, in a fun and informative way, the various terms and photographic principles that can make digital photography quite daunting.

Guided by the manual and slideshow presentation, there are various exercises that help the participants to understand the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of photography but, more importantly, the ‘why’.

I strongly believe that if you know why you are doing something the ‘what’ and ‘how’ becomes a whole lot easier.

The Centurion country club was a fantastic venue and with the golf course and rolling landscapes the photographic opportunities was plentiful as we looked for all kinds of images as prescribed by the manual.  Landscapes, color, panning motion and macro.

Here are a few of the images, each a result of various exercises and mini assignments on the day.

Thanks to everybody who joined us on the workshop!  Keep on practicing and hope to see you on one of our follow up workshops!

If you want to learn, remember or find a bit of inspiration make sure to keep your eyes on the blog for future workshops dates.

Or… join David Devo Oosthuizen for his guest post tomorrow.  David is the Thursday guest blogger and he shares his thoughts, and images, in ‘Activism Through the Lens’.  Awesome images, inspiration and some food for thought.

As you are reading this I will be in the Pilanesberg Game Reserve declaring photographic war on some of the multitude of waterbirds in the reserve.  Armed with a Nikon 600mm f/4 and a 1.4x converter I have a few images in mind that I am hoping to get.

Just me, a super telephoto lens and a full day of photography.  Just doing it for myself!  Bliss…

Enjoy David’s post tomorrow and I’ll see you on Friday.

Bye 4 now!

Gerry

It’s not always about the size.

I suppose it’s with good reason though.  Lions, leopards and cheetahs are without a doubt some of the most sought after photographic subjects out in the bush but don’t forget about the small cats.

The African Wild Cat is one of the more seldomly seen cats in Madikwe.  Actually, it’s more correct to say that they are some of the more difficult cats to photograph.  They are small, secretive and normal disappear into the thickets before you can even say f-stop.

In order to be ready to grab quick shots like this it is important to know that your camera is ready.  All too often I see people fumble with settings, pushing buttons and scrolling wheels in order to get ready to take the shot.  Not take the shot, but just try and get ready for the shot.

The first part of being ready it to know your camera and how to change the various settings.  ISO, aperture and exposure compensation are a few of the things you should be able to change without even taking the camera away from your face.  A second very important habit you can try and get into is to have a standby mode for your camera that you check each time you head out into the field.

My standby position is:

- Mode:  Aperture Priority
- Aperture:  f/4 (two stops higher than the lens minimum & easy to quickly change up or down)
- ISO: 400 (normally quite early so easy to quickly change up or down)
- Memory Card Checked and Formatted
- Bracketing: Off

All too often I have been out in the morning when a fantastic photographic opportunity presents itself and… yeah.  Wrong settings.  My two personal ‘favorites’ that I forget about all the time is ISO and bracketing but the more times I make the mistake, the less I start making them.  Make sense?

To make sure you always get the shot learn how to use your camera and make it a habit to check your camera before you head out.

Even if you get one more shot than usual it’ll be worth it!

Gerry

Like it or not, you will take bad images.

Ok, that might sound a bit harsh but it’s true.  It does not matter whether you take your time to photograph a wildlife subject or whether you fill up card after card on rapid fire, there will always be a few images that you feel is not good enough to show the world.

Come on, admit it.

You have images on your computer that you have no intention of showing anybody.  Out of focus, bad composition, whatever.  You just don’t want to show it to anybody.

It’s ok!  We all, yes all of us, take images that are not up to standard.  The point is this – you need to learn from your sub-standard images.  You need to:

- look at them
- recognize that there is something that you don’t like
- decide why you don’t like it
- decide how to fix what you didn’t like
- learn from it

The last point is the most important.  Learning from you photographic mistake is the only way in which you will become a better photographer.  So, with that being said, here is an example of how one images can teach you many things.

The above sunrise image was shot in the Wolwedans Nature Reserve in Namibia.  Early morning.  Oryx.   Beautiful light.  We were snapping away.  At first glance I quite liked the image but I knew there was something that didn’t feel right.  I took a moment and really looked at it and these are the three lessons I took away from this shot

1.  The subject is placed in the middle of the frame.  This makes the image feel flat as there is no tension or implied movement.  By positioning the Oryx more to the right of the frame there would have been more space for the animal to (potentially) move into creating a more naturally dynamic feeling.

2.  The tree on the right is neither in nor out of the frame.  It’s almost there.  The two choices here would have been to have placed it a little more to the left, showing the entire stem, or to exclude it completely.  I quite like the tree as it forms a frame on the right of the frame and also works quite well with the sunlight coming through the branches.

3.  The horizon is skew.  Even though the Oryx was standing on the slope of a hill the viewer’s eyes will be drawn to the bottom right of the frame.  Placing the subject in the bottom right of the frame might have been one way in which to use this strong leading line alternatively would have been to wait and hope the animal walks to the top of the hill.

There are many ways to learn but one of the best ways is to look at your own work – honestly!  Don’t look for all the good things.  Be realistic and honest with yourself and see what you can learn from your ‘not-my-best’ images.

Another way in which you can learn and be inspired is to look at other photographers images and tomorrow, being guest blogger Thursday, you can do exactly that.  Mark Dumbleton has established himself as on one of the up and coming South African landscape and wildlife photographers to watch.  Join Mark tomorrow as he explores what makes a good landscape photograph.  Great images, great advise, great guest post!  Make sure to pop in tomorrow!

I will see ya on Friday!

Gerry

Isn’t it amazing how sensitive some photographers can be?

Whatever it is that we photograph, we always try and put our best images forward.  Makes sense doesn’t it?  Why on earth would you show your bad images to people?  All fine and well but when you get too caught up in filtering your best images from those that, in your opinion, are not perfect you start walking a fine tightrope.  Filter your images to much and you will start finding it difficult to keep your creativity going as you will become too caught up in creating ‘perfect’ images rather than just following your visual passion.  Share every single image you capture and people might doubt your ability as a good photographer.  This is where some photographers get very ‘tense’ about their work and any criticism about it.  What to do?

No matter how hard  you try, no matter how good a photographer you are you will take bad shots.  It’s just how it works.  Check this out.

I am currently in Johannesburg and since I am up early anyway I thought I would have a go at photographing the Johannesburg skyline.  The image on the right is more or less what I had in mind and you’ll see it again when it’s time for next month’s wallpapers.  The image on the left… well that was one of the first attempts.  Yeah, looks like a rave gone horribly wrong but there it is.  Exposure was off, shutter speed was wrong, I started moving the tripod and the list goes on.  Even though it is a complete and utter mistake that will more than likely find it’s way to the ‘not-sure-if-I-can-actually-do-anything-with-this’ folder I learnt a lot from the experience.  And that’s what it’s about.

In a refreshingly open and honest blog post David duChemin recently wrote ‘Confessions of a so-called Pro‘ in which he confesses to some of the photographic mistakes we all make all the time but are too afraid to own up to.  Absolutely brilliant post and I have no doubt that any photographer who reads it will find at least some degree of truth in there.  If you have not read it yet, open the link in a new tab / window and check it out immediately after you finish this post.  Inspirational stuff!

There is no doubt that in wildlife photography there are various challenges which means that there is always the possibility of getting missed shots, blurred shots and wrongly exposed shots.  Yeah, really.  This means that there will always be some images that you don’t want to show to other people.  Yeah, really. I am most definitely the same and normally try and showcase only my better images but there are a lot of images that, for whatever reason, just did not work.  So picking up from there, I thought I would share a few not-so-perfect images that I captured during the last few weeks.

I took two of my not-so-good shots, of which you can see the RAW files in the corner of the images below, and did a bit of post processing to see what could be saved from the photographic carnage.

We sat watching a pride of lions at a watering hole when this young ellie cam storming over the dam wall.  He was obviously not impressed with the presence of the large cats and stood there staring at them.  It was late afternoon and the background behind the ellie was completely burnt out which, thinking about it afterwards, would never had worked.  The image was always going to be a pretty bad silhouette but in the heat of the moment I just fired away.  I had my camera set to spot metering as I was shooting the lions in the golden sunlight so the resulting RAW file was, well, terrible.  When I opened the file in Aperture I lifted the shadows a bit and added a little bit of saturation which left me with the image above.  Much better… almost?

As with the elephant image, on this particular morning we shot directly into the rising sun as we followed a lioness as she was looking for her cubs.  I normally try and expose slightly to the right but this particular image was completely overexposed but again, a few adjustments kind of saved it.  Drop exposure, lift the blacks, increase the contrast and lift the saturation and you have an almost workable lion image… almost?

The goal is, was and always should be to get your image as close to perfect in camera and then only make a few minor adjustments afterwards.  Not like the above examples!  This being the case, we all need to make peace with the fact that we will not always be able to get every single shot perfect.  It just won’t happen.  No… it won’t.  The moment you make peace with this and start enjoying the photographic journey rather than worrying about getting every single shot perfect you will find that you enjoy the process even more.

Forget about judging yourself or what other people think of your work.  Shoot, share and enjoy.  By doing this you will make mistakes, learn from the process and ultimately become a better photographer.

Bye 4 now and remember… we all make mistakes!

Gerry

A big thanks to Pieter Pretorius for his guest post and video yesterday.

I was lucky enough to to meet Pieter last year when I did a drive for WildEarth TV.  He is truly one of the nicest people you can imagine and his passion for what he does shines through in his images.  Personally I think the first image with Lieschen, Pieter’s better half, and the elephant is absolutely perfect.  If you are on Facebook drop in on Pieter’s page and check out some more of his images.  You can also catch up with him most days as he presents live game drives from the Sabi Game Reserve by using the links at the bottom of his guest post yesterday.  Incidentally, if you have not checked out WildEarth TV - you have to!  Having seen it and been involved, even for one brief moment, it is truly amazing!  If I ever get the chance I would love to visit be involved again!

Anyway, on to today’s post.  Framing and composition is probably one of, if not the, most powerful way in which you can create striking wildlife and nature images.  By following basic principles like the ‘rule of thirds’ you will already be well on your way to creating strong images but there will be times when a little cropping during your post production can make a huge difference.  Cropping can affect your image in various ways, some of which includes:

• Removing unwanted detail around the edges of your image that could distract form the subject.
• Changing orientation to highlight certain key lines in you image.
• Help to lead your viewer’s gaze in a certain direction by assisting visual lines.

As with anything like this it is a whole lot easier with images so let’s look at the first example.

The image above was taken in Madikwe and shows a dramatic sky above Tafu caves.  Overall not a bad image but the focal area, the caves, seems a little lost in the middle of the frame.  The leading lines in the image also tends to lead you eyes from left, along the caves, towards the angry sky on the right and by doing so keeps your gaze around the middle of the image, rendering the top and bottom portions of the image useless.  By cropping these two areas out of the image you end up with this.

In this image, cropped into a panorama-type image, the visual elements of the image are a lot more tight.  Your eyes play between the caves and the dark sky and this movement is more pronounced due to the long crop assisting this horizontal movement.  Visually this image is a lot stronger then the first version and all it took was a bit of the top and bottom.

Another similar example can be seen below.

As this Impala ran across the road I panned along to try and create a movement blurred image.  This obviously took a bit of pre-planning which included choosing a small aperture and slow shutter speed to get the proper amount of movement blur but shooting these kind of images, on purpose is a whole different discussion!

In order to capture this image I chose to keep the subject in the middle of the frame as I knew that sometimes they might jump and if I were zoomed in too tightly I might end up with an image of half an impala.  The idea here was always to crop a little but I ended up removing a whole lot more than expected.  To assist the right to left movement I wanted to leave a bit of space in front of the Impala to move into.  The bright sky also felt a bit distracting so I wanted to crop that out of the final image.  Here is the result.

An image where there is no doubt as to the subject matter and the movement is also assisted by the long crop.  This is also a very useful way in which to place a subject on one of the ‘rule of thirds’ power points.  If, for example, you shoot a flying bird you might center the bird in you viewfinder as it is easier to track and the focus is also sharper in the middle of your censor.  Afterwards you can now go and crop the image slightly to place your bird in a position which will make for a more dynamic image.  Easy!

It is all fine and well to do major cropping but sometimes less is more.  I sometimes feel that I am too critical with small things but then again, if I can fix it… why not?  Check out the following example.

In the image on the left I felt that the little branch in the top right corner distracted from the lion portrait.  See, told you I sometimes get too critical!  By simply cropping off the top area, to remove the branch, the image is now just that little bit cleaner.  That little bit better.  Sure, it might be a small thing but as with many things in life the devil is in the detail.  Is this something that can make a good image great?  I doubt it but it will make a great image just that little bit better.

One of the the other ways in which you can use cropping to modify your images is to change the leading lines in an image.  This is probably not the most common use for cropping but instead of only slightly changing an image it can create a completely new image all together.  The following image of a male lion has no real leading lines to speak of.

To change the image all together I cropped most of the distracting bushes out of the image by taking a landscape image and changing it into a portrait image.  This is what I came up with.

This image now shows the same lion but it has a completely different feeling.  The subject is still the lion (duh) but the the focal areas are more clear. You are firstly drawn to the lion’s open mouth and then down the mane towards the outstretched front legs.  The moment you get your viewer’s gaze move around your image you know that it has something.  Also, on a completely different note, portrait layouts are more sought after for magazine layouts due to the vertical print space.  Use it, don’t use it!

One more example of how cropping can change an image.

The above image shows a matriarch elephant towering over her herd.  A nice image which has clean lines and colors as well as different textures.  Now as mentioned I might be a tad critical of my own work but in a clean image such as this I want the focus to be 100% on my subject and there should not be any distracting elements.  For me the black area in the bottom right pulled the eye just a little bit too much so that was the first thing I wanted to get rid of.  By cropping out this black area my image was starting to look very square.  Not necessarily a bad thing and something I quite like.  A square crop gives an image an immediate ‘fine art’ feel.  If you look at how various artworks have been framed and mounted you can see where it comes from.

After cropping my image to almost square, and removing the black corner here is the result.

It might not be everybody’s cup of tea but I feel that this image works quite well as a square crop.  The tight framing mimics the togetherness of the herd and there are no distracting elements in the image that even slightly pulls your eyes away from the matriarch.  Clean, simple and square.  A pretty good combination which might also work very well as a black and white fine art print.  Hmmm…

Cropping should not be seen as a separate part of the photographic process but rather as a continuation of the vision that you had even before clicking the shutter.  If you keep this in mind when you next head out to shoot wildlife you will be amazed at how many more options you will start noticing when you compose your shots.  Remember that even though I might be quite critical, cropping is a part of the artistic process.  Each person will use it differently and with very different results.  You might not like the way I cropped my images and you might have done it in a completely different way but that is the great thing about our craft.  The possibilities are endless! Oh, and also remember that a crop cannot fix crap and you still need a good starting point to start from!

Most of todays DSLR, and many other digital cameras, give you a lot of megapixels to play with when cropping.  Anything over 8 megapixels will give you more than enough room to play with but in this case more is actually more.  The more megapixels you have the more you can crop in and still produce high resolution images.

As always, if I have time and any interesting images I will post them during the weekend but if not I will be back on Monday.  If you go out shooting this weekend, or just play around with some of your images in your digital darkroom, play with some creative cropping.  Use it, play with it and see how you can improve your wildlife images. Great fun and a good exercise in composition as well.

Have a good one!

Gerry

There has been a lot of talk as to whether you should under or overexpose when shooting with a digital camera.  The answer is simple.  You should expose correctly.

Ok, let’s look at it a little closer.  Your goal should always be to expose your image as correctly as possible.  That is ultimately your goal and the result of proper metering.  However, if you need to make a choice whether to under or overexpose remember this – always expose  right.  Not right as in correct but right as in the opposite of left.

When you look at the histogram on your camera this will make a little more sense.  For a more detailed look at the histogram check this post but the bottom line is this.  Black is on the left, white is on the right and your mid tones are grouped in the middle.  If you were to go with what many take-pictures-like-a-pro websites tell you, the histogram on the right is what you should always be after.  It starts pretty much with a perfect black, all the mid tones are grouped together in the middle and it ends with pure white.

This is all fine and well but not every scene you face will result in a perfect histogram like this.  Actually, very few do.  If yuo had to choose whetehr to uderexpose or over expose what would you do?

This is where the title comes in.  Always expose to the right.  In other words, if you are unsure always overexpose slightly so that your histogram leans to the right of the screen.  You will have much better results if you shoot slightly lighter when you post process your images.  The reason for this is that noise is most prevalent in dark areas or shadows.  If you underexpose your shots and correct it afterwards in Lightroom or Photoshop you are more likely to get noise in the dark areas of your images. Make sense?

You will get better results as darkening an image will not result in as much noise as lightening an image.

Here is an example.

The above image has been slightly underexposed.  This can be seen by the histogram leaning slightly over to the left.  I.e. the images has more dark then light areas.  You stand the chance of increased noise in the dark areas if you were to lighten this image.

This image has been slightly overexposed which can be seen from the histogram leaning to the right.  By processing this image, rather than the first version, you will end up with a better resulting image and less noise.

This is the result you get from darkening the light version of the image.  Compare the three versions and pay particular attention to the dark tire and area below the leopard’s tail and you will see that the histogram is now more centred and we have not gained any noise in the dark areas.

Nice tip to remember when you are out shooting.  When in doubt, expose to the right but the ultimate goal is to still to get it right first time round by metering properly!

Until next time.

Gerry

Photography is about light.

Obvious statement, but let’s look at it in a little more details. For more scientific details you canclick herebut the short version is that light, which is what you are trying to capture in your images, has different wavelengths which renders it visually as different colors. The visual color range is something we are all very familiar and can be seen in a rainbow. This is also called the color spectrum.

The color spectrum, as seen above, shows the colors of a rainbow as they appear in their natural order. Now in art and photography these colors, and various combinations thereof, make up the scenes that we see and ultimately shoot. I am sure that you have heard people refer to the beautiful colors in an image. Again, it sounds like quite a plain and simple statement but in there somewhere lies a magical combination of colors that can either make or break your images. Before look at the combinations of colors that work well together, let’s look at a few basic color related terms. Some of these might seem quite basic but they they are still important to know and understand.

Primary Colors

The three primary colors are red, yellow and blue. They get mixed, in various combinations to make up other colors. These colors form an important part of photography and ones to pay attention to in your images and composition.

Secondary Colors

The secondary colors are orange, green and purple and are made up by combinations of the three primary colors.

• Orange = Yellow + Red
• Purple = Red + Blue
• Green = Blue + Yellow

Tertiary Colors

When you mix primary and secondary colors you get tertiary colors. Look at the color wheel on the right check these examples.

• Light Green = Yellow (primary) + Green (secondary)
• Dark Green = Blue (primary) + Green (secondary)

All of the colors mentioned above, primary, secondary, and tertiary, can all be represented in a circular fashion, or on a color wheel. The color wheel above give a great visual representation of how all the colors fit together. Now before we carry on to look at how to use color in your photographs just a quick word on a small word that sometimes causes a great deal of confusion – Hue.

The short version, before moving on, is that hue is basically just one of the colors on the color wheel. If you adjust the hue in Lightroom or Photoshop you are basically sliding the color towards on of those next to it on the color wheel. In the simple example below I have adjusted the hue of the blue channel in Lightroom.

The image on the left shows the original image which contains blue, a primary color. By now using the slider in Lightroom and moving it to one side, in this case to the left, I ended up with the second image in which the hue has been changed to a blue-green color. By moving the slider to the opposite side, right, the hue has been changed to the color on the other side of blue on the color wheel. In this case a blue-purple. Hue make sense? Try it for yourself by taking one of your images, open it in Lightroom, choose a color on the color slider and while keeping an eye on the color wheel, move the hue slider side to side. This is probably the easiest way to grasp hue and how it can play a part in your images.  Changing the hue changes the color.  Basically just follow the wheel.

Complimentary Colors

Moving on now to how combinations of all of these colors can help you to create striking images. By looking at the simplified color wheel on the right you can see that every primary color has an opposite or complimentary color. Each primary color has a complimentary color which, as the name says, compliments it and is located directly across from it on the color wheel.

The three primary colors and their corresponding complimentary colors are therefor:

• Red – Green
• Blue – Orange
• Yellow – Purple

Out of interest you will notice that a primary color’s complimentary color is made up by the secondary color of the other two primaries. (Check it out on the top color wheel.)

When used together, complimentary colors gives an image that something special.  This is something to keep in mind when composing your images. Look for complimentary or opposite colors to make the image stand out. One example of this can be seen in the wallpaper download of the Swainson’s Francolin where the bird’s red face is complimentary to the green grass around it.

As with anything in photography some rules should be bent and other broken.  When composing your images you don’t have to be too strict when working with complimentary colors.  I.e. they do not have to be directly across from each other on the wheel.

The example on the right was taken from David duChemin’s blog, which I follow religiously, and shows how the use of (almost) complimentary colors makes for a very striking image.  Blue and yellow are almost across from each other on the color wheel and shows how you can approach colors.  The image not only shows this, and very strong, basic composition, but also takes ys to the next color term.

Analogous Colors

This simply refers to colors that are in harmony.  These colors sit next to each other on the color wheel.  Look at the yellow image above.  The orange squiggly thing in the top left is orange and is therefor in harmony with the image as it sits next to yellow, or at least very close to, yellow on a color wheel.

Using analogous colors in your images will help you to create more subtle images and compositions compared to when you use complimentary colors where the contrast of the colors makes the image pop.

A few other colorful terms you might come across include the following.

Color Tint & Color Shade

A color shade refers to a color that is mixed with black.  In the top example you can see how the blue changes from pure blue to pitch black.  The original color, far left, was blue but from then on you are looking at various shades of blue.

A color tint refers to a color that is mixed with white.  In the bottom color bar you can see how the same blue, far left, change as it gets mixed with different degrees of white until it is completely gone, at which point you have pure white.

If you look at all the different shades and tints that you can create by mixing the original blue with black and white it becomes quite apparent that the possibilities are endless and the amounts of colors that ultimately make up the entire color spectrum is massive.  So many colors.  So many options.

Wow, kind of got carried away there but that should give you a pretty good idea on the basics of color.  At the end of the day it is not all that important to know the finer detail when you are out photographing but it will most definitely make a difference if you start looking at things like complimentary and analogous colors.  Try it and let me know how it works out.

A quick one on color filters.  Since the digital revolution not too many people still use the old fashioned filters, that you add to the front or back of your lens, from when we were shooting film.  The theory behind them have not changed so whether you use real filters or you add a color filter in your post processing the results should be the same.

The very very short version is this – filters will selectively let through or block certain wavelengths of light / color.  Opposite colors again come into play here.  Let’s use red and green.

• A red filter will lighten reds and darken greens.
• A green filter will lighten greens and darken reds.

Lighten the same color, darken the opposite.  Easy yes?  Will be doing a bit more on filters as I put together details an article on black and white.  More on that soon.

Anyway, that is about that.  Had a request to do a post on selective color during post processing – i.e. drop all the colors in an image but keep one or two.  Will be getting that up later this week  Let me know if there is ever anything specific you want to to add to the blog.

Time to go.  Until next time.

Gerry