The Photo Journey » DOF

Shoot the finer details

Scott — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:38:12 +0000

So how often do you swap your wide angel lens for a prime or macro lens when you are out on location? Capturing the small details that make up the larger picture can be a great way to tell the entire story of an amazing landscape.

Canon 40D @ 10mm, f8, 1/30sec, ISO 200 with Tiffen HD polarizer

Once again I have used the jetty pillars to block the sun directly entering my lens, but still get a very warm feeling to the shot. To capture the details in the shadows in the underside of the jetty I have exposed the image for a little longer than usual at 1/30sec. At this slow shutter speed it is imperative to use a tripod. A Tiffen HD circular polarising filter has also been used in this shot to reduce the glare of the ocean.

For this weeks additional images I used a 50mm f1.4 prime lens. The shallow DOF that this lens gives you is amazing. You can turn a simple rusted bolt into something captivating to the viewer. Whilst these bolts are visible in the wide angle landscape image the finer details are not visible.

A macro lens is also a great 2nd lens to have with you. If you cant afford a new macro lens don’t forget that many point and shoot cameras have great built in macro modes that (with the use of a tripod for an extra steady shot) can yield some great stock shots.

Shots like these can look great when used as page backgrounds for coffee table books that document things like holidays or your portfolio. Just drop the opacity and slightly de-saturate them. Textures like concrete or grass can also look great as backgrounds.

So next time your on location and you’ve captured the sunrise stick around for another 30 minutes and snap the finer details to help tell the story. The warm morning light can really lift some subjects. Who knows you may prefer one of these shots to your sunrise image.

365 Day Photo Project & Christmas

Scott — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 11:34:37 +0000

I hope that everyone has had a great Christmas and that they have been enjoying some time off with their families.

Well the year is nearly over and its time to announce that in 2010 I will be doing a 365 day photo project. Whats a 365 project I hear you say. Well basically the idea is to take at least 1 photo every day of 2010. Some people limit themselves to Self Portraits, black and whites or strobist style shots. I won’t be limiting myself like this however. I want to in the next year take more landscapes, portraits and strobist shots.

I will uploaded the photos as close as possible to daily to my flickr stream and once a week blog about my weeks photos here. There are are numerous groups on flickr that are dedicated to these projects.

The success rates with these projects isn’t particularly high. Hopefully this blog can keep me honest and motivated.

All the best to everyone for the year ahead.

My First Self Portrait

Scott — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:16:52 +0000

Well I have seen plenty of self portraits of people in their bathrooms (Clothed thankfully) on flickr in the past. Mainly used for Avatars but also a way of finally getting their mug out there. So I decided to give it a go after doing some product photography the other night.

I wanted to have a photo that displayed the camera as the core subject and me as merely the driver. So a nice amount of DOF was required. The lens choice was easy, as for a greater DOF I needed a larger aperture setting. So out came my Canon 50mm f1.8 II.

As you can see from the photo I was using my Cactus wireless remote to fire my Vivitar 285 flash with my small homemade snoot with grid (I’ll blog about this soon). It was to the camera’s right and about as high as a toilet. Why the interesting height well that’s where it was sitting. I had angled the flash towards the back right-hand corner of the small room. By bouncing the flash off the wall and roof the light will spill over the camera and not leave a massive flare in the mirror. You will notice plenty of people on Facebook and Myspace have self portraits with massive flares in the mirror. This is from on camera flash. It looks crap.

So the lighting was sorted. It was time to throw the camera in to Manual and set the Vivitar 285 to 1/16th power the lowest setting possible. I set the camera to a shutter speed of 250 and the aperture at f1.8.

I positioned myself outside of the bathroom perfectly head on to the small 40cm wide mirror, but I had the camera body inside the bathroom.

For the Autofocus points I selected the centre focus point only. This made the camera the focal point not me. If I wanted to set myself as the focal point I would have selected the left corner focal point.

As you can see in this photo the door frame is intersecting my hand so its no good. Its actually not a bad photo otherwise. I needed to shift myself left. Now I had positioned myself correctly and just needed the correct relaxed look on my face.

Because the photo was taken in a mirror I needed to flip the image in Photoshop. I also gave boosted the sharpness and saturated certain colours like the blue in my shirt. Using the burn tool I tried to patch up the brightness on my arm. I still have a lot to learn about post processing but hey its a start.

Next time I do the shoot I would probably check my background wall, as the framed photo kind of annoys me. Also the brightness on my arm is something I would be carefull of. Otherwise I’m very happy for a first time attempt.