Grotto Falls, Smokey Mountain National Park

Following my last post about photographing water, thought I would post this one taken just yesterday of Grotto Falls in The Smokey Mountain National Park. I love living where I can get in my car at 10:30 a.m., drive to the trail head, hike a mile and a half to see something like this then hike the mile and half back and be back home in time for supper. Amazing!

Slow Shutter Speed for Flowing Water

Argghhh - I don't know how long it is going to take me to get this stuff into my head. Drove up to the mountains last Sunday with my son. We stopped to picnic at this little spot beside the road. Before we left, I thought I'd get a photo. The Joe Pye Weed was blooming beside this pretty little mountain stream and I love Joe Pye Weed because it is one of the few things blooming this late in the summer. It was a little overcast making the conditions right for a water shot here. I love photos making water look like it is flowing rather than frozen in action. You can't make these shots in bright sun light because you have to be able to slow the shutter speed down enough to make the water look all soft and yet not let the white caps get over exposed. When you slow the shutter speed down it lets more light into the camera therefore easy to over expose the shot.

I got out my tripod and framed the shot. I set my aperture as small as it would go. This would let in less light and I wanted to have a large depth of field anyway. I took the shot and it didn't work. The shutter speed was still too fast. I tried a couple more and then remembered I had to adjust the ISO. It had been on auto. Even then I couldn't get the shutter speed low enough. See the photo to the right. Yuck!

I get back in the car and my son asked if I got the shot I wanted. Noooo! I was doing something wrong, but what? 3 minutes down the road it hit me! I had been turning the ISO up instead of down. I had been thinking so much lately about speeding the shutter speed up in order to NOT take a blurry picture that when I WANTED a blurry picture, what did I do? I turned it up! In turning it up I was causing a faster shutter speed instead of the slower one I needed. I had taken the photo at F22 with an ISO of 1600 which made the shutter speed 1/30 - the slowest I could get it without over exposing the shot. While 1/30th of a second is slow it was not slow enough to get the nice fluffy water I was hoping for.


About a minute later I saw this other spot and pulled over and made the shot again this time cranking down my ISO instead of up. This was shot at F22 with an ISO of 100 at 1/6. This is much better. See how the water looks like it is flowing rather than frozen in place? This is more what your eye sees when looking at a mountain stream. With more shade it would have slowed the shutter speed down even more and been awesome.

Below is one I took a few months ago. It was shot at F22 with an ISO of 200 at 4 seconds. It is probably a bit too slow, but I love the effect and the feeling it gives. The spot where I took this was so shady there wasn't any sunlight being let in by the trees. This is what I wanted!

Totally Rad for Quick Textures

On August 5th I did a blog on adding cool textures to your photos, check it out below. I have since discovered Totally Rad Actions a company that has developed a really cool plug-in for Photoshop that will actually provide the texture or you can add your own, except instead of having to do all the blending and layering... their plug in does it for you. On top of that, you can see what your photo will look like even before applying the action. It is too cool!

Not on the market yet, but between now and August 23rd they are doing a contest... check it out! http://www.gettotallyrad.com/blog

I can't wait for this!

Focus in Landscape Shots

Here is something new I just learned... haven't used it myself yet. In a landscape shot I had been focusing out to infinity, but the buzz is that you should focus about 1/3 of the way from the foreground into the shot (would be at an imaginary line drawn across the bottom 1/3 of the photo). Hmmm.... the idea is so that the foreground will be in focus as well as the background scene. I am going to try it.

Large Depth of Field Slows Shutter Speed - WATCH OUT!

Okay, I said I would post something about what might be a problem when you set your aperture for those landscape shots where you want everything in focus. Now I am regretting having said that. I have really been trying to keep this blog basic and I'm not sure how to make this simple, but I think this is important to know so here goes.

You have three things that determine the amount of light coming into your camera: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.

Here you are in front of this expansive landscape scene you want to capture. You check your camera setting your aperture to between f16-f22 so you can have the greatest depth of field. The closer to f22 the better. You snap the picture and look on the back -it is blurry. Why? I can't tell you how many blurry pictures I took before I finally found the answer and here it is... this small aperture lets less light into the camera. Your camera, the genius it is, compensates by slowing down slow shutter speed allowing in the correct amount of light to make sure the photo is properly exposed. It really is genius. But at some point depending on the available light conditions you are shooting in, the shutter may have to stay open so long that it picks up the camera shake from your body. Voila, this will of course cause blur and totally ruin your picture.

How do you determine when the shutter speed is so slow that you can no longer hand hold your camera and snap a clear picture? Here is a rule of thumb. If your shutter speed is slower than 1/focal length of your lens. If you have a 70 mm lens on your camera this means that if your shutter speed is less than 1/70 you may experience shake. If you start getting down to 1/50 you are definitely going to have a problem. So what to do?

You have two options. Do you remember my post about the camera I had with no working flash and I used 400 speed film to take wonderful photos indoors? Your ISO on your SLR works the same way. You can set the ISO on most SLRs up to 1800 if needed. The higher you set the number the more grainy your photos are going to apear but I think the difference is nominal on most photos. As a matter of fact, I was looking at a friend's photos the other day taken at ISO 1600 and couldn not believe the clarity. I am sure it varys from camera to camera and most photographers will tell you that jacking up the ISO is the least preferred option.

The preferred option is to use a tripod. If you don't have a tripod look for something to brace the camera against, like a tree or fence or rock. If none of those are an option, and often they are not, then you are going to have to raise your ISO.

Transform

My favorite photography video. Okay, this video is a little dark emotionally, but it is so inspiring as well. If you are dreaming in f-stops and are thinking about or even presently pursuing photography for a living you should watch this. http://www.zarias.com/?p=284

Out of Focus Problems

One of the things I have noticed about most SLRs is that if you have them in "auto" mode or even "professional" mode they tend to default to the largest aperture (smallest number i.e. f4-5.6). I don't know whose idea this was, but in my case that is wrong and I think in most cases it would be safer if the default was toward the smaller aperture. Here is why and here is why you may want to adjust your aperture often if you are shooting with an SLR.


The larger the aperture (f2-f5.6) the shallower the depth of field; which means that the subject is in focus but the things surrounding and behind the subject are blurry. You want shallow depth of field in many instances such as a portrait or a photo of an object where you want that person or object to stand out from everything else. Like the photo of the mean looking Emu above.


But if you are shooting a scene, which I shoot most of the time, you want as much as possible in focus. So, if all your vacation shots of the Grand Canyon are in focus in the middle of the photo and out of focus along the edges... this is why. For these shots you need a small aperture (f11-f22), not the f2-5.6 your camera is defaulting to in the "auto" or "professional" modes. There are two ways you can fix this. You can either make sure you select the appropriate "scene" mode on your camera every time you want everything in focus or you can set your camera to the "aperture" mode and adjust the aperture manually while shooting. If you select the "scene" mode option you will need to be sure and change it back to "auto" or one of the other modes such as "portrait" when you are taking a photo of a person or a bird and so forth.


I use the "aperture" mode because it gives me quicker and more precise control. The "aperture" mode is still adjusting all the other settings for you automatically such as shutter speed to make sure you have a correct exposure. The only thing that is manual is the "aperture". It can be changed quickly, depending on your camera, with a little dial next to your thumb and you can see the setting in your eye piece so you never have to take your eye off the scene.


Either way, just remember that your SLR is going to float toward the most shallow depth of field and if you want that clear shot of the Grand Canyon then you are going to need check the aperture and probably make a change.

There is one note of caution here. This is written assuming you are taking photos in day light situations. If taking the picture in low light your camera will adjust to a slower shutter speed to let in more light. This means you may need to use a tripod to avoid camera shake. More on that in my next post.

Adding Textures to Photos

In my last post I emphasised the importance of photo editing software for saving pictures that were not exposed correctly. Photo editing software is also good for adding features to it that will turn it from an okay photo to a "wow" photo. Here is an example. When I was visiting San Francisco a few years ago, I turned a corner and while I and everything around me on my block was in the shade, here was this church steeple shining in the sun. I thought it was a great shot and took it from the vehicle. Later, I didn't feel that it had really done the scene justice and it became one of my just so, so photos.

Recently I have been playing with adding texture to photos by layering them into the photo in Photoshop. Here is a great article on the how to's http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-use-textures-to-enhance-your-photographs. I added a layer of a cover of an old book and one of some thick red and white paint and voila! Now this is something frameable I think.