When you are in a plane of a light plane flying near a mountain range, it is quite tempting to shoot a few landscape photos; But the conditions will stay very difficult for the photographer. There are many traps and the results may loose a lot of quality compared to what you expected. For example,…
Category: Shoot
Wildlife photo the easy way
It is not always easy to shoot rare animals, like a North Chinese leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis). These photographers found the solution at the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg (Germany). When wildlife photo meets tabloid-like photography.
Sports photography
Shooting good pictures of sports events is challenging at best. Rob Miracle is offering good advice about sports photography, grouped in several important categories: Location, Location, Location! The Decisive Moment Required Equipment Depth of Field — Isolating the subject Focus Composition Know your Sport, Know your Players Freezing Action Shots Giving the illusion of movement…
Water splash: The easy way to a great photo
photo credit: nsaplayer Who did not dream of making such a great photo as the milk or water drop stopped in mid-air? But this seems quite difficult. It may be, but there are a few techniques that can simplify things a little. Gavin Hoey, in the following video, shows a few of them, explaining lighting…
Wildlife photographers, shut up!
It has been revealed by a scientific study that ecotourists (and certainly wildlife photographers like you and me are falling in this category) are actually much more disturbing to wildlife than initially supposed. As written by New Scientist, “The sound of even a quiet conversation caused the birds [hoatzins in the Amazonian forest] to begin…
Black & White photos
Some itemized advice for shooting B&W digital pictures: B&W loves textures and fine grained surfaces Check your light Use low ISO: Image noise is more visible in B&W Check your composition: The lack of colours will make your spectator more attentive to a a bad framing Before converting to B&W, do all the cleaning and…
Photography in a forest
Sometimes, in the past, I wondered if it would be difficult to shoot animals in a forest. When I traveled to Amazonia, I could observe by myself that it is much more difficult than elsewhere (and specifically more difficult than in Brazil’s Pantanal). The obstacles: Animals are often high in the trees (nearly never creeping…
Photography in the Third World
In the coming months many people will travel abroad, possibly to some developing country or or near very poor people. And if they bring their camera, they will want to take snapshots from the place and the people they find there. There, in a different country, in a different culture, when the difference of economic…
13 photography lessons for your child
Thanks to Digital Photography School. They have marvelously varied and nice lessons for the amateur photographer. Today, I noticed a rather old post on their site which is a compendium of the best, most important lessons to teach somebody starting photography (aged from 7 to 77 years). 13 Lessons to Teach Your Child About Digital…
5 lessons for photo self-improvement
After all, if you come here, you must be interested in photography. It is quite possible that -like me- you want to improve your day-to-day routine and become a better photographer. Don’t believe that you must be born with the photographer’s gene. It’s something that you grow into. photo credit: Dave-F almost retired Here are…
Solutions to photographer’s block
Some photographers may have « writer’s block » (or photographer’s block, more acurately) and feel that they no longer want to shoot pictures. I found two answers to this problem on the Internet. The first one is a a series of advice by Photocritic: 10 ways to prevent photographer’s block. 100-step challenge: Walk 100 steps,…
UK: Kingdom of low-flying plane photo
Did you know that the United Kigdom is certainly the country where photography of low-level flying military airplanes is the most developped? Hundreds of enthusiastic amateur photographers catch amazing pictures of flying planes seen from above on a background which is no longer the usual bright sky. Why United Kingdom, would you ask? Because this…
Time lapse 6: Introductive lesson
When I started writing a short series of posts about time-lapse photography, I thought it would be quick. But I keep getting information about good web sites and articles about it. So, I could not close this without mentionning the introduction to time-lapse photography just posted on Digital Photography School (an excellent web site, by…
Time lapse 5: Moon eclipse
Sometimes, the time-lapse collation of images does not lead to a video, but to a complex picture. Like this one from NASA. A Time-Lapse Lunar Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Forrest J. Egan (Digital Astro) Explanation: During a lunar eclipse, our Moon appeared to disappear. As the Earth moved between the Moon and the Sun, the…
Learn photo
The great Recession is here, you are depressed as I am and you do not know what to do. Change gears! Go and teach yourself photo and a lot of its techniques on web sites like Photojojo and Digital Photography School. I found there a lot of ideas, tricks and tips I use. But, above…
Nature and wildlife photography
Nature photography and wildlife photography are two specialities that can be classified as difficult. Here, nothing beats advice from great photographers. This is why I noticed those two great articles, though they are very different: Mark Godfrey explains on Nature.org how are made some superb nature images. The pictures are permanent in their classic vibrance…
Time lapse 4: Flowers
To close this week’s series about time lapse videos, here is one of the most classical and traditional subjects: Growing plants and blooming flowers. Lily Time-Lapse in HD from danLinfield on Vimeo. Amaryllis Awakening from David Lanier on Vimeo.
Time lapse 3: Nights and stars
There is no doubt that time lapse videos made of pictures taken at long time intervals and stitched into a a single video, require mastering a difficult technique. But waht about doing it at night shooting the starry sky? Everything gets more difficult. So, kudos go to SkyTimeLapse!
Time lapse 2: How?
A few recommendations for time-lapse videos: Use high-definition: Your photo camera can do it, the video will be great in HD. Include some attractive central subject: Don’t just shoot clouds and skys. Make sure that there is a lot of activity: It would make no sense to speed up a boring single move from right…
Time lapse 1: Snails
Time-lapse movies are actually photos taken at a relatively slow pace (for example, one photo per minute or one photo per second) and assembled into one long sequence displayed as a video movie. What is slow will appear fast. Interestingly, it can be done by nearly anybody with: A good camera A tripod Some patience…
Story of three photos: 10 tips
Here are three photos I shot last Sunday during a visit to the Lake Der-Chantecoq. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them If you want to only watch the photographs, you can merely ask for a large format print on RedBubble (or a simple card). But I think that the story of these three photos…
Cooking photos
I don’t know about you, but I consider studio photo as one of the most complicated photography techniques (possibly with underwater photos while diving). But in the middle of this general context, photographing dishes to illustrate a book seems to be one of the most difficult specialties. I will not detail the technique, but I…
Panoramic photo, tricks
Photographic panoramas are certainly, with HDR images (high dynamic range), photographiques, avec les images HDR (à haute dynamique), one of the photo techniques that most profited for the arrival of electronic imagery. What seemed reserved to the owners of luxuriously priced and specialized equipment now appears simply an idea to bring variety to your photographic…
Photograph hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are definitely difficult to shoot as anybody who tried will confirm. They move fast, they’re small and somewhat shy. But they are quite nice to see in a picture (and in the wild), and they are specially spectacular if they are caught in mid-flight. This is sometimes seen as a kind of Graal for…