#1 Learn How to See the Lights

See the color of light, see the direction of light, see the quality of light. Look for the shadows and contrast in the scene, that way you can set your exposure accordingly. I have my digital Rebel XTI set in the AV mode and I’m going to use my exposure compensation feature to open up a third of the stop so I can see into the shadows. So remember, learn how to see the light.

#2 Try to Create a Sense of Depth and Dimension

We see the world in three dimensions; height, width and depth. Our cameras only see two dimensions; height and width. It’s our job to try and create a sense of depth. One way to do that is to use a foreground element when we compose in a scene like this a landscape.

So we have that rock in the foreground, we have these mid ground rocks and we have these beautiful rocks in the background. That’s my composition. To get everything in the scene in focus, what I’m actually going to do is use the focus lock on my camera one third into the scene and then recompose and I shot. So remember, try to create a sense of depth and dimension in your pictures.

#3 Take a Hike

Actually, take a walk. When you get on location take your time and walk around the subject. Look for all the different photo angles. There are a lot of different photo angles here. I found the best. So remember, when you get on location take a walk and take your time.

#4 Always Look Down, Back and Up

So many people miss great picture opportunities because they are in such a hurry to get to the final location that they miss what’s going on around them. Always look down, always look back and always look up.

#5 Tell the Whole Story

Take the wide angle shots, take the medium shots, take vertical shots, take horizontal shots and look for details. Shoot close ups like these beautiful carvings on the rocks. If you have a lot of pictures you can tell the whole story. As photographers we are story tellers. We need a wide variety of pictures to tell the whole story.

#6 Frame It!

Our camera man will be shooting through the opening in the rocks. This will make it a much more interesting picture than if I was just positioned flat against the rocks. When you are photographing someone look for a doorway or look for a window to frame the person. Look for some branches and you’ll get a much more interesting picture, good enough for framing.

#7 Be Aware of the Background

The background can make or break a picture. I tell my camera men this all the time. I don’t want some object sticking out of my head. Remember, always be aware of the background.

#8 Fill the Frame

I’m here at Elephant Rock, one of the most spectacular rock formations in the Valley of Fire. I want to share my picture with my family and friends. What I’ve done is zoomed in and moved in tight so I’ve cropped out the dead space in the sky and the rocks down below that don’t add anything to my picture. So remember, the name of the game is to fill the frame.

Bonus Tip: All rules are meant to be broken. You’re in charge, be creative with your photography. In this situation for example, say you’re doing the school newsletter and you want to send an electronic postcard to someone. You want to tell people in one image where you are. What you could do is leave that dead space on the top and bottom for type, which you could put in the digital document. In general, the name of the game is to fill the frame.

#9 RAW Rules!

When you shoot a jpg file and open that file on your computer, a lot of the information is thrown away, especially in the highlight areas like the sky. When you shoot a raw file, the file retains all the information. If you want to get the most out of your pictures, remember, RAW rules.

#10 Always Envision the End Result

For me, photography is a fifty/fifty deal. Fifty percent image capture and fifty percent digital darkroom work. Take this scene for example, I can turn this into a beautiful black and white. I can warm up the picture to make it look like I was out here early in the morning or later in the day.

I can pull it off to make it look like it was taken at midnight and perhaps best of all, if there’s a subject in the scene that I don’t want, I can take it out! So always envision the end result.

Over the weekend, something unforeseen happened, one thing led to another, and I ended up taking pictures of old pictures.  I had wanted to scan the negatives of these pictures, but I have not had the time to do so.  In this case, my brother-in-law asked me for some old pictures of my wife, as well as any pictures I had of his youngest brother.  It’s not really a long story, I just don’t want to go into it.

The task ended up as a group effort between me and my kids.  I asked my son to take the pictures, while me and my daughter filtered through the loose pictures and albums.

I was not feeling up to it, but as there was some need for urgency, I had to plow through.  We did have fun though.  And my son did learn a thing or two about taking pictures of pictures.  Truth is, given the time, I would have opted for a scan of the pictures.  But my scanner is a ten year old machine which doesn’t scan fast enough.  Hence the only alternative was to take pictures.

My son started out with the pictures on the desk and him hovering above the pictures.  Problem was the lighting.  We were just using the regular room lights.  No use for flash as that would wash out the picture.  He had to move to where there was brighter lighting.  After a while he was still slowly edging his way through his task.  He was holding the camera and not using the tripod.  This resulted in blurred pictures, besides taking a long time doing and redoing the pictures.

At that point I substituted for him, in as much as we were already done through choosing which pictures to shoot.  I got the tripod out, experimented a bit with the distance, and started shooting away.  I wasn’t able to shoot all the pictures we chose.  This was because of various reasons, including the contrast of the photos, the glare from the lights, some folding of the pictures, and the slight but very discernible slant for most of the pictures. But I was able to shoot the pictures almost like an assembly line manner:  set the picture, set the aperture, shoot, and cycle.

It was a good drill all in all.  But I guess I should really start on that project of scanning all the pictures using the negatives, if possible.  That would have to be for another day.

On top of the building where I once worked for a computer company, there’s this exclusive restaurant.  It’s actually part of a chain or restaurants and has a good menu of continental dishes.  The building itself is only about 34 stories high, but from the restaurant the view is breathtaking.  The restaurant has a promenade deck of sorts complete with potted plants and you could see up to fifty miles away in all directions, give or take some angles where the taller buildings block the view.

It’s a great place to take pictures, specially if the weather is cooperating.  And, in fact, even if the weather was not cooperating, or specially if there’s bad weather moving in, the panoramic shots would have been incredibly dramatic.

To describe the view, there’s an airport about five miles to the southwest and a mountain range south of that, the bay is about five miles west, a lake five miles to east and beyond that there’s another mountain range going north to south.  Any dark clouds with rain moving from one end of the horizon to the next could be easily tracked.  And the view of the financial district is clear all around.

There wouldn’t be any real problems with the shots.  Panoramic shots would be simple enough to do, with a good wide angle to work with.  You only need a tripod with the camera.  The sunset is spectacular, but you would need some luck to catch it in its best light.  This is due to the smog and haze.  Better to take sunset shots after some heavy rain in the afternoon.

Neutral filters on top of a polarizer would do well in this environment.  The neutral filters would give the shot more contrast.  And the polarizer would help with the haze, making the sky darker.  A bright sunny morning would work.  Or late afternoon after some heavy downpour.  It could also be a good platform for taking pictures of the night skyline.  What with the first class hotels nearby and the tourist district on one end while the commercial district is on the other end.  And yes, lots of the buildings have full lights on deep into the night.

Really, the possibilities are endless.

There’s a new trend in photography, and that’s a growing trend for candid, unsolicited and perfectly random shots.  This is embodied by the popularity of cell phone cameras.  It’s also the main concept of lomography.  Lomography as a brand uses cameras from Russia which are configured not to shoot what you see.  The simplest explanation is that these are still cameras which have visual effects included in the camera.

And since the cameras are designed to create posterized shots, these are not good for realistic renditions.  Lomography is more surreal and based on the feeling of the moment rather than the technical aspect of standard photography.

I may be biased, but I have not gone into lomography yet.  My current direction is in digital still photography.  However, I do understand the spontaneity being spoused by both cell phone cameras and lomography.  I do have the tendency to shoot candid or stolen shots of people and of landscapes as well.

The candid shots do need a lot to setup.  The first thing I do is to hide the fact that I am going to take a picture, all the while keeping the camera in the open where everyone can see. I try to get as many shots in the open, and with permission.  This allows the people around to see that I’m taking pictures and they can relax and pose as they like.  It breaks the ice, somewhat, and would expect to have their picture taken as well.  If they don’t want to be included in any of the pictures, I would know immediately.

It would help a lot if there was no need for flash.  But that’s an option which I don’t have much choice. And I would rather go with manual focus.  Though auto-focus with a timer has work fine for me, assuming I know what would happen in 10 seconds.  The reason I would rather go manual or aperture-priority automatic is for me to set the focusing distance, and shoot without any other preparation.  Look through the viewfinder in that direction, set all parameters, and then turn and shoot the subject.  It’s a nice exercise.

The spontaneous landscape shots don’t take much preparation.  I usually do it while I’m on a moving vehicle and shooting out the window.  The subject could be anything, sunset or sunrise, billboards, some hills or mountains in the horizon, or a river.  To begin with, there’s not enough time to prepare, as the vehicle would be running with no regard for any picture I take.  I usually focus on a distant object, with no auto-focus, and a fast shutter, with as wide an aperture as possible.  And the lens should be a wide-angle, thoug a prime of 50mm works fine as well.  Long lenses don’t usually work well; zooming in on a subject while on a moving vehicle does not make a good picture.  You’d get more blurs.

I usually don’t have time for a light meter reading.  The shutter speed may or may not be automatic.  So far, I have had shoddy success, but the pictures are an aid to memory of my trips.

A while back I had a home project converting prints from my photo albums to digital files.  At the time , my setup was fairly simple:  a 300 DPI UMAX scanner, and multiple SCSI hard disks of 2 or 4GB each.  I figured I had enough hard disk space and shouldn’t have any problems scanning the pictures.

Turns out that there were several problems, mainly from trying to make the job go faster.  I scanned the images to TIFF, and as part of the scan process, I also did some post-processing. During the scan process, I had multiple pictures laid on the scanning glass.  This allowed me to scan multiple pictures at the same time.  Unfortunately, not all of the pictures were set at right angles and I had to adjust the scans by rotating the pictures by several degrees.

Though not a very common occurence, it does happen that sometimes when taking pictures, the shot is not leveled.  This usually happens when the photographer is not paying attention and frames the picture at an angle.  Admittedly, there are some pictures which look better when skewed.  In fact, some purposely take skewed pictures.  But on the whole, a skewed picture does not make a good picture.

Making sure the picture is leveled is a simple matter of paying attention.  A beach scene for instance, or shooting a sunset are examples of pictures which focus is a level horizon.  In the case of a skewed picture, the eye notices that the picture is degree off by as little as a degree or two.  It’s enough to ruin a perfectly good picture.

There’s this anecdote a friend of mine told once.  It was his own experience.  His wife works for the Accounting staff of one of the biggest sports shoe makers in the world, and that company had a promotional event which involved some NBA players at a basketball clinic.  With free tickets, my friend went to the clinic with his whole family.

He’s not really a basketball player, but is into sports, like bowling, badminton, swimming and mountain bike riding.  He’s also a techie for a major computer company.  Besides, that one of his hobbies is photography, he’s had a digital camera since the late 1990’s.

He goes to the event with his whole family and starts using his digital camera.  Shoots with the flash and takes some videos of the events.  And when the NBA players come along the worst thing happens.  He runs out of battery charge.  He checks out his camera bag and he’s got no spares.  He never did explain if he forgot to charge the batteries but he was not very happy.  He didn’t have anyone to blame as this was solely his fault.  The event was set and they’ve planned to be there, and he wanted to take pictures.  Unfortunately, due to an oversight on his part, that didn’t happen.  He went home dejected because he had no pictures of NBA stars.

This just goes to show that even for guys who have been taking pictures for a long, long time, it’s still possible to screw up because of batteries.

For photography in general, it’s a cardinal rule to check the equipment before going anywhere.  In the case film cameras, check that the flash is in good working order and the batteries charge the flash in an acceptable time, typically about 5 seconds.  If it takes longer than 10 seconds, it’s time to change batteries.  It would be pre-emptive to replace batteries at this point, unless you’re willing to wait until the batteries are fully depleted, and in the case of flash units, if it takes longer than 10 or 12 seconds, then the flash might be too weak to light up the picture.  In which case, you would end up with a picture which has uneven lighting (strong at the center and shadowy at the edges) or an underexposed shot, or just a black film.

And whether it’s a film camera or a digital one, it’s always best to bring along spare batteries.  There’s always that feeling that the best shot is the one which was not taken (something like the fish that got away).

For rechargeable batteries, the normal recharging time is 6 hours.  But there are chargers which can fully charge batteries within one and a half hours.

Additionally, it’s better to have lithium-ion batteries rather than nickel-metal hydride (NiMh) batteries.  The older technology NiMh batteries have what’s called battery memory or charging memory.  With these, the battery charge has to be fully depleted before being recharged.  Otherwise, if this keeps happening, the battery will slowly lose recharging capacity.

With today’s electronic devices, with no battery charge, it just doesn’t work.  The alternative would be to plug in the camera to a wall outlet.  Though not every camera can operate while plugged in in this manner.

There’s a new mall in out town.  It opened about a almost two months ago.  My kids and I had planned to visit it on opening day, but one thing led to another, and we instead ended up in a mall about two kilometers from the new one.  And today, we had planned to take pictures of it.

I have not had the opportunity to take a look at the place.  On the daily commute to the office, I saw the mall’s construction almost daily.  And relative to other malls by the same developer, this was relatively small.  It did have a lot of things going for it, including the full support of the city government.  The mall construction was incumbent on the construction of another bridge to ease the expected traffic.

By chance I went to that mall just this past week because the utility company moved their customer support office from a third mall, to this one.  And I was impressed and very much surprised by what I saw.  It was very bright.  Though I knew it was going to be well-lit, as I pass by the building every evening on my way home.  It’s practically blazing at night, even without any neon lighting.

I went into the building just before noon, and from the glare of the direct sunlight to the lobby, there was only a slight diminishing of the light.  The lobby was glass-fronted to the roof.  And with the wide lobby, this resulted in sunlight streaming in full force.  And along the main hallway running perpendicular to the lobby, one end was also a glass wall.

To capture how bright the building was, we planned to take pictures of the lobby from the top floor, this should show the sunlight streaming inside the building.  Another shot of the lobby would be from the ground floor, shooting upwards at an angle to capture the whole wall of glass and the big metal pipes which support it.  Wide-angle and quite close shooting upwards and from the side would show the vanishing of the glass and metal structure.  Unlike the concrete walls, the glass is set at an angle where the top has a slight overhang.  The close wide-angle shot would show the angle to its advantage.

Other shots of the building would be from several vantage points outside it. There’s the pedestrian overpass as one vantage point.  Shooting from there would also show the river and another mall across the river.  Another angled shot would be from the bridge.  This would frame the mall and the overpass.

some other shots from across the river would give it a good perspective.  Another good photo would be one where the train is crossing the river, with the mall as background.  But this would have to taken from the second bridge, and about two hundred meters distant.

Pictures of malls can give a false sense of perspective unless there are other buildings or structures within the frame, or there are people in the picture.  The other buildings would give more perspective and comparison in terms of size.  While the people would give the picture some sense of dynamics.

We’ll have to reschedule another time as the weather did not cooperate today.

There are still several niche photo opportunities out there if you’ll just think about it.  One of the more common is macro photography, as well as mating the still camera with a microscope for a science project or a attaching a camera to telescope for space or stellar photography.  There’s not much in terms of additional equipment except for the macro attachments, microscope or the telescope.

Though in terms of opportunities, underwater photography should be more common, there’s not too many who would want to go through the cost of a camera or a casing for underwater use.  There are alternatives, of course.

One no-brainer alternative is to use a disposable camera with underwater capability.  These point and shoot film cameras don’t have much depth to them but they are workable and well worth it, provided you know how to advance the film.  That’s because the film advance lever is it’s main disadvantage.  Most underwater disposable cameras do not advance the film far enough.  And when that happens, you can’t take the next shot.

Another alternative to an underwater camera is a camera casing for underwater use.  For the most part, these camera casings are quite expensive and are designed for a particular camera and lens unit.  Some water-proof camera casings are almost as expensive as the camera body.  The advantage of the camera casings is that they are rated to go deeper than point-and-shoot disposables.

These camera casings are not without their own set of problems, specially for beginners.  You have to test the seals once you enclose the camera.  And after testing the seals, only then should you go take the camera to deep water.  Unfortunately, it’s the testing which is crucial.  If the case was not closed properly, the seals won’t work, and the camera would get wet.  There’s no two ways about it.  And with a digital SLR, that’s a ruined camera right there.

For a really cool low-tech solution with partial results try a glass-bottomed tube or an aquarium.  These solutions are not costly, and could be done on the work bench.  These two solutions give different results.  The glass-bottomed tube is much like underwater photography on a glass-bottomed boat.  You’ve got a long cylinder with a wide diameter, with a glass or clear-plastic seal at one end.  To take pictures, you submerge one end of the tube into the water and you hold the camera at the other end.  There’s not much flexibility in terms of the shots, but you should be able to see the bottom, up to ten or 15 feet down.

The aquarium solution is different because you can have a different effect when taking pictures using it.  You don’t take pictures with the camera pointing down.  Instead the camera is pointed horizontally.  This allows shots of the waves as it touches the glass sides, as well as pictures with one part above the water and the other part under the water.

These low-tech solutions may not look like much.  But if you take into account the cost of an underwater camera or even a waterproof camera, the successful shots are well worth it.

My brother was sending me SMS messages the other day asking about print quality for a 2MP picture.  I answered that for a 2MP picture, you can print 3R photos okay.  He then asked if it was okay to print a VGA quality (640×480 pixels) to a wallet sized picture, which would be approximately 2×3 inches.  To which I said yes, that would still turn out fine.

I brought this up because, relative to the number of pictures being taken, there are less and less pictures being printed.  That may be true, in relative terms, of course.  But looking at it from a different perspective, there really are a lot more pictures being printed, not just in one-hour photo developing booths or shops at the mall, but also at home on the computer with the colored printer.  And these are not just pictures taken personally with the camera, but also pictures sent via email, or posted on social-media websites.

Going back to the print sizes, there’s an almost direct relationship between the camera resolution and the size of a good print.  Or, rather, the picture resolution and the resulting print.  It’s easy to forget that the camera resolution in megapixel can be re-set to a lower resolution by the user.  This also depends on how compressed the JPEG file is (which is a related to how good the camera software  is). And it’s also much harder to realize that you can get better prints (or larger good prints) from RAW files or from TIFF pictures.

The rule of thumb I follow is relatively easy.  A 3MP picture can be printed on a 4R or up to half the size of an A4.  A 5MP can be blown-up to A4 paper size and still have good quality, but you’d be better off with an 8MP picture on A4 paper.  Again, this depends mostly on the JPEG quality.

Relating this further to JPEG quality, there are lots of algorithms for JPEG, and these yield different compression ratios.  Typically, most JPEGs have a ratio of 1:10, meaning that a JPEG of any given size is equivalent to an uncompressed bitmap (BMP or TIFF) of up to ten times the file size.  With greater compression, you would have to print to a smaller paper size to get a better quality.

However, if you have a RAW or TIFF file of the picture, you can blow that up to a larger size.  Better yet, if you have a postscript-capable printer, printing can give better results.  To do this, you have to paste the picture to a document (Word or PageMaker) or open in a photo-editing software (Adobe PhotoShop or GIMP), and print as an EPS file.  Without going into the technical details of what a PostScript printer does and what an EPS file contains, suffice to say that personally, I have had better print quality using this method.

I’ve seen pictures blown-up out of proportion to the file size and pixel resolution, and the resulting pixellation can be tolerable or not, depending on how far you are viewing it.  I sometimes think it’s such a waste to print a badly pixellated picture.

The best times to shoot a picture under the sun would be between 7:00 to 10:00 AM and between 4:00 and 5:00PM.  But even the afternoon sun would give a reddish tinge as the sun’s rays get filtered out leaving the long end of the spectrum.

The worst time would have to be from 11:00AM to 2:00PM when the sun is at it’s zenith.  The light would be too bright (harsh as some would call it) and streaming from the wrong angle, straight down.  This would leave the face highlighted in sharp stark shadows.

The best solution when forced to take pictures while the sun is high would be take pictures in the shade, or partial shade and lying down, with the camera above the subject.  But seriously, there are ways to do this.

Without any props, the best way to do this would be to set the aperture one or two stops down, to underexpose the shot, use the flash and to shoot the subject with the camera held upside down.  This is specially true if the shot was a portrait.  The reasons behind this are simple enough to understand once you get past the shooting with an upside down camera stage.

Since it’s too bright, setting the aperture a step or two down, will result in a darker (or toned down) picture.  (The reverse is normally done if the background is much brighter than the foreground or subject.) Otherwise, there would be no details captured of the subject.  To offset this, using the flash will illuminate the subject.  And while using the camera upside down, the flash unit would be below the lens, resulting in highlighting the dark areas from the harsh sunlight streaming from directly overhead.

Alternatively, if there was a choice of position, shooting from above the subject and the subject looking up. there’s no need for a flash.  But it would still be a good idea to underexpose a bit.  This is a judgment call depending on what the ground is, if it was sand or snow, set the aperture one or even two steps down.

A word of warning is needed at this point.  If you have a digital camera, check the white balance setting.  And while you’re at it, don’t use the automatic mode for balance setting.

With some camera accessories (like reflectors and filters) the job gets easier.  There’s no need to use a fancy reflector, just a screen you can use to reflect sunlight so that instead of streaming harshly from above, the light gets reflected from the sides.  This could be a white board or a board wrapped with aluminum foil.

The aperture would still have to be a step or two down, because there’s really too much light on the subject and some details would be lost.  You’ll have to try for a softer shot, preferably with a neutral or gray filter.

And if you’re working with a polarizer, it would be a good idea to shoot the subject at an upward angle, in profile, with the sky and clouds as background.  The picture would have to be shot with flash, still with the camera upside down.

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