Vacation photography tips

[LadyShea]

curses, or others, now that I have a good camera, and will be visiting some gorgeous places, I need some quick n dirty tips to get at least some shots to be proud of.

Tips for strong sunlight near water, dappled light through trees near water, and framing people shots so it's not photo after photo of cheesy "smile for the camera" crap.

Look at this! Can I take something awesome like this without years of study? Or can I learn a few rules to help?

[curses]

I'mma post a more detailed post when I get to work, but for now remember the No Shooting Into The Sun rule. In other words if the sun is directly behind your subject, move them (or you) so it isn't. Also Rule of Thirds in regards to shooting. Try to not shoot your subject dead center, try this:



http://www.digital-photography-schoo...rule-of-thirds

[curses]

And because I don't feel like editing the above, you can totally take something awesome like the above pic (which is an obvious exception to the Do Not Shoot Into The Sun rule).

Dappled sunlight in trees is nice, try putting you subject in one of the dapples. Shooting in the shade but out towards full sun is going to mean that your background is blown out, or overexposed. This can be fun but more often than not looks a bit crappy.

Learn to shoot in manual mode for the most control. There's a scale inside the camera (at the bottom when you look through the viewfinder) that tells you the degree that you're under/overexposed. In other modes the camera will make decisions for you and give you an image that you may not want. (in TV it may sacrifice depth of field for more light on the sensor so that your subject is sharp but the background is out of focus)

[godfry n. glad]

My approach is to take a shipload of pictures and then cull out all the crappy pix.

[Ensign Steve]

IANAP by any stretch of the imagination, but I think you're on the right track just by trying to get away from the "smile for the camera" approach. I found this thing on Pinterest one time, and I feel like it helps to just try unusual things and get a different perspective. They might not all be winners, but hey, it's digital. No worries about waste.

[ceptimus]

If you're photographing a seascape, or other water, double-check that you have the horizon exactly level in the viewfinder or on the camera screen. Otherwise you'll have to rotate the whole frame later in your photo editor - sloping water looks wrong!

It's easy to get into the habit of holding the camera just-off level. While water shots (and photos of buildings taken square on) show this up especially, even for normal landscape or portrait shots it's best to always check that the camera is level before you press the button.

[ceptimus]

Ignore the rule about having the sun on your back when shooting portraits. You get more interesting lighting that way, and it's usually best to avoid having your own shadow in the shot too.

Sometimes, when there are strong shadows, I deliberately get my shadow into the shot - it's a kind of 'I was there' shot - but one step back from using a helper or timer to actually include yourself in the shot. If you are going to include your shadow, it's best to get the whole thing - otherwise it just looks like a mistake.

[Vivisectus]

Remember, the reality of that shot you posted looked way different to the photographer. (S)he made sure to set everything right for the sky to show up nice and colourful, which means the rest was way underexposed. That doesn't matter, as the dark contrasting shapes were what makes the shot anyway. But (S)he could probably see the kid just fine.

Good photographers learn to see what the camera sees rather then the human eye. The difference is huge.

[Ymir's blood]

RE: The don't shoot into the sun rule. Is it ok to have the subject stand there for several hours until the sun moves?

[thedoc]

I go along with Godfry, shoot alot and don't expect every photo to be perfect. When you are shooting people (especially kids) Just shoot away, trying to pose them and have them hold it will drive you crazy. The advice about water is good but if you see something and need to get it in a hurry, better to get the shot and fix it later than try to get a prefect shot and miss an effect if the light is changing quickly.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Good photographers learn to see what the camera sees rather then the human eye. The difference is huge.

The camera sees what is really there, not what is wanted or expected.

[The Lone Ranger]

I'm assuming you have a digital camera, because who uses film anymore?

Do you have an SLR? If so, I'd suggest investing in a circular polarizer lens. If you're taking pictures over water on sunny days and/or landscape photos on sunny days, a circular polarizer is invaluable. Used properly, it will drastically reduce glare, and it will make the greens (of vegetation) and blues (of the sky) stand out much better. Again, what you see and what the camera sees is quite different. You can be taking a picture on a sunny Summer's day and thinking of how vivid the blues and greens are, only to get washed-out looking pictures back. A circular polarizer will help a lot under those circumstances.


If you have Photoshop or another such program that will allow you to "stitch" together photographs, you can make stunning photomontages. For instance, when I'm up in the mountains and want to get a good panoramic shot, I can simply take several photographs and then digitally stitch them together for spectacular results. [The latest version of Photoshop automatically corrects for differences in exposure between shots. If your software doesn't do this, make sure that you use the same f-stop and exposure time for each shot when taking pictures to be stitched together.]

This trick also works for closer views. For example, suppose you're standing at the base of a very large waterfall, and you can't get the entire thing into a single shot. No problem. Just take several overlapping pictures, making certain that between them, the entire waterfall is covered, and then stitch them together into one picture.

When you see a picture of a large waterfall, a tower, or other such object that was photographed from near the base, this is often how the photographer managed to get the entire thing into "one frame."


For myself, I don't pay as much attention to the rule of thirds as some do. For example, in the photograph of the bee and the flower above, I would have framed it so that the flower was entirely included, instead of "wasting" so much of the picture on blank space. Because, frankly, I don't care about the blank space. I'm much more interested in the bee and the flower than the "artistic" effect of the blank space "balancing" the composition. Tastes vary.



The really nice thing about digital photography is that with a high-capacity storage card, you can take literally thousands of photos on a single card. So I'm also a fan of the "take lots of photos and sort out the good ones later" philosophy. Accordingly, it's a good idea to have a backup storage card or two. When you don't have to worry about the fact that a single roll of film only allows 24 or 36 shots, you'll be amazed at how you soon discover that you're taking literally hundreds of photos where before you might have taken a couple dozen or so. And so you can fill up a card. I filled the wimpy little card that came with my camera while on vacation a few years ago -- and much to my dismay, at a time when I really wanted to take some more pictures. Now I have two 32-gigabyte cards in my camera bag. I could take more than 20,000 highest-resolution photos before filling them, so I'm no longer worried about running out of memory.

Cheers,

Michael

[ZEZOZE]

eta- it was bad advice.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

I'm assuming you have a digital camera, because who uses film anymore?

Do you have an SLR?

curses gave me a Canon digital SLR for Secret Santa this year

[The Lone Ranger]

Excellent! I have a Canon Rebel t3, and I just love it. It takes stunning photos, and is extremely versatile. I wouldn't go back to film now for anything.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Excellent! I have a Canon Rebel t3, and I just love it. It takes stunning photos, and is extremely versatile. I wouldn't go back to film now for anything.

Don't buy a camera from Walmart, you only get what you pay for.

[Ari]

You're right, don't buy a camera from walmart.
The DRebel series ("Kiss" in Japan) is an awesome line of cameras and I've been using them since the first digital Rebel, they are easily some of the best bang for your buck and lack the photographers tax that the more "professional" canon cameras include.

Shoot a lot!
If you have the space on your cards shoot RAW + JPG. The JPG gives you that instant gratification while the RAW allows you to fix minor errors (like white balance) in post. Remember you can control the ISO (film speed) as well, upping the iso and getting more noise is preferable to a shaky shot. A good rule of thumb is you can't hand hold below 1/lens-focal-length. So for a 100mm lens you generally want your shutter speed above 100.

Chimp! You have the ability to instantly look at the photo and if you didn't like it, shoot it again with corrections.
Don't Chimp! That being said, once you get used to things, turn the instant view off and only view after 10 or 20 shots and trust yourself, not only will you be surprised but you won't miss things looking down at your camera.

[LadyShea]

What can you tell me about bracketing?

[curses]

Bracketing is shooting underexposed by n, the correct exposure, and overexposing by n where n equals a distance between exposures you pick. (I like to do it by f stop since I hand hold and like a quicker shutter speed, YMMV) It gives you a few different choices of an original image, so if there's a highlight that's overexposed in the "correct" frame then you have another slightly darker image to go to. Likewise if the "correct" one is a bit too dark then you have an image with more light. Plus you can combine the three for tonal range.

Ed. note. I LOATHE most HDR (high dynamic range, can be achieved in Photoshop or other image editing software) but if it's done subtly than it can be nice.

[Ari]

Bracketing is useful if you aren't sure what exposure to use. The nice thing with digital is it doesn't waste film, although it's not nearly as useful as you can check the exposure on the camera. When in doubt underexpose slightly, darks can be pulled up later in post but completely white highlights are gone and can't be recovered, but for the most part your camera should be right on.

Speaking of exposure, remember your camera wants to turn everything gray, so a snowy scene needs to be overexposed to actually show white and something all black needs to be underexposed to stay black.

[Vivisectus]

Bracketing is also fun for messing around with in Photoshop. Shoot a landscape bracketed, and you can use the underexposed bit to get a nice, blue-looking sky, and the regular or overexposed bit to get the actual landscape nice and brightly coloured. Just put one over the other and use a mask layer to turn the underlying bits you want transparent.

[LadyShea]

I need to learn to use the camera more gooder....I gots lots of reading to do.

I got some nice shots, but nothing super special.