Photo Tips from a Pro, cont'd

Anchor Wide Shots

Whether you get very close or not, using wide-angle lenses helps involve your viewer with your subject, creating a sense of place by taking advantage of these lenses’ large depths of field, or the amount of your photograph that appears to be in focus. For example, if you focus your camera on a tulip, not only will the tulip be in focus, but part of the scene in front of the tulip and behind the tulip will also appear to be in focus. This range of apparent sharpness is the depth of field of the image. You get more depth of field with wide-angle lenses and less with telephoto lenses.

You also get more depth of field with smaller apertures like F16 than with larger apertures like F4. (The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens that allows light to pass through to your camera’s sensor. The size of this opening is designated by an F-number. To confuse matters, the smaller the F-number, the larger the lens opening. So F4 is actually bigger than F16.)

Wide-angle shots work best if they have a strong fore­ground feature as well as an interesting background. When you include a foreground feature that “anchors” the scene and use a small aperture to maximize depth of field, your viewers will feel like they were standing there with you when you shot the photo. Even small digital point-and-shoots let you choose your own aperture setting if you want (read your man­ual if you want to learn the specifics for your camera–I highly recommend this!). However, if you want to let the camera do most of the thinking, see if your camera has a “landscape” shooting mode (most do), which will basically do its best to maximize depth-of-field for you.

Shoot Sharp

Nothing detracts from the beauty of a photo more than blurry subject matter (unless of course you are shooting fast action and want it to look blurry). I almost always shoot with a tripod in order to minimize camera shake, and if you are shoot­ing in the forest on overcast days and using wide-angle lenses at small apertures, you will probably be forced to use a tripod because of the necessity to shoot with slow shutter speeds. (For forest scenes, I often shoot exposures of a minute or longer—try hand-holding that!) I also use a cable release and the mirror lock-up feature on my camera to further reduce camera shake when shooting with a tripod. If you aren’t using a tripod, try to use a shutter speed of at least 1/60 second or faster. You can also try to brace the camera against your body while leaning against a tree or rest your camera on a rock or your pack–anything to add some stability.

Also, shoot with the lowest ISO setting on your camera to reduce the amount of “noise”–unwanted specks of light or graininess–in your image. Whether you are using a film camera or a digital one, the higher the ISO rating, the more sensitive the film or digital sensor is to light, which allows you to use faster shutter speeds. With a digital sensor, that higher light sensitivity is achieved by running more electricity through the sensor at ex­posure time. All those extra electrons can create “noise” in your photos, especially in the shadow areas. Having less noise in an image allows you to make bigger enlargements, which is why it is preferable to use the lowest ISO setting available to you.

Polarize

Most casual photographers don’t want to be bothered with carrying extra gear, but if you are going to add one acces­sory to your camera bag, I recommend a polarizing filter. Fil­ters are thin pieces of colored or toned glass that screw onto the front of a lens. Most people use a polarizer as a way to darken blue skies in their landscape shots, but I find this use to be less important than the polarizer’s ability to reduce or eliminate the reflections on water and foliage. If you are finding that your fall foliage, waterfall, and forest scene photos seem to be less col­orful than what you remember, try using a polarizer. Water and foliage (whether wet or dry) reflect the blue or white light from the sky. The glare from these reflections prevents much of the true color of the leaves (or the rocks under the water) from recording in your photo. A polar­izer will let these colors through, giving your photo that colorful look you want. Unfortunately, this is the one tip that owners of point-and-shoot cameras won’t be able to follow as filter makers don’t make filters that fit the tiny lenses on smaller cameras. If you use one of these smaller cameras and are in­tent on “polarizing,” you can buy a filter that fits a larger camera and just hold it in front of the lens while you shoot your photos.

Be Persistent and Practice

Memorizing and applying the above tips should help you create more memorable photographs while on fu­ture adventures, but to succeed on a consistent basis you need to practice these techniques so that they are sec­ond nature. Learn how to use a wide-angle lens or polarizer in your backyard, so when you are on that once-in-a-lifetime hike or rafting trip, you will nail the shot when the conditions are perfect. Also, be persistent. Wait for the right moment to press the shutter, and return to favorite places when the light is ideal. Do this and your odds of getting compelling photos will increase, and instead of feeling disappointment when you download photos you will be furiously emailing your brilliant work to everyone you know.

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