Stone wall in Lebanon PA

While digging through my iphoto library, I found this picture of a stone wall I saw in a park in Lebanon PA a few years ago.  This was taken long before I had ever even thought of owning a Digital SLR camera,  with a Kodak point and shoot.  I remember taking a long walk through the park, and just thinking this wall was beautiful.  At that point in time, I didn’t take many pictures, but I always had my point and shoot in my pocket, and when I saw something that really struck my eye a frame would be made.

I carry my SLR with me just about everywhere too, but it is usually in a backpack, not a pocket, so it is far less accessible.  Sometimes, I wonder how many images like this one I miss because its so much more work to get the SLR ready to create an image than that old Kodak.  If the Kodak didn’t have a broken screen, maybe I would just carry both.  Do you carry a point and shoot when you don’t have your SLR?  Or do you just carry a Point and shoot all the time like I did back then?  Do you ever miss a shot because you just cant get the camera out of a backpack fast enough, and its just not convenient enough to always have it in your hand or in super easy reach?  And if you do miss those shots, does it bother you, or do you just shrug it off?

Church Silhouette 24mm f9 @ 1/250 ISO 400

Sometimes you fail to achieve what you were looking for, but come up with something else you love.  This past Sunday,  the sky was doing awesome ray of light stuff through the clouds. I have had my eye on this little church, hoping to make a cool frame for a while, so I decided to drive over and see if the sky would do something nice for me behind it.  The pretty rays of light were nowhere near where they needed to be to get the image I was hoping for, so I set up on a tripod  with the Sun directly behind the church, and started bracketing exposures, thinking maybe I would use them for my first crack at HDR.  When I got home…..  and started playing with the image,  I realized that the underexposed images were actually really neat, so I started playing with them.  I came up with this with a bit of a crop, and shifting the color temperature to gold a bit.  The final image was totally not what I was looking for, but I am defiantly happy with the result.  There is absolutely zero detail, but you just know exactly what you are looking at.  The lessons here are twofold:  first off,  even if you cant get the image you want, you might still make something that works.  Secondly,  bad weather might mean good photos.  It had been rainy and nasty, and these left over clouds when it got sunny totally make the picture.

Briarcrest in Snow +1.3ev

This week I would like to talk about shooting in Snow.  People often have trouble with this, but its actually very easy.  Shooting at the Beach poses several of the same issues, and the same solutions.

The basic issue is simple.  Digital cameras expect every scene to be average.  An average scene, when you average all colors, ends up being 18% grey.  If you let your camera do all of the thinking, and it doesnt know its shooting snow,  it will try to make the entire scene average… which will make the snow average.  Average being 18% grey is just disgusting and dingy.

There are two ways to deal with this.  If you have a point and shoot camera,  look for a setting for “Snow” or “Beach” and set your camera there.  If you have a DSLR,  dial in a Positive exposure value.  If you don’t know how to do this, check your manual…. its always easy, and fundamentally useful.

If you are really serious about getting the best shots,  Bracket your exposures.  Some cameras can do this automatically, or you can do it manually by just setting different Exposure compensation values.  Again, check your manual, and look for Auto Exposure Bracket.  Either way, the point is this:  Get 3-6 images at different exposure levels.  Then, when you get back to your laptop, pick the best one.  Don’t trust your camera,  bracket, bracket, bracket.  Then when you get home, decide what you like best.

Snowboarding EV +1.3

If you shoot DSLR, shoot raw.  This will give you more power to adjust later as well.  If you Cant bracket,  say for example, because you are trying to shoot kids instead of landscapes,  try to find a positive exposure compensation value that you think will work, and you can massage the raw file a bit later…. but definably don’t just go full auto.  As a base line,  try +1ev.  This might not be right on, but it will be much better than having your camera set to neutral.

It may also be a good idea to shoot a little wide if your are trying to get a moving subject, especially if you have a descent Megapixel sensor.  Its better to crop the picture than to miss the shot because you couldn’t keep up with your subject.  For the snowboarding shot, I actually had the camera on a tripod with a shutter release, so I could watch the subject better, and shoot when i knew he would be in the frame.

Today the sky was a wonderful Blue.  I used a Circular Polarizer filter to really bring it to life… and loved the results.  The blue sky with white clouds,  and the white snow played great off of each other.

Shutter speed was not an issue today, as it was quite sunny, and I was using a tripod.  I think I had my camera at iso 100, on a tripod for most of the still shots, and I increased to ISO400 to get my shutter speed into the 500 range for the snowboarder, while keeping a deep Depth of field with a high F-stop number.

The other camera setting to watch is White Balance.  As it was a bright sunny day, so I shot all of these images on Daylight white balance.  If it were cloudy, I may have needed to adjust as such.  If you shoot raw, you can tweak this after the fact, but I didnt find that I needed to to get the affects I wanted on my images today.

Next time it snows,  keep these tips in mind.  Dial in a Positive exposure value,  Check your White balance,  set your ISO as low as you can while getting the shutter speeds you need, and go have a great time!