John Fletcher is a professional photographer living in Asheville. His work has appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times, the Raleigh News and Observer and elsewhere. With 20 years of photographic experience, John uses his photography to expresses the experiences he has had in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond.
John has agreed to share some of his digital photography secrets with Asheville visitors through this special to the CVB. Visitors can purchase John’s prints at The Asheville Shop
We have all experienced the excitement of returning home after an extraordinary adventure with our cameras only to find the photos we thought would be spectacular are instead flat, confusing, or even boring. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned during my 20 years of photographing in hopes that you can more fully enjoy the terrific medium of digital photography.
Contrary to popular believe, digital photography is neither superior nor inferior to traditional photography. In fact, the fundamentals are the same with each. Digital medium have a number of advantages. You can use a camera’s view screen to check exposures, they enable you to work in a digital darkroom and control the contrast of color images. Digital photography also gives you the ability to make high-quality prints in your own living-room.
Landscape Shooting Tips
Fall Color
Conveying the feel of “fall color in the mountains” is actually quite challenging. Many circumstances such as the leaf color, lighting, and your composition must come together at the right time in order to pull this off effectively, so be patient. Strong colors are usually found in pockets along the mountainsides.
Notice how light falls on the different slopes of the mountains. Direct sunlight works well with fall color, and most of the time on clear days you can find a slope with dramatic lighting and shadows.
The leaves seem to emit an inner glow when lit from behind, and looking up through the branches and playing them off of the sky is also fun and colorful.
You can also use the brightness/contrast controls on your photo editing program to pop the colors if they are more flat than you anticipated.
Tip: I like to fill most of the frame with a couple of colorful trees or branches, then let the mountains recede in the background of the photo. Even if those mountains have little or no color, the effect is nice.
Dealing With The Haze
Ironically, the beautiful blue haze that characterizes these mountains often makes for tedious photographing.
At sunrise and sunset, atmospheric haze can bend and reflect light into almost any imaginable color or quality, and this can be quite dramatic. During the middle of the day, however, I shy away from vista shots and concentrate instead on close subjects such as trees or the terrain.
Sometimes, however, exploiting the haze yields interesting results.
Ultraviolet or polarizing filters can help, and working with the brightness/contrast tools in an editing program like Photoshop can diminish the effects of haze greatly.
Adjusting Exposure
Exposure refers to how much light enters the camera and strikes the digital sensor or film. An ‘automatic’ camera determines exposure by averaging the light and dark areas of a scene. This method usually works for evenly lit scenes.
When shooting landscapes, especially vista shots, we will often have to choose a balance between exposing for the sky or exposing for the land. Basically, whatever fills most of your frame is what the ‘automatic’ camera will attempt to expose, so one way of adjusting your exposure is to change how much of the frame is filled with exceptionally bright or dark areas – especially the sky.
Another way of making an image lighter or darker while using an ‘automatic’ mode is to use a common camera feature called ‘exposure compensation.’ It looks like this: (-2...-1...0...+1...+2). Setting your camera to one of the negative numbers will make exposures darker, and using the positive numbers will render a lighter photo than the camera would ‘normally’ make.
Using The View Screen
The view screen can be a fantastic tool for a couple of reasons. Not only does it help with pre-visualizing a photo, but it lets you know when you must make exposure adjustments.
Tip: The first several shots that you take of any scene should just be test exposures. Check your exposures frequently with the view screen, and adjust the lightness or darkness of the exposure accordingly.
A Note About Composition
Instead of a point-and-shoot mentality of “taking photos,” try thinking in terms of filling a frame with elements, such as shapes or objects, to make a composition or design. A beautiful photo can be made anywhere, anytime, with any subject. There are certain “rules of composition” that help us do this.
These rules, or concepts, have been used by artists throughout history, and they are sometimes referred to as: Repetition, Symmetry, Asymmetry, The Rule of Thirds, Perspective, Balance, Line, Rhythm, and Texture. These rules are also fun to break.
Tip: Keep it simple…don’t include too much in the frame, which can lead to confusion.
Horizons
Tip: When shooting vistas, experiment with the sky-to-land ratio within your frame. Try putting the horizon line at different levels in the frame. Sometimes the sky is more interesting than the landscape and vice-versa.
Sunsets
Tip: When shooting sunsets, take time to look around. There’s usually many interesting things happening besides the ball of fire in the sky.
Weather
Don’t be afraid of the weather. Although a bit of sunlight can be helpful with shooting fall colors, clouds and fog can add mood and drama to your photos. Clouds also diffuse and soften the light. On a partly cloudy day, the shadows of clouds can be seen on the mountains and make for interesting photographs.
Tip: In my opinion, the absolute best time to shoot landscapes is when a storm system is moving-out. Almost all of the photos on my Web site were made in “inclement” weather.
Memory Cards
They hold lots and lots of photos. I would get at least a 512MB and preferably a 1GB card.
Tip: Shoot a lot. Work the angles. Over shoot. You’ll appreciate it when you edit your pictures on the computer. A few frames will really stand out for some reason, and the difference between those pictures and the others could be the slightest change in light or camera angle.
Optical vs. Digital Zoom
The optical zoom is the true range of focal lengths of your lens. The digital zoom feature just keeps cropping and cropping the image to give a zoom effect, and the result is lousy image quality. Turn off the digital zoom feature, if possible.
Learn How To Use A Zoom Lens Creatively
Long lenses aren’t just used to get close. Here’s a quick lesson you can do anywhere: Without using your zoom feature, shoot a subject about three feet away from the camera and make note of exactly how it fills the frame. Now zoom to your longest focal length and walk back until you can fill the frame in a similar manner. Shoot the subject again and compare the two pictures. Notice how the perspective changes.
Editing Software
To make the most of digital photography, invest in a decent digital imaging program like Photoshop. Remember that like traditional photography, once you’ve made the initial exposure with your camera, you are only partially done. Get a photo editing program that allows you to fully adjust the image in terms of cropping, color, brightness, contrast, image size, dodging, burning, etc…Like working in a darkroom, this can be as fun and creative as making the initial exposure with your camera.
Manual Mode
Shooting manually involves making up to three adjustments on your camera: 1.) selecting the ISO or “film speed,” 2.) adjusting the aperture (or f/stop), and 3.) selecting the shutter speed.
You can take comfort in knowing that these are the ONLY adjustments that can be made on ANY camera, besides focus, of course. Understand the relationship between these three adjustments and you are well on your way to becoming a master photographer.
Only through understanding how to make exposures manually can you appreciate or fully utilize any of the other modes.
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