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Monday, August 11, 2008

LANDSCAPE AND SEASCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY

Before you go out shooting seascape and landscape scenes, here are a few of the ways you can prevent a tilting horizon line or shoreline.
  • Use a tripod. It helps keep your camera steady so you can compose your picture more precisely.
  • A bubble level often tips you off to any tilting. Some tripods come equipped with a level; otherwise, an add-on accessory is available that slips onto the camera's flash shoe. But remember: Such a bubble is NOT foolproof (see next item).
  • Trust your eye: On occasion, the horizon may not look right, even though the camera appears perfectly level ... and even though the bubble level confirms it. In those cases, you may need to actually slant the camera ever so slightly in order to keep the image visually level.
  • After composing your shot, perform this last-minute task: Check the viewfinder to see if things look "right." Specifically: Is there the same amount of sky AND the same amount of land (or sea) on each side of the picture frame
  • But remember that these tips aren't always right,because you may intentionally want to have some angle on the photo.
    Some other tips to take breathtaking landscape photos.
    1. Early morning and late evening are the best times for shooting landscapes. This is because the low angle of the Sun picks out shadows and reveals textures.
    2. The best landscapes are rarely found at the side of the road. So be prepared to go for a trek with a map or a GSP unit in an effort to seek out the most interesting locations.
    3. Wide angle lenses are commonly used for landscapes because they will allow you to include more in the frame and open up prespectiv. A wide-angle zoom lens gives you more latitude in framing the scene and cropping out distracting features.
    4. Whenever possible, place something of interest in the foreground of the shot to create a sense of depth. At the same time, ensure that you use a small aperture to keep everything in focus.
    5. You should always have your tripod with you to prevent camera shakes on the shoots
    6. Look out for scenes that will let you crop the top and bottom of the image to produce a more dramatic "letterbox" panoramic composition.
    7. Use a polarizing filter to darken the sky and saturate the colors in the landscape (this is the one must-have filter for landscape photographers).
    8. Use color correction filters to change the color of light on a landscape. These filters can either warm up the landscape or cool it down, depending on the filter color used. In this image, a sepia graduated filter was used upside-down to color the foreground rocks only.
    9. Try using a soft focus filter to add an ethereal quality to the scene. These filters blur the bright areas of a scene into the shadows to give the image a glow.
    10. Use the Hyperfocal Distaqnce to obtain the fastest shutter speed with greatest depth of field.Hyperfocal focusing allows you to get everything sharp, from things close up to the camera to those far away. It's more reliable than just setting the focus at infinity. You will need a camera that allows manual focusing though.
    11. If you use a digital camera, and your camera is capable of it, shoot RAW images rather than JPGs. The RAWs will take up more room on your memory card but there's no in-camera processing done on the image (as there is for JPGs). RAW images will give you greater latitude for image manipulation (using Adobe Photoshop,Photoshop Elements,Paint Shop Pro or some other image manipulation package).
    12. Be original! Develop your own style and unique vision. Any competent photographer can duplicate others' work. Truly great photographers produce unique images. Avoid cliche photography. Go for non-standard viewpoints, say from ground-level rather than eye-level. Imagine the world as seen from an animal's viewpoint rather than a human's!

    2 comments:

    Generic Viagra said...
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    Elliott Broidy said...

    GORGEOUS