Reflections, Texas Peace Officers’ Memorial, Austin, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

I had some time free between two morning commitments downtown so, as I usually do, I headed over towards the Texas State Capitol with the camera.

I’ve visited the Texas Peace Officers’ Memorial a couple of times before but failed to get any really good pictures of it. It’s tucked away in the shadow of a large building at the back of the complex and, as far as I can see, never gets any direct light. Knowing this and also realising that the morning sun would light the dome nicely for reflections on the monument, I went back today and was treated to a wonderful show. From particular positions, due to the way the memorial curves and the angles of the marble facets, I could capture 3 or 4 reflections of the dome in a single frame. I’ve not processed all the pictures yet but this one popped out in my initial edit and shows the effect pretty well,

During this walk, I also took several more angles of the huge Lone Star outside the Texas State History Museum and some abstracts at the Blanton Museum of Art. Expect to see these popping up over the next few weeks too.

Aspen Abstract, Duck Creek, Utah, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

I’ve been back from my Utah/California/Nevada photography trip for 3 days now so figured it was about time I post a wrap-up containing some of the lessons I learned while shooting with Raul Touzon last week. Overall, the trip was a whirlwind of 10 to 12 hour shooting days covering 1800 miles with 5 photographers (Raul, myself, Enrique, David and Wayne). I shot something over 3000 exposures and will be editing for weeks.

Think Outside The Box

Watching Raul work was inspirational and sobering at the same time. I’m completely convinced that he could make great pictures inside an empty, white room. While I was off shooting the tourist sites of Zion and Bryce Canyon, he was making amazing images of snowbanks and traffic signs. Thinking outside the box doesn’t even begin to describe the level of creativity I saw last week and this definitely pushed me to stop thinking postcard snaps and start looking for something different to shoot.

It’s the Exposure Dummy

I’ve been shooting a lot of HDR for the last couple of years and it’s definitely made me sloppy in my exposure choices. For HDR, as long as I bracket widely enough to get all the highlights and as much of the shadow detail as possible, it doesn’t really matter if any one image has correct exposure for particular pieces of the scene – the HDR processing will determine the light level and the tone mapping will give me a usable image. As a result, I’ve not tended to think too carefully about the exposure I want for given areas of the scene other than making sure that I don’t clip my highlights when I’m not shooting for HDR. This is a big mistake.

Talking to Raul and doing some bracketing experimentation, I realised (once again) that a half stop over or underexposure really can make a huge difference in the image and that it’s far better to get the exposure right in the camera than put up with something that is slightly off and try to fix it later in Lightroom.

Although I shot brackets for HDR on Monday, I pretty much stopped for the rest of the week and concentrated on back-to-basics, single frame photography. I still bracketed a great deal but this time I was shifting half a stop between exposures looking for exactly the right place for the scene rather than trying to capture the whole dynamic range as I would for HDR.

Even when doing HDR in future, I will be adopting the same approach – get the center exposure dead on for the most interesting area of the image then bracket around this. When doing exposure fusion, I will be even more careful, making sure that the individual shots are exposed such that each important area in the image is correctly exposed in at least one of the constituent images that are to be merged.

No doubt you are thinking that this is all pretty obvious and I suppose it is but, realistically, how often do you bracket half stops looking for the perfect exposure these days? I bet I’m not the only one who is lazy here.

Manual Really Is Easier

I ate crow last week on the whole Aperture Priority vs. Manual debate then had second thoughts when I realised that the “new” method Raul proposed was exactly what I had been doing 25 years ago on my 35mm cameras. Shooting manual for the rest of the week, however, I am now 100% convinced that it is the mode to use when shooting landscapes and in situations where you have time to set up a shot and shoot a few brackets. With aperture and shutter speed dials easily accessible with one hand, changing the exposure is really quick and easy in manual mode allowing very quick bracketing without the need for any double button pressing (as in the exposure compensation case) or menu manipulation. Give it a shot and see what I mean.

See The Light – Get Up Early

I knew this already too but often failed to put it into practice. We concentrated our shooting around sunrise and sunset, picking locations based on the sun angle so that we could get the best possible light for our shots. This really does make a huge difference. Light at either end of the day is softer and warmer, and landscape textures really pop due to the lower angle of the sun.

One of the best parts of the trip was early in the week when we climbed a hill in Zion National Park and spent an hour watching the sun go down and the light changing on the cliffs on the opposite side of the valley. Treat yourself to a lazy sunset hour somewhere and really look at what the light does. I bet you’ll like it.

Take The Time You Need

One of the huge pluses of taking a photography-specific trip is the obvious fact that you get to take time to take the pictures you want. If you need to hang around 10 or 15 minutes for a break in the clouds, you can (unless it’s at Duck Creek and everyone else is in the van, but that’s another story). Being able to plan where to shoot and when to shoot it makes a big difference in the quality of your pictures and having the flexibility to wait and take 20 or30 shots over a period of 30 minutes is a great luxury.

Sharpness Isn’t Everything

I’m a huge fan of super-crisp images and normally get cheesed off if I can’t count the bricks on a building 100 yards away or the leaves on each tree in a forest. It is, however, perfectly acceptable to throw sharpness out the window (so to speak) if the creative result is appealing. The image at the top of this post is an example – I moved the camera during the exposure to give a streaked, abstract effect. When it comes down to it, if the result is pleasing to the viewer, it works.

Wide Angle Shots Without A Wide Angle Lens

So you want to take a picture of an amazing vista like Bryce Canyon but you don’t want to do it with your horribly unsharp 10mm lens? (Yes, I know I said sharpness isn’t everything but just forget that for a minute or two). Why not use your lovely sharp lens and shoot a panorama instead? Photoshop CS4’s panorama stitching is so good that I can seldom find the joins in a stitched landscape shot. Remember to switch to manual focus and manual exposure so that each picture in the panorama doesn’t suffer from focus or exposure differences then take as many shots as needed to capture the whole scene. Remember, too, that a panorama doesn’t need to be just a single row of pictures – you can shoot an array say 3×2 or 3×3 to cover the scene and Photoshop will still stitch it beautifully.

Dramatic Outdoor Flash Portraits

I’ve been wondering for a while how to take those wonderful outdoor portraits where the background is underexposed by a couple of stops and the subject is lit by flash. Based on some studio portraiture lectures where I was told that shutter speed controls ambient light and aperture controls the amount that the flash contributes, I had assumed that I needed a wide aperture and short shutter speed to make this work (using a flash that can handle high speed sync, of course). My attempts at doing this, however, had failed miserably. It turns out, however, that the opposite is true for these types of picture. Set the aperture to something really small like f/22 and set the exposure so that you take a 2 stop underexposed image of your background. This will likely give you a shutter speed of around 1/250 or 1/125 which, helpfully enough, is at or below your flash sync speed. Now set the flash to half or quarter power, hold it about 3 feet from your subject and fire off a frame. If it looks good, you’re done. If not, move the flash forwards or backwards to change the amount of light it dumps on your subject until you get it just right.

It’s More Fun With Friends

Aside from the great photography opportunities, one of the highlights of this trip was the fact that I was traveling with other avid photographers. We could spend the whole week geeking over gear and doing things photographic, exchanging hints and tips and comparing composition. It was an absolute blast and I would encourage other photographers to get social and shoot in company since it definitely enhances the experience for me.

Ice Crystals on Pine Tree, Bryce Canyon National Park, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

I was definitely optimistic in adding the day number to my last post. I fully intended posting every day but ended up selfishly editing pictures instead. I suspect there won’t be time for a long post tonight either given that we have a 3am (yes, you read that correctly) tomorrow morning so here’s a potted history of the last few days.

We spent Tuesday in Zion venturing into the Kolob Terrace area where the snow was deep and the views amazing. In the afternoon we again headed through the tunnel to take some sunset shots but were foiled by clouds.

On Wednesday, we had a leisurely drive to Bryce Canyon , stopping frequently along the way as a view appealed to us. We got to Bryce in plenty of time for afternoon photography, though. The park is under several feet of snow making the views absolutely superb but closing all the trails from the rim into the canyon. Nevertheless, a good photographic time was had by all and we continued checking out viewpoints and roadside locations on Thursday. A passing snowstorm offered some great clouds for last night’s sunset shoot.

Given the trail closures, we decided to switch locations for Saturday and take a trip to Death Valley, using Las Vegas as our base (hence the 3am call – it’s a 3 hour drive from Vegas to Death Valley and sunrise is at 6:35am tomorrow). Our morning so far has been spent driving slowly across route 14 in Utah, stopping frequently for shots of snowfields, Aspen, iced trees and fog – great fun but very cold!

Morning, Zion National Park, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

I posted my confessional entry earlier but reckoned that I should probably write something more about our day. In short, it was an amazing day – I shot about 600 exposures, filling an 8GB SDCard in a single day for the first time ever, and marveled at some of the most awe-inspiring scenery I have ever seen.

The five of us in the group started early at 6:40am to catch sunrise on the peaks behind the Zion Visitor Center. We set up in the semi-darkness and were in place for the 7:30am event but, unfortunately, cloud obscured the sun until after it had given up its magical, golden light. Despite missing the hoped-for treat, the clouds cleared about half an hour later and we got a good collection of nicely lit shots of the amazing view. This one is an HDR generated from 3 exposures.

After our early morning shoot, we headed up to Canyon Junction and spent some time around the bridge over the river before heading up the Zion – Mt. Carmel Highway, through the tunnel and up to Checkerboard Mesa where we turned round and worked our way slowly back stopping half a dozen times when we saw views requiring attention. By the time we got back down to the bridge it was time for a very late breakfast before we headed up to the top of the park road and shot more pictures on the trail that ultimately heads to the Narrows.

We headed off at about 3pm to find a spot to shoot the sunset and ended up just outside the park in Springdale where we tried various side roads until we found one which took us to the base of a suitable hill from which we could get a panoramic view of the lower portion of the valley. The three of us who scrambled our way up the hill spent a wonderful 90 minutes or so watching the light change on the opposite rock faces and shooting huge panoramas of the vista. It was absolutely magical!

Tomorrow, more of the same – does it get much better than this?

Zion Canyon Panorama, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

Well, I admit it – I was hopelessly wrong. OK, not hopelessly wrong but wrong enough that I need to confess on the blog and provide some information that contradicts my earlier (and rather popular) post claiming that I’m happy to keep shooting in aperture priority and wondering why anyone would ever shoot manual when cameras these days have so many cool automatic exposure modes to help you out.

I should provide one caveat. My original assertion about shooting manual being a more complex process than shooting aperture priority was based on my experiences using a manual 35mm SLR back in the 80s. Having spent some time discussing the issue with Raul Touzon while sitting on top of a hill waiting for sunset (during which the above panorama was taken), I’ve now been introduced to a manual method for DSLR users and am definitely convinced that this is the way to go when shooting digital since it does, indeed, use a lot less brainpower and a lot less button pushing than my “aperture priority + exposure compensation” approach.

Raul’s method is as follows.

1. Set your camera on centre weighted metering.
2. Set the aperture you want to use (this may well not change from shot-to-shot so this step may not be required).
3. Take a reading from the area of the scene containing the brightest highlight you want to capture.
4. Rotate your shutter speed dial to choose the correct exposure as suggested by the meter.
5. Increase your shutter speed by one half stop (one click of the dial if you camera is set to work in half stops rather than thirds of a stop) to set your manual exposure for half a stop below what the meter suggests.

Since you will typically be using a fixed aperture (to control depth of field), this approach means you only have to spin one camera dial after pressing the shutter half way. Change the shutter speed until the internal meter reckons the exposure is correct then give it one extra click for your half stop underexposure and voila, you’re done.

This seemed too simple to me but trying it today, it worked beautifully. The main point of this approach is that you prevent yourself from blowing out the important highlights and ensure that you gather as much information from the scene as possible.

As a side benefit of this approach, Raul also asserts that you won’t ever need to chimp the highlight or histogram displays again (at least, not unless you are doing things like HDR but that’s a whole other discussion that we have not had yet).

I was pretty skeptical when I heard this but it really does work beautifully. Give it a shot and see what you think.

Updated 2/18/10: After another day of shooting in manual, I’ve realised that this is exactly the same method as I used to use on my Praktica MTL-3 in the 1980s except for automatically dialing in a half stop of underexposure. The half stop is also not fixed since you still need to take into account the overall brightness of the scene and dial in different adjustments as a result. In snow, yesterday, for example, I was typically dialing in a stop of two of overexposure since the meter on its own would tend to underexpose the bright scene.

Based on this, I will be using manual mode moving forward in any situation where I have the time to set up a shot – any landscape, architecture or still life shoots, for example – and will stick to aperture priority in situations where I need to be able to shoot without thinking (and am happy to suffer the consequences of not adjusting the exposure to compensate for bright or dark scenes) – parties, pictures of the kids, etc.

Paris, Las Vegas, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

I’m sitting in a lovely, new Best Western hotel at the entrance to Zion Canyon in Utah having arrived here about 30 minutes ago with 4 other photographers all eager to spend a week shooting landscapes in what must surely be one of the most spectacular places in North America. Although the real workshop doesn’t start until tomorrow, I’ve already had a full day of photography thanks to the fact that I arrived at our meeting point, Las Vegas, a day early due to the non-availability of frequent flyer tickets today.

I had a great time taking pictures of some of the hotels and casinos on The Strip for about 7 hours yesterday afternoon at the end of which time, I had one of those amazing “small world” coincidences when my younger brother’s best friend from Lanark Grammar School bumped into me outside the Flamingo. I’d not seen Malcolm Garden in about 20 years so, of course, we had to go and have a beer. The beer multiplied and ended up being 5 beers and a very good steak dinner so I didn’t get a change to process any images last night.

One side effect of the beer and dinner (and, probably also the 2 hour time difference) was that I was wide awake at 4:40am so, after a couple of Tylenol, I got several photos processed this morning. The one shown here was taken outside Paris (as if you couldn’t guess that) just after sunset. It’s a combination of 3 different exposures, processed to look completely natural and I’m very happy with the result.

There are plenty more images to come so check back since I expect I’ll be posting images from this trip for quite some time.

In the past, flash was something that I considered a necessary evil – a nasty, hard, blue light that you fired at people if the ambient light was horrid and yet you just had to get a picture. After reading both of Joe McNally’s excellent books and going through the tutorials on David Hobby’s Strobist site, however, I’ve decided that this needn’t be the case and have become rather keen to learn a lot more about using flash properly. Couple this with my goal of taking more people pictures and no doubt you will see where I’m going – time to learn some studio portraiture.

While I’ve been using fill flash quite a lot recently (isn’t high speed sync fabulous!), I’ve not yet done much work where flash is the main light source. To try this out, I have a project in mind but, although I have the lighting gear required, I didn’t have a decent background. For the project, I want a solid white background but the price of the required stands and the background itself had put me off. To work around this, I had been playing with the idea of using a couple of lightstands, a bedsheet and wire or a pole to hang it from but this didn’t really seem a particularly tenable solution. Late last week, however, the situation changed.

While reading some blog or other (I can’t find the link now that I am looking for it, of course), I noticed a mention of a great bargain background stand available from Amazon. At $109 for two Ravelli stands, a 12 foot crossbar and both black and white 10′x20′ backdrops, the price was about 1/3 of other products I had seen and was definitely worth a look.

I expected a fairly cheaply made product but what arrived today has very pleasantly surprised me. The stands are study and apparently well made. They come in a very solid carrying case made of thick nylon with metal zips, no less! The backcloths are large, hemmed and pocketed and seem up to the job. The only downside I’ve seen so far is that the stands are rather larger than I had visualised – perhaps I’ll save them to use in a church hall rather than our front room?

Now I have no excuse not to take some studio portraits and put my reading to use. I’ll start practicing once I get back from next week’s trip so look out for some portraits in the not too distant future.

Bryce Canyon, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

My Christmas present this year (or last year, I suppose) from my wonderful wife is a 1 week photo expedition to Zion and Bryce Canyon. I’ll be hitting the trail this Saturday to spend next week shooting the amazing landscapes of southern Utah with National Geographic photographer Raul Touzon and 5 other photographers. How much fun is that going to be?

I’ve been to Bryce once before when I was 21 and just about to start work. I spent less than a day there but exhausted my supply of Fujichrome 100 and had to switch to Kodachrome 64, the only slide film that I could find locally. I think I was working with only 2 lenses at the time (a 50mm f/1.8 and a 28mm f/2.8 on my Minolta X-700). Packing for this trip, things are a bit different – I have 3 cameras (the D90, a Canon Powershot G9 for backup and an IR-converted G9), enough SDCards to store about 2000 images, a laptop and 500GB backup drive and 5 of my 8 lenses (the 70-200mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2.0 and 90mm f/2.8 macro are staying at home). Hopefully this should cover all possibilities and allow me to get the kind of images I would really love to capture in these parks.

Things may be a bit quiet for the next week or so but look out for some landscapes when I get back.

Wells Fargo Tower, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

The nice folks over at HDRSoft, the makers of my HDR software of choice, Photomatix Pro, have signed me up for their affiliate program. This is a win-win-win arrangement as far as I can see since all parties benefit – you get a discount, HDRSoft get a sale and I get a commission. I’ve seen several others advertising HDRSoft discount codes but didn’t realise before this week that the arrangement involved a seller commission. In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I thought it would be right to mention this.

If you are buying a copy of Photomatix and use the coupon code “DaveWilson” when you are checking out, you will receive a 15% discount on the purchase, and I will thank you very much.

Despite the mutually beneficial arrangement, I should point out that I have been a huge fan of this software for several years now and, as regular readers will know, have pretty much been acting as an HDRSoft salesman for most of this time!

I spent the early part of this afternoon trying to get Nikki’s minivan out of an area of mud that it had got stuck in last night while at a school event for Cameron. The event was a star party organised by one of our neighbours, Mike Reid. Oddly enough, I wasn’t there since Cameron was sick but, after releasing the car, Mike kindly showed me his observatory and some of the images he’s captured using it. I was blown away that you could capture that kind of image with such a relatively small telescope. He’s even managed to capture exoplanet transits using the same gear!

I’ve long been impressed by astrophotography but today’s visit was a real eye-opener and I encourage you to take a look at the amazing images that Mike has captured.