Digital Photo Tip: Expand Space by Going Wide

Posted on August, 2015 by Mark Turner

A wide-angle lens emphasizes Western Anemone seedheads along the trail to Mount Larrabee. The lens was only a foot or so from the foregound subject.

One of the strengths of compact cameras, and even cell phone cameras, is their ability to shoot wide-angle close-ups. These little cameras focus closest at their widest zoom setting. That seems counter-intuitive but it’s the way they work. So take advantage of this by going close to your subject, but leaving some space around it to show a hint of the environment, too. It’s a great technique for wildflowers, garden flowers, and other nature-type subjects, but not so good for people because the exaggerated effect that can make your sweetie’s face look fat and her nose like Pinocchio. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Use Aperture to Control Depth of Field

Posted on July, 2015 by Mark Turner

One of the most powerful creative tools photographers have at their disposal is choosing which parts of a photo should be sharp and which parts should be soft. This sharp/soft contrast is a very good way to set a subject apart from the background. We call this depth of field because we’re controlling apparent sharpness from close to the lens to the far distance.

In the pair of landscape photos above, one was made at the relatively wide aperture of f/5 (left side of the slider)and the other stopped down to f/16 (right side). Notice the difference in sharpness in the foreground flowers. My focus point was on distant Mount Baker in both versions. These images were made with my lens at 70mm, a short telephoto. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Organizing Chaos

Posted on May, 2015 by Mark Turner

Dad's Garden — Something must have caught my eye here, but it isn’t evident.

Have you ever come back from a photo excursion, looked at one of your pictures and wondered, “What was I seeing when I snapped that photo?” My mother even saved some of my early “what’s that?” pictures, like the one above. I must have seen something interesting in that early spring messy corner of my dad’s garden but it sure didn’t come across in the picture. I don’t know why she didn’t toss those clunkers, because that’s what she should have done and what I do today. (I was 7 when I took that picture in 1961.)

Sometimes it’s downright hard to find the photograph in a chaotic scene. I’ll feel there’s something interesting in there somewhere, but it’s not always obvious how to convey what I’m seeing or feeling in the frame. Slowing down and really looking for the story is a good first step.

A few days ago I took a walk through our woods with my camera. Spring growth was fresh and green, the early morning light was soft, and I felt engaged with the forest. I wanted to capture how the woods looked and felt to me. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Shoot for Variety

Posted on April, 2015 by Mark Turner

Hawaiian Tree Ferns, photographed from above and a distance.

One of the exercises I give to all of my photo class students is to find a subject and photograph it from different viewpoints. The idea is to expand creativity and explore new ways of seeing a subject. You can apply this concept to almost anything you’re photographing.

Last month Natalie and I spent a week vacationing on the wet side of the Big Island of Hawaii. The weather was mostly overcast, with periods of heavy rain, not the brilliant sun most people think of for Hawaii. We spent a lot of our time exploring for plants and birds, including a couple of days at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Almost all the plants we saw were new to us. A lot of them blended together — mid-sized broadleaf evergreen shrubs and small trees that didn’t have showy flowers. But a few stood out and I made several photos of them with my pocket camera. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Clean Up the Frame

Posted on February, 2015 by Mark Turner

Little details matter when you want to set your pictures apart from the masses. You don’t want anything to intrude into the frame that shouldn’t be there. Your viewer’s attention should go to whatever it is you’re photographing, without distracting stuff getting in the way. I call it “cleaning up the frame.” Here are five ways to clean up your photos before you press the shutter button.

What’s that growing out of your head?

Model with 1959 Corvette — Note the pole coming from the model’s head in the photo on the left. Moving the camera to the right fixed the problem.

Watch for objects like telephone poles, trees, or lampshades growing out of people’s heads. It’s usually pretty easy to move over a little, or ask your subject to move, to fix the problem. I have a snapshot of myself and some climbing buddies commemorating our climb to the top of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming many years ago. I handed my camera to another climber and our party posed around the post marking the summit. I failed to realize that when I sat with my back to the post the spike came out of the top of my head. It would have been a better photo if we’d grouped ourselves with the post between two of us. Continue reading →

Digital Tip: Exposure Part III — Aperture

Posted on February, 2015 by Mark Turner

Aperture, the size of the hole letting light through your lens, is the third variable you control to get properly exposed photos. Last October I discussed ISO, the sensitivity of your camera’s digital sensor. In November I wrote about shutter speed and how your choice is a creative one as well as an exposure control.

Family Portrait — Haddock family portrait, photographed at f/8

Like shutter speed, the aperture you choose affects the “look” of your photo as well as the exposure so it’s both a creative and technical choice. The family portrait above was made at a middle aperture to balance depth of field and shutter speed with proper exposure.

You can think of the aperture as the size of the “light pipe” carrying photons through your lens. The larger the diameter of the pipe, the more photons go through, just as a 2” water pipe carries more than a ½” pipe. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Exploring Pattern and Texture

Posted on January, 2015 by Mark Turner

A few days ago, during our recent cold snap, I stuck my Canon G12 compact camera in my pocket and headed out the door for a walk around our block. Where we live, that means walking at the side of the road for about a mile and a half. It was crisply cold and the late afternoon sun was low in the sky as I left the house.

I found several nice photo subjects along my route, but spent the most time lingering over a single frozen puddle, exploring the patterns and textures in the ice. It’s an intriguing and ephemeral subject, one temporarily frozen in time as well as temperature. I was reminded of the patterns in the sand from waves washing ashore, or the waves themselves when caught by an instantaneous exposure. There were figures, akin to the what you might see in the clouds while laying on your back on a warm summer day. And there was this luminous quality to the late afternoon light as it caught the ridges and textures in the ice. In short, I was entranced by this simple frozen tableau and lingered until the knees of my Carharts were soaking wet, my fingers frozen, and the sun had dipped too far below the horizon for a reasonable shutter speed. Continue reading →

Digital Tip: Exposure Part I – ISO

Posted on October, 2014 by Mark Turner

When you go to the beach do you want a sunburn, a nice healthy tan, or a pale complexion? You’re in control by how much you expose your skin to the sun. If I spend too much time outside without my hat, my balding head gets burned. That’s analogous to an over-exposed photograph, although the results usually aren’t so painful.

Point Whitehorn Beach — Point Whitehorn beach, photographed on a sunny day at ISO 100.

This month and the next few I’m going to help you make sense of the three variables that interact to affect photographic exposure: the sensitivity of the digital sensor (or film), how long the light strikes the sensor, and how big is the hole the light passes through. We call those the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. I’ll get to each of those and how they interact in this and the next few installments, along with exposure compensation.

You may wonder why this is important if you always use your camera in its fully automatic mode. In full auto, your camera is measuring the light and setting the ISO, shutter, and aperture to expose the subject correctly. Taking control yourself gives you creative options you don’t have in full auto mode.

Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Improvised Rain Cover

Posted on September, 2014 by Mark Turner

Garden chairs on awet flagstone patio — Garden chairs on a wet flagstone patio, Pittsburgh, PA.

Last month when I was on a bus tour of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania gardens with the Garden Writers Association I got caught out without my usual rain cover for my camera. We only had 20-30 minutes in each tour garden and I certainly wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to photograph lush and beautiful gardens just because it was raining and I didn’t have proper protection for my camera. I really like the look of a garden in the rain. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Think Triangles

Posted on July, 2014 by Mark Turner

Triangular composition in group of Tulip Poplars — Strong triangular composition in group of Tulip Poplar trees.

There’s a lot of power in the humble triangle. Just as it brings strength to all kinds of mechanical structures, the triangle makes your photographs stronger, too.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re photographing your family, a sweeping landscape, something abstract, flowers, or anything else. Look for ways to incorporate one or more triangles into your composition. Continue reading →