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: Polarizing Filter

Posted on June, 2015 by Mark Turner

Last week I was photographing Southern Oregon forests under a brilliant clear blue sky. The fresh green foliage sparkled, reflecting the bright sunshine. These are the conditions that call for a polarizing filter. It’s one of the few filters I use with my digital camera, and there’s no good way to simulate its effect in post-processing software like Photoshop or Lightroom. Continue reading →

Vendovi Island Forest

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Mark Turner

Harsh Paintbrush and Oregon Sunshine at Paintbrush Point on Vendovi Island.

Last Saturday I joined a boatload (literally) of Washington Native Plant Society friends for a field trip to Vendovi Island. It’s one of the smaller of the San Juan Islands, located a few miles south of the southern tip of Lummi Island and northeast of Guemes Island. Up until 2010 it was privately held. Then the San Juan Preservation Trust purchased it and has opened it to the public from May through September.

We’d hoped to enjoy spectacular meadows of wildflowers on a couple of west-facing balds, but with our very warm and early spring the flowers were well past their prime. There was still a little camas blooming, and quite a bit of harsh paintbrush, Oregon sunshine, and death camas. 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 →

Award-Winning Photographs

Posted on April, 2015 by Mark Turner

This year all four of my entries scored high enough against the rigorous standard in the Professional Photographers of Washington print competition to be displayed as part of the exhibit at the just-concluded PPW spring conference. Two of my prints also received a “seal” that means they’ll automatically receive a Professional Photographers of America Merit when I send them on to international competition later this spring. When I’ve earned enough Merits I’ll receive the Master of Photography designation.

Why do I enter competition? It’s somewhat costly — entry fees, the expense of making prints, and shipping them to the conference for judging. The process of selecting or creating new images for competition, perfecting them in my computer darkroom (aka Adobe Photoshop), getting feedback from other photographers, and finally getting feedback from the judges all contribute to my learning to be a better photographer. That translates into better work I do every day for my clients.

One of my entries this year, “Sunset Meditation,” was from an extended on-location business portrait session I did for Chikeola Karimou of The Stellar CEO. It was photographed at sunset at Larrabee State Park. 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 →

I Love Photographing Homes

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Mark Turner

I opened my copy of the Bellingham Herald this morning (yes, we still get the newspaper delivered daily) and saw another of the homes I photographed on the front of the real estate insert.

Michelle Harrington, the listing agent at Windermere in Fairhaven, is a delightful go-getter who has been one of my clients for real estate photography for about a year.

Real estate photography is a service I added to my business late in 2013 when Kena Brashear, the realtor in my BNI networking group, asked me if I photographed homes. Kena knew me primarily as a portrait photographer — I photographed her family and her business portrait. I photographed a high-end country home for Kena, she loved how I approached the job and the final results, and we’ve been working together ever since. She connected me to Michelle, who referred me to several other agents in her office. Real estate, like many other businesses, really is built on personal connections. 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 →