Digital Photo Tip: Concentrate Attention

Posted on February, 2012 by Mark Turner

As a photographer you want to control where the folks viewing your images look. A strong focal point, or center of attention, in your photos will almost always make them more powerful and more interesting. We’ve all made pictures, shown them to a friend, and gotten the “what the heck were you taking a picture of?” response. Most of those should go in the trash can. They should have been tossed before you even showed them to anyone.

Where you put your main subject in the frame is most important. If you’ve been around photography or art for any period of time you’ve likely heard of the “rule of thirds” or the “golden mean.” That’s a technique for positioning the main subject at one of the power points within the frame. I’ll write about that in more detail another month.

This month I’d like you to think about using differences in brightness, color, or sharpness to direct attention within the frame. Continue reading →

Colorful Las Vegas

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Mark Turner

I spent four nights in Las Vegas last week attending John Hartman’s photography marketing bootcamp. The program was fantastic and now I have a ton of work to do implementing what I learned.

But one can’t go to Las Vegas and not spend some time wandering around photographing the over-the-top hotels and casinos. ( You just need to develop the skill where you dodge all the pushy casino people. They will come up to you as you take pictures because you look like fresh meat! So dodge the “ Details of the vegas promo offer for new members” shouts and and pleas to view this here or check this offer there, focus on your photography! I traveled light and just carried my Canon G12 pocket camera. I took a tripod with me, but didn’t carry it out on the strip so everything I shot was hand-held. Continue reading →

Snowy Christmas Lights

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Mark Turner

We leave the Christmas lights on the Korean Fir in our front yard garden through much of January to brighten the long winter nights and in hopes of getting a little snow.

This year we had to wait until January 17 to get our first snowfall of the winter. Tonight, the 18th, I took my camera outside in the bitter cold to photograph the tree and its setting. I used my Canon 1Ds Mk II with a 16-35mm lens and photographed at the widest setting. I wanted to emphasize the space and separate the tree from our house and other buildings in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Snow and Slow: Forest in my Pocket

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Mark Turner

This past weekend was the beginning of the first real winter we’ve had this season. I took a couple of hikes to keep my blood circulating and to visit a couple of favorite local haunts. Saturday I zipped up to Pine and Cedar Lakes in the Chuckanuts and on Sunday I ambled along the Whatcom Creek trail to Whatcom Falls Park, returning via the Railroad Trail.

Saturday was the beginning of our current snowfall. There was just a bit of slush at the Pine & Cedar trailhead, but by the time I’d gained the roughly 1500′ to the lakes the snow was 5-6 inches deep, relatively light and fluffy. Continue reading →

Lost Lake: Found in the Chuckanuts

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Mark Turner

How can you lose a lake? In the Chuckanut Mountains south of Bellingham you just bury the thing in a deep valley beneath a high sandstone cliff and ring it with lush Douglas-fir, hemlock, and cedar forest with a dense groundcover layer of salal, sword ferns, and low Oregon-grape. Add a muddy trail and you’ve got a perfect place to lose yourself for an afternoon.

That’s just what I did this afternoon under a sodden gray sky and chilly temperatures. Well, I didn’t actually get lost, but I did pay a visit to Lost Lake. Here’s the DNR map of the Chuckanut trail system I carried in my pack. You definitely want a map for the maze of trails up there, but it’s definitely worth it. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Backups Are Boring

Posted on January, 2012 by Mark Turner

Sometimes the boring stuff we face as digital photographers is really important. Backing up all of our master photo files is one of those “must do” tasks. Backups take time. Backups aren’t fun. Backups can save our a**.

I touched on backups over a year ago in my Digital Condoms post. It’s time to return to the subject. Like the previous post, this one is motivated by a friend’s hard drive crash catastrophe. Continue reading →

Oysters and Hemlocks: Rekindling Old Friendships

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Mark Turner

January 1st, New Year’s Day, I donned shorts and boots and headed for Oyster Dome. That’s the prominent rock outcropping rising a couple thousand feet above Chuckanut Drive at the south end of the Chuckanuts or the north end of Blanchard Mountain. It’s a popular hike, despite being steep and muddy. I went for exercise and to rekindle old friendships with the inhabitants of the winter forest.

The view from the top out over the San Juan Islands is spectacular. I made this photo handheld with my little Canon G12 pocket camera, planning to stitch the frames together later in Photoshop. Continue reading →

Phlox on the Rocks

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Mark Turner

Yreka Phlox The latest Rock Garden Quarterly arrived in my postal mailbox today with a bunch of my photos from Deception Pass State Park to help promote the upcoming Western Winter Study Weekend. There’s a link to this blog, so I figured I’d better get busy and write something new for the hoards of visitors coming my way.

I’m working on selecting photos for the new Trees and Shrubs of the Northwest book due out in 2013. Today was Polemoneaceae day, or in plain English, a day of selecting pictures of Phlox.

The beauty at right is Yreka Phlox, Phlox hirsuta. It’s a certified rare plant that only grows in a few locations on the outskirts of Yreka, California. I photographed it back in the spring of 2004 when I was working on the wildflowers book with Phyllis Gustafson. It’s one of the plants that ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor and got left out of the first book. Ellen and I plan to include it in the trees & shrubs book. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Smartphone Camera Tools

Posted on November, 2011 by Mark Turner

What’s fun, fast, better than expected, and more socially acceptable than a nooner? That would be making photographs with your smartphone’s camera.

It seems that everyone has a smartphone these days, whether it’s an iPhone or Android. The advantage of a smartphone camera is that you usually have it with you. Plus, it’s small and easy to use. The disadvantage is that the technical quality isn’t as good as a “real” camera and you pretty much have to accept whatever the automatic controls give you. Continue reading →

Digital Photo Tip: Where’s the Light?

Posted on November, 2011 by Mark Turner

Light doesn’t just provide the photons tjay excite your camera’s digital sensor. It can reveal shape and texture or hide imperfections, depending on the angle of the source relative to the subject. Light is one of the primary tools we use as photographers, whether we’re photographing people, birds, landscapes, widgets, or plants.

While there are many variations, we can boil light direction down to just three concepts: front, back, and side lighting. Continue reading →