Photography is the perfect marriage of science and art. Some photographers revel in the technical side. For others, it’s all about creativity and aesthetics.
They’re both important. You can have all the style in the world, but if you don’t have the technical side down, it can hold you back.
To make high quality photographs, you need to understand how to work with light, and know your camera inside out.
Here are 8 secrets for taking high quality photographs.
Shoot In Raw for Quality Photographs
You have heard this one a million times before, but for high quality images, you need to shoot in RAW.
This is not to say that JPEG files don’t have their place and that you should never photograph in JPG. You might be a high volume shooter like a wedding photographer. For you, it can sometimes make absolute sense to shoot in JPG. The files will take up a lot less space on your SD card and JPEG files are already processed.
The drawback of JPG is that you’re limited by how much retouching you can do. Every time you retouch a JPEG file, you lose information. A couple of edits can result in an image of very poor quality. RAW files preserve most of the information form the camera, like sharpness and contrast. It does this without processing and compressing.
This will give you more control over how your image looks. It will allow you to correct the white balance in post-processing.
You can retouch the file as much as you like without affecting its quality. And you can convert it to JPEG or another file type upon export.
A RAW file has 68 billion more colours than a JPEG file. It offers increased brightness and a higher dynamic range.
JPEG is a convenient file format that is easy to open and share. But a RAW file will give you much better quality photos.
Understand Your Light
Light is the foundation of photography. After all, it’s referred to as “painting with light”. Without it, the photograph couldn’t exist.
But many new photographers don’t pay enough attention to it.
Being able to “read” the light and set your camera is very important for getting good exposure.
You need to know how to get the correct amount of light into your camera. And you also need to understand how the direction of light will affect your final result.
Study incident light and reflected light, as well as basic principles of physics such as inverse square law. This will help you predict how the light will fall off when you’re shooting.
The more you understand how light behaves, the better the quality of the images you’ll be able to shoot.
Understand the Exposure Triangle
The exposure triangle is the combination of aperture, shutter speed an ISO that gives you your exposure. You need to balance all three.
When you change one setting, it affects the others. Understanding the exposure triangle is fundamental to photography.
ISO relates to how sensitive the camera is to incoming light. The lower ISO number, the more light you need to achieve a good exposure. For example, ISO 100 is best used with studio lights or bright sunshine. A lower ISO will also give your image less “grain” or “noise”.
Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter in your camera stays open. Thus, how long it lets light into the camera.
Aperture controls how much light is allowed into the camera. We measure aperture in f-stops.
It can get confusing because a large aperture is represented by a small f-stop number. For example, f/2 would be considered a large or “wide” aperture because it lets a lot of light into the lens. But f/22 is a small aperture because it only lets a small amount of light in.
Aperture also affects your depth of field. This is the zone of acceptable sharpness within a photo that appears in focus. An image shot at a small f-number such as f/4 will have a much shallower depth-of-field than an image shot at f/16.
The aperture you choose will depend on what you’re shooting and your desired end result. A landscape image should be sharp throughout, requiring a small aperture. Portraits and some still subjects look best with blurred out backgrounds. This comes with a wider aperture. Shallow depth-of-field used to isolate the subject
Don’t Over Rely on ISO
Adjusting ISO instead of the aperture and shutter speed is a mistake. A lot of new photographers do this when they’re in a low light situation.
Raising the ISO on your camera can lead to noise. This gives your images a grainy look and reduces their quality. Some cameras have great ISO capabilities. You can push them quite far before this noise becomes obvious. In general, it’s a good idea to refrain from using high ISO whenever possible.
Most images look best when the ISO is in the 100-1000 range.
ISO controls your camera’s sensitivity to light. Aperture and shutter speed are more important exposure controls. Since ISO is so easy to change, people rely on it way too much when in lower light situations.
When faced with a low light situation, use a tripod if you can. This way you can decrease your shutter speed without getting camera shake.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t raise your ISO when you have to. A lot of times you can’t work with a tripod or your lighting situation is too dark. This can happen when shooting a wedding ceremony inside of a church.
Start by adjusting the ISO and see if you can get good results without pushing it up too far.
Watch Your Histogram
The histogram is another important tool. A lot of new photographers tend to skip over it, mostly because it can be confusing. But the histogram is crucial in helping you check whether you have proper exposure.
A histogram is a mathematical representation of the number of tones between the darkest part of your image and the lightest. It maps out brightness on a grayscale. Black is on the left, while white is on the right. You can find all the shades of grey between them.
Each image file has a scale of values of brightness. The histogram maps it out in pixels. Each pixel from the image is assigned to a value. The height of each column on the vertical (Y) axis is determined by how many pixels are assigned to that column.
If you have a dark and moody image, most of the tones will be on the left of the image. If the assigned brightness values touch the end of the histogram, then it’s underexposed.
In a light image, most of the brightness values will fall on the right. If they touch the end of the histogram, the image is overexposed.
In either of these cases, you’re missing details you can’t recover in Photoshop. At this point, you should adjust your exposure and re-shoot.
It’s always best to get your exposure as correct as possible in-camera.
Use Compositional Principles for Quality Photographs
Composition is how you arrange your subject and all the other elements in your frame.
Good composition leads the eye through the image and keeps it interested in the scene. There are many compositional principles that can help you create stronger imagery.
When you start learning about photography composition, you will learn about the rule-of-thirds. This compositional guideline divides an image into nine equal sections. It does so using two horizontal lines and two vertical lines.
The important elements in the scene fall along these lines, or at the points where they intersect.
The rule of thirds helps you place main elements and focal points within the composition. Think of an imaginary grid that divides the image into nine equal parts, like a tic-tac-toe grid. The ratio is 1:1 per rectangle.
The rule of thirds is a great place to start. It helps add harmony to your images. It aids new photographers in their first steps in composition. It can work very well or many images, particularly landscapes, but relying on it too much can be limiting.
There are other principles like the Phi-Grid, the Fibonacci Spiral, and the Golden Triangle. These are all expressions of the Golden Ratio. They can help you create balanced images that are pleasing to the eye.
Concepts like texture, pattern, leading lines and even colour all contribute to composition and quality in your photos.
Manage Your Colours
To get high quality photos, you need to manage your colours.
Color accuracy will differ from device to device. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a smartphone, tablet, or monitor. What you can do is ensure that color is accurate on your end through monitor calibration.
Regular monitor colour calibration allows you to be sure that the true colours of a particular file are being represented. You know you’re not seeing colours your monitor’s settings has adjusted.
A non-calibrated monitor can lead to colour inconsistencies. This will happen when you print your work, or even when you are viewing your work on another monitor.
One of the most important aspects of colour management is the right colour space.
Colour space is a specified range of displayable colors.
There are two colour spaces you’ll be most concerned with:
SRGB is the correct colour space if your work will be posted on the web.
Adobe RGB is the correct colour space if you’re looking to print your work.
SRGB is the industry standard colour space for web browsers and web content.
The Adobe RGB colour space is larger than the sRGB colour space and includes more shades of green and red. Adobe RGB is only used for printing. It allows you to take advantage of the larger range of displayable hues.
If you’re using Lightroom, you can choose the appropriate colour space upon export. You can see this in the image below.
Edit With a Light Hand
How you approach post-processing can make a huge difference. All RAW digital files need a bit of processing. They come out of the camera looking a bit flat and lacking in contrast.
Until you get comfortable with Lightroom or Photoshop, you should keep your editing and retouching minimal. This will result in the most natural look.
After that, you can go more in-depth with certain toning and colour grading techniques if you wish.
Lightroom can seem overwhelming at first, but it’s relatively user-friendly. You can develop your skills with a bit of practice. Plus, there are tons of free tutorials and articles online.
Sifting through the mass of information on the web might be too much for you. Then you can pick an online Lightroom editing course. You can choose a general program or a class that is more tailored to your preferred genre of photography
You can also buy ready made presets. These are “recipes” of a combination of settings that will give your image a certain look.
You can apply these settings with a single click. Your results will vary and presets are best used as a starting point, and even a learning tool. You’ll most likely need to tweak them for optimal results. And to create your own signature editing style.
You can save these as “User Presets” in the Develop Module. Or you can make your own presets from scratch if you want to mimic a certain style from shoot to shoot.
If you prefer to work in Photoshop, you can buy “actions“, which will work similarly. The great thing about actions is that you can reduce the opacity on them to get a very natural look. And it’ll save yourself the time it takes to hand edit every image.
Digital cameras have made taking high quality photographs much easier in some respects. But photography still has a steep learning curve.
Digital photography has made it possible for anyone to get a decent image. Getting a great image, however, requires skill and practice.
These tips will help you immediately improve the quality of your photos. And they’ll give you some inspiration for areas where you can practice more.
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Monday, October 14, 2019
Balance Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to Improve Your Photographs
Want to know how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw to improve your photographs without causing white or black clippings?
Have you ever faced a scene so contrasted that it’s impossible to achieve balance in the exposure?
If you shoot in Auto mode, you may have seen this quite a bit. If you were not able to solve this problem while shooting, this is the tutorial for you. I’ll show you how to balance exposure in Adobe Camera Raw using helpful post-processing techniques.
For this exercise, I’m using a photo with extreme problems to really highlight the adjustments I’m making. Images with less-obvious exposure problems can still be improved using this same technique.
Firstly, let’s clarify that this works best with a RAW file, but even if you shoot in JPG format this tutorial can help – so keep reading!
A RAW file is a ‘digital negative’ that contains all the information without being processed, so it won’t open directly in Photoshop. Instead, it opens in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which is where the editing is done for this tutorial.
If you are working with a JPG file, open the ACR manually. To do this, go to Photoshop ->Menu -> File -> Open. From the browser window choose your JPG file and select ‘Camera Raw’ from the ‘Format’ drop-down menu. Click ‘OK’ to open in ACR.
If you are not sure whether to shoot with RAW files or JPG Files, read this interesting article.
*From this point, you can follow the same steps for both RAW and JPG files.
Activate your clipping warnings
To help balance your image, activate the clipping warning in ACR.
To do this, go to the top corners of the histogram where you have a white and black clipping alert. Click on the one you want to view first.
Once activated, this highlights any pixels that exceed the intensity represented.
The Shadow Slider
The order in which you decide to tackle different problems doesn’t matter. You have to go back and forward through the adjustments until you reach the balance that works for you anyway.
In this case, I’m going to start brightening up the bottom, so my first instinct would be to lighten the shadows.
Adjust the ‘shadows’ slider until you achieve the desired look.
Look at the changes to the histogram as well.
The Black Slider
Now we can see much more detail in the lower part of the photo, but now the contrast has lowered so much that the image has become quite flat. You can correct this by moving the ‘Black’ slider, which determines the darkest black of your image.
Adjust the ‘Black’ slider and see how the darkest areas are now being highlighted in blue to show you the clipping areas because you’re exceeding the range.
Be careful not to exaggerate.
The White Slider
Now it’s time to fix the lightest parts. The sky is completely blown out and has little detail; therefore I’ll lower the brightest white possible by moving the ‘White’ slider.
Adjust the ‘White’ slider until you achieve the desired look.
Notice how the red spot in the sky that represented the clippings is getting smaller.
The Highlights Slider
The image looks better but it hasn’t completely solved the problem.
The next step is the ‘Highlights’ slider to add more detail to it. Be careful not to render the image too dark now.
Adjust the ‘Highlights’ slider until you achieve the look you want.
You’ll need to go back to the Shadows and Blacks to balance them according to the new sky. You can go back and forth through these until you find a balance you are happy with.
Notice how all the clippings have gone:
Before and After Previews
Apart from the clippings you canals keep an eye on the histogram, look how the original had very high points in both ends and was very flat in the middle while the current one is much more balanced.
To view before and after previews, press the P on your keyboard, allowing you to make comparisons without losing any of your adjustments.
Balance is not necessarily all there is to it.
In this case, it resulted in a flat and muted image.
To give it that extra punch you can boost areas such as contrast or saturation.
Keep in mind that these can create clippings again, so always keep checking the entire image.
If you worked through this process with a RAW file, it is non-destructive, so you can keep editing until you’re satisfied without losing any pixels or lowering the image quality.
I advise you to save your file as a copy to always keep your original intact.
If you want to learn more about the basics of ACR, I invite you to read my tutorial ‘Quick Beginner’s Guide to Processing RAW Files in Photoshop Adobe Camera Raw‘. Share this article.
Ever wondered what Lomography is?
Have you seen Lomo images and wanted to know how to do it? Do you know what Lomo photography is but don’t want to go back to film or buy more cameras?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on to learn about Lomo, and how to achieve a hassle-free, totally digital image like it.
What is Lomo?
You’ve probably heard of this term or its more colloquial name Lomography. It became very trendy over the last decade, and there are even workshops, contests and more dedicated to it.
It refers to a style of photography made with a particular brand of camera from Austria called Lomo. Thus, the name of the technique comes from the camera brand. Different models create a different kind of image.
What is Lomography?
Regardless of the model of camera, the make is mostly plastic including the lens.
Sometimes they have light leaks and allow very little control over the settings. Therefore, the results are fun and unpredictable. While technically they have photographic ‘flaws,’ it creates a particular style that created an entire visual culture around it – Lomography.
How to Mimic the Lomo Effect in Photoshop
As I’ve explained, Lomo photography can be unpredictable, and also includes different models of camera that create a different kind of photograph. Therefore there’s no specific set of rules.
I’ll mention some of the most common and characteristic effects of the Lomo cameras and how to achieve them using Photoshop. These are not set in stone. The fun part about real Lomo or digital Lomo effect is that you can be as creative as you want.
1. Vignette
Most of the images created with a Lomo camera, especially if made with long exposures, have a vignette.
To create a Lomo image in Photoshop, you need to duplicate the background layer by dragging the existing one to the bottom into the New Layer button, or by going to Menu-> Layer-> Duplicate Layer.
Next, go to Filter-> Lens Correction (If you don’t immediately see it in your version of Photoshop, go inside ‘Distort’ to find it). In the ‘Custom’ tab, move the slider called ‘Vignette.’ Once satisfied, apply the filter.
Duplicate this ‘Vignette’ layer. Go to Menu -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. I’ll set it to 3 pixels, but this is entirely up to you.
Now use the ‘Eraser’ tool. Start to delete the center and slowly widen your moves towards the outside. We do this process because the edges are not super sharp in Lomo photography, due to the lenses often being made of plastic.
2. Grain
Since Lomo cameras use film, you can give the illusion of analog photography by adding a little grain to the image. To do this, select the first Vignette layer and go to Menu -> Filter -> Filter Gallery- > Artistic -> Film Grain.
Again, the quantity is for you to decide as it’s an authors choice and not an exact recipe to follow. I’ll do 4 with an intensity of 3.
3. Color Saturation
Finally, Lomo’s characteristic colors are overly saturated. To achieve this, while there are many ways in Photoshop, I like to do it channel by channel with the ‘Curves’ tool. Firstly, add an adjustment layer.
To do this, click on the button at the bottom of the Layer panel with the circle symbol, and choose ‘Curves’ from its pop-up menu. You can move around the settings in each channel separately by opening the ‘Preset’ drop-down menu as per the picture below:
You may continue adding some adjustment layers to keep modifying the effect. I added a ‘Gradient Map’ with an ‘Overlay’ blending mode. I also added a ‘Vibrance’ and ‘Saturation’ layer where I pushed the vibrancy up a bit more. Experiment until you are satisfied with your adjustments.
Remember that you can double-click any adjustment layer to open its properties and move the settings as many times as you want.
Once your adjusts are set, go to Layer -> Flatten Image which will compact all the layers you created into one. If however, you’d like to keep your layered file first, save a copy of it before you flatten. Once your image is flattened, go to Menu -> Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and apply it to your image.
Be careful not to exaggerate this because it will enhance the film grain from before. Just move the sliders while keeping an eye on the preview window.
That’s it! Take a look at the before and after images below.
Before
After
Try out this technique for yourself, and show us what you come up with in the comments section below.
The following post is from Australian photographer Neil Creek who is part of the recently launched Fine Art Photoblog, and is participating in Project 365 – a photo a day for a year – on his blog.
Welcome to the second lesson in Photography 101 – A Basic Course on the Camera. In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the ‘exposure triangle’: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.
This week’s lesson is Lenses and Focus
Bending Light
Last week we discussed how we can use a tiny hole to direct light so that it forms an image. All that a pinhole camera does is excludes all the light that doesn’t make an image. As we learned, however, the problem with that technique, is that it results in very dim images. As photographers we want bright images, and although that may seem obvious, we’ll discuss why in detail in a later lesson. Fortunately, there is a better way to do it.
Fig 1.2.1 A light shone into a glass
tank of water bends. Source. Fig 1.2.2 As light passes into a more
refractive material, it slows and bends.
As we touched on briefly in Lesson 1, light is a form of energy that can be bent. Bending light is called refraction. What happens when light is refracted is that it actually slows down. It’s a common misconception that light always travels at the same speed. In fact, the speed of the light depends on the type of material that it is travelling through. The really useful thing about refraction is that it can bend the path of light.
I don’t want to get into the mysterious “dual nature of light”, but remember that light can be seen as a series of waves. Line after line of these waves make up light, similar to waves hitting a beach.
Imagine we have a fishtank of water and a torch. For the sake of simplicity lets also imagine that we can see the beam clearly in the air and water. When you shine the torch at the surface of the water at an angle, from the side of the tank, you can see that the beam has been bent, see Fig 1.2.1. The many wavefronts of the light are aligned perpendicular with its direction of travel. When the wavefronts encounter the water, one part of the front hits it before the rest. The part that has entered the water and slows down, while the rest of the wave is still travelling at the same speed. The effect of this is to bend the beam. See Fig 1.2.2.
Okay that’s enough physics for now. Lets talk optics.
Lenses
This bending of light can be very useful! Lets say we wanted to concentrate all the light from a wide beam onto a narrow point. If we can direct each beam of light by bending it slightly – a little right for the light in the left side of the beam, a little left for the light in the right side of the beam – then we should be able to focus the light. This is exactly what a lens does.
There are two main factors that determine how much a lens bends the light. The refractive index of the material, which is how much it slows down the beam, and the angle of incidence. The angle of incidence (or incident angle) is how far from perpendicular the light beam is when it passes through the surface. The greater the angle, the more the bending. This is why wide-angle lenses, that need to bend the light a long way, have such a bulging appearence.
Fig 1.2.3 How much the light beam is bent depends on the angle at which it hits the lens (all other things being equal). Light passing through the very centre of the lens is unaffected, while those at the edge are bent the most. This is why lenses are curved.
Fig 1.2.4 Different shaped lenses focus the light at different distances. This is the focal length of that lens.
A simple experiment
Click for larger version
Fig 1.2.5 An everyday magnifying glass can create an image. In a darkened room, set up a candle, a magnifying glass and a sheet of paper as a screen. With the magnifying glass squared up with the cangle and the screen, slide the glass and screen backwards and forwards until you bring an image of the candle into focus. Just as with the pinhole camera, the image projected by the lens us upside down. Notice that the shadow of the glass is dark except for the candle, even though the magnifying glass is see-through. This is because all of the light that passed through the glass has been focused into the image.
Not all lenses are equal
It’s not always the case that focal length equals lens length, as the complex optics in modern lenses can give a “virtual” focal length while keeping the actual lens size small. As a rule of thumb, the focal length isusually pretty close to the actual length of the light path through the lens.
Focusing
So far, we’ve been imagining a perfect beam of light hitting a refractive surface. In this beam all the light is parallel. Parallel light passed through a lens will always converge on the same point. The distance from the surface of the lens to the focus point is called the focal length and is measured in milimeters. Most lenses are described by their focal length. Zoom lenses have a range of focal lengths, a feat which is accomplished by using a complex series of lenses which can be moved relative to each other. The mm number translates into a real distance, from the front of your lens to the chip of your camera. In that way you can tell that a 400mm telephoto lens will be much longer than a 24mm wide-angle, without even looking at the lens.
If an object is close to a lens, even several hundred meters away, its reflected light entering the lens isn’t perfectly parallel. The closer the object to the lens, the less parallel, and the more the lens must be moved in order to keep focused. This change is much more noticable when objects are very close to the camera, and is one of the reasons why the depth of field in macro photos is so small – a point we will return to in a future lesson.
Fig 1.2.6 The closer an object is to a lens, the more its focus point moves, and so the more the lens must be moved to compensate.
In order to keep the image of a close object sharp, the lens must be moved relative to the screen (or camera sensor). This process is called focusing. When you are focused on an object at a certain distance, then objects which are closer or more distant than that will not be in focus. The situation can be helped somewhat, by reducing the size of the lens, just like we did with the pinhole camera, to restrict the variety of angles of light entering the lens. But we again are faced with the loss of brightness as a result.
We’ve hinted at the main reasons to use a lens: to make an image brighter and to make it bigger (or smaller!). Next week we’ll take what we have learned about lenses and see how we can use that to understand the concepts of focal length and f-ratios, and how they translate into maginification and image brightness.
Homework
I was disapointed at how few of you submitted homework for last weeks lesson. In fact, nobody did! Peter Emmett deserves some extra credit however, for his DSLR body cap pinhole camera photo taken coincidentally the weekend before the first lesson. This week’s lesson is challenging for setting homework, so I’d like to encourage you to experiment and think of how you can apply what you have learned here. Here’s some suggestions:
Project an image with a magnifying glass or a lens from your camera gear and take a photo of it. If you want to get really creative about it, be inspired by this spectacular example seen recently on Strobist.
Find and photograph examples of light refracting in everyday objects. The clearer the example the better. For example the classic pencil in a glass of water, or maybe play with some large crystals from a jewelery box.
Shoot some natural lenses. Drops of water can be creatively used as little magnifying glasses to show an inverted image of the scene beyond them. This would be a good exercise for lovers of macro photography.
“Fine Art” when it comes to travel photography is not an often used term and few photographers define themselves as “fine art travel photographers”. Genre definitions in photography can be highly subjective, and the fine art line can be very fine indeed. For me as a travel shooter, the fine art approach is just a natural extension of who I am and how I see and share the world through my images.
Vietnam is one of my favorite places to photograph, not only because of its remarkable aesthetic qualities but because of my great fondness for its people. And so when asked to talk about my photography through the fine art lens, using Vietnam as the focal point was an easy choice to make.
Flower H’mong mother and daughter walking a rice terrace berm in Mu Cang Chai, northern Vietnam.
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/2000th, ISO 400, 70mm focal length.
Fishermen resting. Shot from a bridge near Lang Co Bay. Exposure settings: f/8, 1/320th, ISO 800,
56mm focal length.
The Fine Art of Travel Photography – People and Landscapes
Fine art photography, at least the way I see it, is about focusing on a specific style or look that reoccurs in every image with a goal to create aesthetically pleasing and engaging work.
Fine art travel photography implies that each travel-themed photo is of a very high artistic standard with consistent consideration to an effective composition, use of tonal range (lights and darks), and a balanced or focused color scheme throughout the photo.
Personally, I use natural light, and again, approach a photo to be a work of art. The goal is to create a visually striking image that looks similar to what a painter might have created, while still also looking completely like a photograph.
Fishing amidst the thousands of karst limestone formations of fabled Ha Long Bay. Exposure settings:
f/9, 1/200th, ISO 800, 35mm focal length.
Four fishermen raise their nets on the Perfume River in Hue, central coastal Vietnam. Exposure
settings: f/11, 1/160th, ISO 800, 30mm focal length.
Showcase the people and culture
I aim to do this while still faithfully representing a country’s culture, with the goal to accurately, if ideally, portray the personality and lives of the people within the photos. I have always been most interested in the artistic side of travel photography, and less so in the traditional or documentary approach.
That said, I can see myself taking on more singularly focused projects in the future, where I can apply my artistic sense to the challenges of documentary storytelling within the travel space.
A Khmer-Vietnamese monk daydreams at his monastery window in the Mekong Delta region.
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/125th, ISO 640, 40mm focal length.
Set your intention of making art
Although it may seem obvious, I think it’s critically important when adopting the fine art style to have the intention of making art throughout the process – from preparation to post-production. I take this mindset into the field and shoot a variety of subjects in various ways.
Portraiture is my first love, but I also enjoy landscape, wildlife, and cultural documentary photography. The purpose is to showcase scenes of life and culture for others to observe and enjoy. And of course I enjoy it as well, or I wouldn’t be doing it!
Ladies from the Cham ethnic group in Phan Rang having their own water festival. Exposure settings:
f/36, 1/15th, ISO 400, 90mm focal length.
Vietnamese lady wearing the traditional white “Ao Dai” and Non La (conical hat), Saigon. Exposure
settings: f/4, 1/125th, ISO 640, 70mm focal length.
Have a vision and shoot with a purpose
In each work, I try to have a vision and understand what the photo will be about and how it will look in my mind before I take it. There is nothing in the frame that shouldn’t be there – everything included serves a purpose.
I also like to look for patterns in the scenes and feature these in the composition. Careful composition allows for clean backgrounds, no unnecessary distractions from the subject, and a clear focal point that is immediately identifiable against a complementary background that helps to tell the story or set the mood for the piece.
Below is some insight into how I approached photographing some of my favorite Vietnam images taken over the last few years.
Forever in Love
“Forever in Love” – A loving couple in Hoi An share a moment of joy and happiness together in
their garden as the sun sets. At the time of photography, they had been married for 66 years. Exposure
settings: f/7.1, 1/200th, ISO 500, 50mm focal length.
A happy boy playing in a blue sea of fishing nets in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam.
Exposure settings: f/8, 1/250th, ISO 500, 24mm focal length.
I was in search of a workshop where fishing nets are made by hand in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. When I arrived, I noticed a boy and his friends were curious about my presence and wanted to meet me and help out if they could. They led me to the net weaving shop, which was a large open-ended structure with a corrugated tin roof.
Inside were seated ladies spread about busily creating these nets. I was immediately struck by the blue color and knew it would be very photogenic, but it was important to get the right light to make them come to life. I noticed all the ladies were in shaded, darker areas where the light wasn’t strong enough. There was an area that was close to an opening in the rooftop, under a natural skylight. I saw that the light was good there, but without a human subject the photo wouldn’t be so interesting.
Since I had created a rapport with the boy and his friends and they were still hanging around, I encouraged them to play in the fishing nets. Demonstrating myself, I ran and jumped into the nets, making everyone laugh, and the kids started to do the same themselves. I captured this photo knowing that the frame had to be filled with the blue fishing nets to bring attention to the boy. It’s his genuine smile and action that makes this photo all the more interesting and enjoyable to view.
Patterns on the Streets of Hanoi
A busy street scene in Hanoi photographed from a bridge on a rainy morning. Exposure settings:
f/14, 1/40th, ISO 1250, 35mm focal length.
It was raining one morning that I was to be exploring the city of Hanoi, which could have been considered a problem for photography. I went to the Long Bien Bridge after visiting a nearby market and observed the traffic passing by underneath me. I saw the potential for a really interesting pattern of cyclists with the high volume of motorbike traffic and the occasional bicycle. The rain had stopped, but the wet roads were creating reflections which would ultimately be beneficial and make for more dynamic lighting in the picture.
I waited a long time and photographed many combinations and patterns of commuters. I felt it was important to have an interesting focal point that was different from the rest of the scene. That was either going to be a person walking across the road or riding a bicycle amongst the sea of cars and other traffic.
I decided to use a slightly slower shutter speed to blur the traffic and capture the human subject sharper than the surroundings. It took a lot of patience and time on the bridge to finally capture an interesting pattern. It was fun to find the art in simple, everyday life.
Old Man with a Lute
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/160th, ISO 1000, 70mm focal length.
I met this old man in the small idyllic village of Ninh Binh where he was walking by a lake. When he learned that I would like to make his portrait, he invited me into his home close by. We drank some tea and I spent some time together with his family.
Before I photograph someone, I always look around the scene and try to find the right place where I will take their picture, depending on the lighting and the background. I noticed near a window there was strong natural light coming into his otherwise dark home, and I placed a chair in this spot for him to sit. There was enough light on the man to not require a tripod in this position.
I noticed an old lute hanging on the wall. I found out that it was his and he could play, so I asked if he could show me. As he played, I took some pictures, but I noticed that the light would be stronger on his face, which is the main focal point if he were looking out the window. The breeze from the window blew his beard gently to one side, creating some movement in this portrait of an interesting, old and very friendly Vietnamese man who I was privileged to meet and photograph.
Here are a few more example images of my fine art travel photography.
Use Compositional Principles for Quality Photographs
The following post is from Australian photographer 
Fig 1.2.1 A light shone into a glass
Fig 1.2.2 As light passes into a more
Not all lenses are equal
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