PhotoNaturalist

How to create intimate portraits of nature

Steve Berardi — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:38:37 +0000

Bigelow's Monkeyflower / Photos by Steve Berardi

Which of the two photos above do you like better?

They were both taken of the same flower, with the same camera settings. The only difference between the two shots is the position of the camera.

I’ll take a wild guess that you like the first one more. And, I think this photo is better because it has more of an intimate and friendly feeling to it.

Now, part of the reason the first photo has this intimate feeling is because the flower is more isolated from its background.

But, what’s more important here is the perspective: the first photo was taken from a position looking directly at the flower (which stood just a few inches high). I was lying down on the ground with the camera on the same level as the flower, almost as if I was seeing eye-to-eye with the flower (if the flower had eyes, hehe).

The second photo was taken from a more elevated position: I was kneeling and looking down on the flower with my camera. When we look down on things, we tend to have a slight feeling of superiority or conquer, and this diminishes that friendly feeling.

I’ve talked about this topic before, as it applies to photographing wildlife, but I think it’s just as important for any kind of nature portrait. The position of your camera in relation to your subject (whether it’s above, below, or on the same level), will determine the feeling you portray in your photo.

So, to create that intimate and friendly feeling in your nature portraits, you have to photograph your subject on their level. You have to see them eye-to-eye.

Sometimes this might mean lying down on a bed of sharp rocks and being sore for a couple days, but the rewards are well worth it

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About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, computer scientist, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of Southern California.

3 things that affect depth of field

Steve Berardi — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:02:23 +0000

Diagram by Jared C. Benedict (used under the CC-Attr-SA license)

I was planning to write about the three things that affect depth of field this week, but by pure coincidence (seriously!), I discovered this great blog post that Brian Auer wrote a few days ago:

Three Ways to Control Depth of Field

I’d highly recommend checking it out. Brian did a nice job of explaining the three things that affect depth of field (aperture, camera to subject distance, and focal length), including some sample images too.

There’s a few things I’d like to add though:

If the f-number is doubled, then the depth of field is also doubled. Note that “doubling” here literally means doubling (e.g. from f/4 to f/8), it does NOT mean one whole stop (e.g. from f/4 to f/5.6).

If the subject distance is doubled, then the depth of field is increased by four times (depth of field is proportional to the subject distance squared).

If the focal length is doubled, then the depth of field is decreased by four times (depth of field is inversely proportional to the focal length squared).

So, if you’re looking for small depth of field (i.e. to help isolate your subject against an out-of-focus background), then the key is to use a small f-number, get close, and use a long focal length lens.

The only place I’ve seen these three things explained so precisely like this, is in Ansel Adams’ wonderful book, The Camera. It’s 195 pages of pure magical goodness, and it’s a book that I constantly reread and go back to. I just wish there was a pocket size edition too

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New eBook, Digital Wildflower Photography, is now available!

Steve Berardi — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:42:45 +0000

Today I’m happy to announce that my new eBook, Digital Wildflower Photography, is now available.

The first thing you’re probably wondering is how it’s different from the free eBook I released last spring. Well, this new one is over twice as long at 55 pages, and has a ton of new content.

While the free eBook was really just a collection of a few tips for getting better wildflower photos, this new ebook is more of a complete guide that will teach you how to take stunning wildflower photos and how to post-process them in Adobe Photoshop (CS and Elements 8).

Here’s a sneak peak of what you’ll learn in this 55-page eBook:

What equipment you need for photographing wildflowers.

How to setup your shot to create pleasing compositions and maximize sharpness.

How to choose the right aperture to ensure all parts of the flower are tack sharp, and to isolate the flower against its background.

How to find the perfect exposure by using tools like the RGB histogram (complete with a step-by-step example).

The secret to getting perfect light, and what to do when you can’t wait for that perfect light.

How to photograph butterflies (including how to maximize sharpness and how to get closer to butterflies without scaring them away).

How to compose landscapes of wildflowers and include the three essential elements.

How to post-process your photos with Adobe Photoshop to reduce noise, increase contrast and saturation, make small adjustments to exposure, and make your images super sharp (tutorials apply to both Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements 8).

Also included are 7 example photos with complete stories about how they were taken and processed. It’s like Albert Einstein said,

“Learning by example isn’t the best way to learn–it’s the only way to learn.”

Here are some of the examples you’ll learn about:

Photos by Steve Berardi

A few of the topics in this eBook have already been discussed here on PhotoNaturalist, but the vast majority of this eBook is new content, and I have updated and expanded upon a lot of the old content.

The eBook is mostly geared towards beginner to intermediate photographers, but I think thereʼs something in here for everyone. And, although a lot of the material could be applied to any digital camera, you’ll get the most out of the book if you own a digital SLR.

Oh, and I almost forgot: I’ve also included a 1-page quick reference guide for wildflower photography. It basically summarizes everything in the book, so you can print it out and take it on the trail with you

You can buy the eBook now for just $12.95

Sure, it’s a little more than a cup of coffee, but it’s practically free when you stack it up against all that expensive camera gear

And, don’t worry–if you buy it and realize it’s not what you thought it was or you’re unsatisfied in any way, I’ll be happy to give you a full refund within 30-days after you purchase it. No questions asked.

After paying, make sure you click the “Complete Purchase” button.

The eBook comes in the standard PDF format, which you can view with Adobe’s free Reader software. Feel free to print the eBook, but please do not redistribute copies

Payments for the eBook are handled through PayPal, the #1 service on the Internet for making online payments (they’re owned by eBay).

Digital delivery of the eBook is handled by E-Junkie, a service which is used and recommended by some of the top bloggers in the world. After you pay through PayPal, you’ll receive an e-mail with a link to download the eBook.

If you experience any problems with payment or downloading the eBook, please contact me and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

About the Author: Steve Berardi is a naturalist, photographer, computer scientist, and founder of PhotoNaturalist. You can usually find him hiking in the beautiful mountains and deserts of Southern California. His photographs have been used by the National Wildlife Federation and Nature Photographer Magazine.

5 great resources for nature photographers

Steve Berardi — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:00:10 +0000

When I started this website, I listed a few great resources on the right sidebar, but I just realized that I’ve never written about them in a post before. So, I thought I’d take a moment to list them here and explain how each one can be helpful on your journey to photograph the wonderful natural world:

#1 – Moon Phase Calendar

This website will show you the moon phases for the current calendar month. It’s helpful when you’re trying to plan a landscape shot and need the moon to be in a specific phase (mostly likely full). I usually just use it as a sort of “quick look” planning tool, and then move on to the next site for more details.

#2 – Sun/Moon data for one day

This is a cool tool developed by the United States Navy that will give you complete sun/moon data for a day (after you give a location). It’ll generate this nice one-page summary that lists sunrise/sunset times, moonrise/moonset times, and civil twilight start and end times. I like to print this page on trips to the desert, so I can also use it to take notes on.

#3 – Precipitation Analysis by NOAA

This website is run by the United States National Weather Service, and has a ton of information on precipitation history. I really just use this for finding good wildflower spots in the spring (more rain in an area usually means more wildflowers), but there’s probably a ton of other things you could use this for. Maybe you could use it for scouting waterfalls too, since some of them are primarily fed by snow melt.

#4 – Weather Forecasts at Weather Underground

Weather Underground has some of the most detailed weather forecasts available on the Internet. What’s particularly useful about their forecasts is the percent cloud cover throughout the day. Of course, this isn’t usually accurate a week in advance, but I use it often the night before I’m planning a trip outdoors. Knowing when there will be clouds could be helpful for things like waterfalls, wildflowers, and landscapes (i.e. sometimes you really want that clear sky!).

#5 – Weather Maps by Weather Underground

This is an awesome tool that Weather Underground just released: it will show you weather conditions overlayed on top of a Google Map (I’ve been waiting forever for this!). You can see cloud cover, temperature, and precipitation. You can also quickly move between cities and different weather stations to get detailed information on things like wind speed, visibility, etc.

This tool can be useful for planning trips to see and photograph wildflowers or waterfalls, where you want some cloud cover. You can use it for the opposite too: say you want to go out and see some dragonflies which won’t be around if there’s overcast skies.

What did I miss?

If you’ve found a better website to accomplish any of the above, or have an additional resource that you’ve found invaluable, please share it with the rest of us by leaving a comment below. Thanks!

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What went wrong with this sand dune photo?

Steve Berardi — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:01:27 +0000

Photo by Steve Berardi

I received a lot of positive feedback the last time I discussed one of my “bad photos,” so it was easy for me to decide to continue these types of posts.

This time I want to talk about a photo I took last weekend while camping in the Mojave Desert. I intentionally picked this weekend because of the full moon–I was hoping to catch a few glorious moonrises and moonsets.

The first night I was there, I shot this photo a few minutes before sunset:

Photo by Steve Berardi

But, I see a few problems with how this photo came out:

Moon is out of focus
Lines in the sand are not emphasized enough
Perhaps the moon is a little too small

Why is the moon out of focus?

It may not be very obvious from the small image above, but the moon in this photo is not in focus. Here’s a 100% crop that shows this more clearly:

Why did this happen?

Simple: the sand in the foreground was pretty close to the camera (around 15-20 ft), while the moon was significantly farther away. I focused about midway into the sand dune, and despite the small aperture I used (f/32), there still wasn’t enough depth of field to make the moon in focus. It was just too far away in relation to the close sand dunes.

One solution to this problem is to take two photos: one focused on the sand, and the other focused on the distant moon. Then, combine these images later in post-processing.

Why didn’t I do this? Why did I make such a simple mistake here?

Well, I actually arrived to these dunes pretty late, on the night I took this photo. I got there about an hour before sunset, and that didn’t give me much time to hike through the dunes and find a good composition for the sunset (and moonrise). I actually started running through the dunes at one point, trying to chase the sun before it set.

Since I was rushing so much, I got sloppy and forgot that I needed to take two separately focused photos for this image.

So, that’s lesson #1 here: don’t rush. Get to your photo location well before you plan to actually hit that shutter button.

How the sand could have looked better

I was pretty lucky to visit these dunes when I did. It had just rained on them earlier that week, and instead of those typical smooth waves you see in dry sand dunes, I got to see these beautiful thick lines of moist sand. It’s something you don’t see very often, and I should have emphasized them more in this photo.

I could have done this by getting closer and using a wide-angle lens, or getting higher so I could shoot them from above where these waves were most visible from.

Since my mind was so set on photographing the moonrise, I didn’t appreciate the unique conditions of the dunes nearly enough.

So, that’s lesson #2 here: although you may be set on photographing a specific landscape, always keep an open mind and be ready to adapt to any surprises you might find.

Is the moon too small?

I personally feel like the moon is also a little small in this photo, but this isn’t really a huge problem and I think it’s just a personal preference: I love images with a giant moon (like this awesome photo by Jim Goldstein).

To make the moon bigger in this image, I should have used a 300mm lens instead of the 70-200.

So, lesson #3 is: visualize your final image before snapping the photo, and know your lenses.

What went right with this photo

Although I think this is a “bad photo,” I’d like to end on a positive note and just say that a few things did go well with this shot:

the light was glorious (thanks to the setting sun)
the unique waves in the sand still look pretty cool even if they’re not emphasized enough
I think I chose a good composition (with the sand making up most of the photo)

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The Future of PhotoNaturalist

Steve Berardi — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:41:37 +0000

I’m happy to announce that PhotoNaturalist celebrates its first birthday today (February 2, 2010). I launched this site exactly one year ago today, and I must say it’s been an amazingly fun year!

In our first year, we went from zero to 1800 subscribers and had more than 40,000 unique visitors.

To all of you who shared PhotoNaturalist articles with your friends, I owe you a special thank you, because that has been one of our largest sources of new traffic.

This site has grown faster and larger than I ever could have imagined, so I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where to go from here.

One thing I’ve learned from running this website for the last year is that I absolutely love learning new things, and I love sharing what I learn. It’s something I’ve enjoyed my whole life, but never really realized until now.

I’ve started a lot of little projects throughout my life, and for every single one I ended up creating a website to share what I learned. Most of these sites are long gone now, but one of them from ten years ago still remains and I love going back there once in awhile for a glimpse of my past

Anyway, I’ve realized that PhotoNaturalist encompasses all of my biggest passions in life: nature, photography, learning, and sharing. So, I have made the decision to try and run this website full time. There’s so much more I want to do with this site and the community that surrounds it, that I cannot see another way to do it, other than work on it full time.

Of course, running it full time means finding a way to generate income from the site, so here are a few of my thoughts on that:

I will continue to write 1 or 2 blog posts per week, which will always be free. In fact, I’m hoping to start writing 2 or 3 per week.
I don’t want to run a bunch of ads on the site for two reasons: I don’t want to advertise things I haven’t personally used and support, and I don’t want ads to interrupt you while you’re reading.
This leaves one solution I’ve thought of: selling extra resources that go into more depth than the blog posts. This would include things like eBooks, videos, etc

I think it’s really hard sometimes to squeeze a topic into a short blog post, so I see the eBook as a way to cover a topic more completely. So, for the next year, I’m planning to release three eBooks that will each sell for less than $20.

The first one will be on wildflower photography, and I’m planning to release it in the first or second week of March, about one month from now. It’ll be about 50 pages or so, and will contain everything I know about photographing wildflowers, covering the topic in much more depth than the free eBook I released last year.

The other two eBooks I’ll keep a secret for now, but one of them I plan to release in the summer, and the other in the fall.

If these eBooks go well this year, and PhotoNaturalist continues to grow, then next year I’d like to try a few other things, like holding in-person workshops, release training videos, and maybe even create some kind of membership program that will give you online access to a wealth of training material that I create.

So, that’s my plan. As always, if you have thoughts, comments, or suggestions you’d like to share with me, please e-mail me at editor@photonaturalist.net, or leave a comment below, or use our contact page, or if you’re reading this through our email updates, just hit reply

Thanks again for all your support this year. I always look forward to writing a post each week, and although I don’t always have time to reply to your comments or e-mails, I always read and enjoy every single one.

Cheers to another year of capturing natural light

Steve

How three bananas can help improve your wildlife photography skills

Steve Berardi — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:19:10 +0000

One of the hardest parts about photographing wildlife is learning how to use a long lens. There’s a lot of little things you have to get used to with that big lens.

One of those is simply learning how to quickly locate your subject in the viewfinder. With such a long lens (around 400mm or greater), you have such a small field of view that it becomes hard to locate your subject.

Being able to locate your subject quickly is important because you usually only have a second or two to take a shot. This is something I learned pretty quick when I went to photograph hawks with my dad a few weeks ago.

Well, I’ve thought of a little exercise that will help you get used to locating your subjects through that long lens–and it involves three bananas. And, don’t worry: I’m not gonna tell you to use the bananas as bait!

Here’s how the exercise works:

( 1 ) Place the bananas far away from each other in a large room. Here’s an example setup (bananas are circled in red):

( 2 ) Stand where you can see all the bananas in front of or to the side of you.

( 3 ) Randomly pick a banana, and try to find it as quickly as possible through your viewfinder. It’ll also help if you try to focus on the banana too, but the main thing to practice here is simply finding the banana.

( 4 ) Continue to randomly pick and locate the bananas through your viewfinder, until your arms fall off (just kidding: you might want to stop a few minutes before that happens)

Locating subjects through a long lens is mostly about hand-eye coordination, so this exercise will help improve these skills. I’ve been doing this for about 15 minutes a day for the last couple of weeks and have definitely noticed an improvement.

It’s kind of like learning to play the guitar. At first, it’s really hard to move between the strings and hit the one you want, but with a little practice you get used to where those strings are and can instantly locate each one of them.

Of course, you don’t have to use bananas for this exercise. I just used them as an example, and to make the title of this post interesting. You can use any objects you have available. The important part is that you pick them randomly, and that you try to increase your speed in finding them through the viewfinder.

Practicing this kind of stuff at home will help you locate your subject when it really matters: when you’re out on the trail and have just a few seconds to respond. Whether or not you can locate your subject quickly will often determine if you get a shot or not.

What other methods do you have?

If you’ve discovered another method or exercise that helps you quickly locate subjects through a long lens, please share it by leaving a comment below. Thanks!

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Why you should memorize the f-number series

Steve Berardi — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:36:14 +0000

Diagram by Chris Buckley / Used under the GFDL

In photography there’s something known as the standard f-number series. It’s a geometric sequence of f-numbers that goes like this:

f/1

1.4

2.8

5.6

At first this may look like a random series of numbers, but there’s actually a method to this madness, and memorizing this series can help you make quick adjustments to exposure when switching between f-numbers.

What makes this series so special?

The f-numbers in this geometric series are known as whole stops. And, the thing that makes them special is that each number in the series transmits exactly twice or one-half the amount of light of the neighboring f-number.

For example, f/5.6 transmits exactly twice as much light as f/8. This means that if you’re shooting at f/5.6 and want to switch to f/8, but still keep the same exposure, then you’ll have to make your shutter speed exactly two times slower (because at f/8 you’ll be transmitting two times less light). If you were shooting 1/100 sec at f/5.6, then at f/8 you should shoot at 1/50 sec.

Having this f-number series memorized will allow you to switch between f-numbers and quickly calculate the new exposure.

Your camera probably also has intermediate f-numbers between these whole stops (usually in increments of one-half or one-third stops). So, memorizing the whole stop sequence will also help you calculate the exposures for these intermediate stops when switching between f-numbers.

Where do those strange numbers come from, anyway?

The f-numbers are calculated as a ratio between focal length and aperture diameter:

f-number = (focal length) / (aperture diameter)

For example, if you’re shooting with a 100mm lens (the focal length), and the aperture diameter is set to 25mm, then the f-number will be 4 (100/25).

At first you might think that doubling the aperture diameter would allow twice as much light to be transmitted, but it doesn’t work this way because doubling the aperture diameter would more than double the surface area of the aperture.

It’s the surface area that needs to double when you want to transmit twice as much light, and to double the surface area of a circle, you have to multiply its diameter by the square root of 2 (which is about 1.414). And, this is why the whole stops are incremented by a factor of 1.414.

2.8 = 2.0 * 1.414
4 = 2.8 * 1.414
5.6 = 4 * 1.414
…and so on…

Confusing enough?

I realize this is probably the first time I’ve brought up math in a post, so let me know if any of this makes no sense, and I’ll be happy to clarify as much as I can in the comments

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Learn more than exposure from the histogram

Steve Berardi — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:24:47 +0000

In a previous post, I explained how to use the histogram to get a better exposure (and then how to do it better with the RGB version). The histogram is a great tool, and it can even tell you a lot more than just the exposure of your image. It can also help show you properties like contrast.

Brian Auer recently wrote some wonderful articles on his blog that illustrate some of the other things you can learn from the histogram, so I thought I’d share them:

I usually just share these kinds of links on our Twitter or Facebook pages, but I thought these were so good that they deserved a blog post

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Quick tip for getting sharper wildlife photos

Steve Berardi — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:45:40 +0000

Anna's Hummingbird (male) / Photo by Steve Berardi

Getting sharp photos of wildlife is a constant battle. With an uncontrollable and constantly moving subject, you usually end up with a lot more blurry shots than sharp ones.

To increase your chances of getting a sharp shot, you can do things like shoot in JPEG to help you take a lot more photos in a burst.

And, if you’re shooting in JPEG, there’s one more setting you should adjust to make your sharp photos even sharper. It won’t do anything for the blurry shots, but it’ll make those good shots even better.

Increase the sharpness on your picture “styles” or “controls”

They’re called picture “styles” on Canon cameras and picture “controls” on Nikons, but they work pretty much the same way: they’re presets for different types of images and usually include settings for contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, and sharpness.

You can safely adjust these later in post-processing if you’re shooting in RAW, but if you shoot in JPEG, then you need to adjust these on the camera before you snap the photo.

By default, the settings are pretty conservative, so I usually end up setting the sharpness to level 5 on my Canon cameras (the default is 3). I haven’t tried this on a Nikon, but I imagine they also have fairly conservative defaults. Sharpness is the only adjustment I make, I leave the rest at zero.

Shooting in JPEG really only makes sense when you need that fast burst rate, so it’s easy to forget about these picture styles. But, if you perform some tests with your cameras and lenses to find a suitable sharpness level, you can use these styles or controls to get just a little more sharpness