Fingal Head

Derek had a few great suggestions including Fingal Head (northern New South Wales). This looks to be a fantastic location, with a stunning rock formation of basalt columns, which look to rival the Giants Causeway in Ireland, combined with some nice looking beaches this place looks to be a winner.

Currumbin

Currumbin is located close to Surfers Paradise so its not surprising to see some nice wave action around these parts. Throw in rocks and sand, and you’ve got a good combo for a great shot.

Snapper Rocks & Rainbow Bay

One thing Australia is not short of is wonderful rock formations along the coastline. Snapper Rocks and Rainbow Bay look like they’re prime examples, and theres no shortage of waves to capture or surf either! Another suggestion was the Southport Seaway, so check it out if you’re in the area too.

To create the 3D effect you must have two images to start with (one for the left eye and one for the right). Then we must make sure only the right eye sees the right image and the left eye only sees the left image. We do this by colouring each image differently (blue or red) and then using a pair of red and blue 3D glasses to separate the images.

Step One

Go out with your camera and take two images about 3 inches apart (about the same distance between your eyes) of the same object. Try not to move the camera too much and don’t take them too far apart otherwise you wont get the same effect.

Step Two

Open your images in Photoshop, (keeping track of which one is for the left eye and which for the right) create a new document the same size as the images and select each one, copy it (ctrl-c or command-c) and paste it (ctrl-v or command-v) onto the new document, so you should have a 3 layers a background layer, and 2 image layers. Make sure your right image is at the top. Label your image thumbnails so that you know which is left and right.

Step Three

Now we need to take some of ther colour out of each image so the right one appears red and the left one appears blue (cyan). Do this by first clicking on your right eye image in the layers thumbnails, goto Image->Adjustments->Levels (or hit ctrl-L/command-L). Now from the dropdown box at the top that says ‘Channel’, select the Green channel, then at the bottom where is says ‘Output Levels’, change the 255 value to 0, then from the box at the top, select the Blue Channel, and change its Output Level to 0 also. Click ok, your layer should appear Red now.

Step Four

Now select you left eye layer from the layers palette, goto Image->Adjustments->Levels, click the Channel drop down box and select the Red Channel. In the Output level section at the bottom, change the 255 to 0. Hit ok, and now your left layer should appear Blue.

Step Four

Now all you need to do is align the layers. Click on your right layer in the Layers palette and in the dropdown box just above it where it says ‘Normal’, select ‘Screen’. Make sure the objects in the centre of the images are aligned nicely (use the move tool ctrl-m, and arrow keys to move it about). You may find it easier to use your 3D glasses to get it to the right alignment.

Step Five

Crop any white space off and save. Done, enjoy!

The Great Ocean Road

Starting from Melbourne and snaking its way along the coast to Adelaide, the Great Ocean Road speaks for itself. Its great. The meandering highway takes the traveler past plunging cliff top drops that fall in to the crashing waves below, serene bays with pretty towns and one of Australia’s most iconic rock formations – The Twelve Apostles. These rock formations are basically remnants of the eroded cliff sides, standing tall in the pounding surf, but provide a stunning back drop to any shot taken here, and with the ever-changing conditions and sea spray to contend with it can be a challenge, but one that is worthwhile nonetheless. Great location for: Wave motion, moody sunsets/sunrises.

Cape Le Grand National Park

With so many pristine beaches on the east coast of Australia, and the shear remoteness of the west coast, it’s easy to see why many people fail to even think about getting to this stunning location nestled in the south western corner. But that’s whats so great about it, this place is my idea of heaven, impossibly white sandy beaches gently shelving into a turquoise ocean that fades out to deep blue, green bushland backdrop with no development to speak of (its a national park), and not another soul in sight. Great location for: Classic beach landscapes, wave motion, sunrises, wildlife(kangaroos).

The Pinnacles

Once you set eyes on these things its not hard to see why they’re called the Pinnacles. Its a strange yet captivating location, where hundreds if not thousands of pointy rocks, some measuring a few meters in height, stand together in a relatively small desert like area, forming a strange alien landscape, but one worthy of an awesome landscape shot and of its place in list. Great Location for: Unique landscapes, sunrise/sunsets.

Karijini National Park

One of the hidden treasures in Western Australia, Karijini National Park is home to a vast network of deep red rock canyons, with cool green rivers running through the ravines into picturesque tree lined swimming holes. Karijini is another one of those ‘in the middle of nowhere’ locations, but feels so inviting when you get there. Coupled with the absolutely astounding number of stars you can see at night, Karijini is a place of magic, and a fantastic location for photography. Great location for: Glowing canyons, moving water, sunsets/sunrises, wildlife.

Kimberley Region

Nestled in the north western corner of the red continent is the unique Kimberley region. Containing some of the most ancient rock formations in Australia, dating to over 350 million years old, which form the stunning Purnululu National Park and home to hundreds of aboriginal rock paintings, the Kimberley region is as remote as it is beautiful. The area is also known for its abundance of Boab trees, appearing with bulbous trunks and spindly branches, like something out of a Tim Burton movie, making for great landscapes. Great location for: Unique landscapes (rocks/trees), sunsets/sunrises, rock art.

Kakadu and Lichfield National Parks

Pounding waterfalls, unbearable heat, cooling lakes, crocodile infested rivers and crazy polar aligned termite mounds, all set amongst lush bushland – Between these two National Parks they have an astounding array of scenery to captivate any tourist or indeed any photographer. Highlights include, Jim Jim Falls, Twin Falls, magnetic termite mounds and fantastic open vistas. Great location for: Waterfalls, water motion, general landscapes, wildlife, rock art.

The Great Barrier Reef

Underwater photographers will be in paradise with this location. Visible from space and perhaps one of Australias best known attractions, The Great Barrier Reef is a haven for millions of brightly coloured tropical fish, turtles and throngs of tourists. Its a little wonder though; coral reefs, warm clear blue ocean, and a similarly tropical climate make for one of the best photographic locations in OZ. Great location for: Underwater photography, underwater wildlife, beaches, boats, people.

Whitsunday Islands

Located close to the Great Barrier Reef are the stunning Whitsunday Islands, these islands form part of the Whitsunday National Park, and provides a superb back drop of coral white sandy beaches with crystal clear waters which are great for snorkeling or scuba diving. A highlight is climbing to the hill lookout, and beholding the glorious view over Whitehaven Beach. Great location for: Fantastic views, underwater photography, beach vistas, wildlife (+ underwater), boats, people.

The Blue Mountains

A few hours drive from Sydney is the Blue Mountains. A popular tourist spot but for a good reason; this spot is endowed with more than its fair share of rocky outcrops and rugged terrain, criss-crossed with great walking trails. Perfect for the nature loving photographer, the blue mountains also has an abundance of flora and fauna, and surprisingly gets a pretty cold and even a coating of snow in winter. Great Location for: wildlife photography and country landscapes.

Sydney

This bustling metropolis provides such a huge gamut of photographic opportunities, you’ll find it hard to know what to shoot. The city itself provides some nice architecture to shoot, including the Centerpoint Tower, the Harbour Bridge and the iconic Sydney Opera House. While traveling to the eastern suburbs reveals some great beaches surrounded by nice rocky outcrops that can make fantastic landscapes. But that’s not all, Sydney is filled with a mix of interesting (and a few crazy) people, making it perfect for street scenes and portraits. Great Location for: Night scenes, architecture, boats (harbour), wave motion, people, beaches…

Australian Photo Locations

This list is definitely only the tip of the iceberg for great photography locations in Australia, there are far more locations than can be covered here and in the coming weeks we’ll be publishing a follow up article with readers suggestions with the low-down for a few local hot spots.

If you think you know of a certain special location, then let us know where and why, and we’ll look at compiling a list of great locations so photographers like yourself can experience the thrill of shooting a new location.
Keep a lookout in the coming week for the first installment: Australia!

If you want to submit a location, let us know at: hello@smashandpeas.com

Soft Light

We all know light is almost the most important part of photography, so when its overcast in autumn, these conditions present a nice subdued light that’s great for portrait photography. Add a little fill flash and portraits become beautifully lit with soft shadows; you couldn’t ask for better than that! Tip: When using fill flash (direct) dial down the flash by 1 stop or so to avoid producing a harsh light on skin tones.

Dramatic Colour

In autumn Mother Nature provides an ever changing palette of warmer colours to play with. The countryside gradually moves from green to golden browns, creating a dramatic backdrop for any landscape shoot. Try to make the most of this time of year as it comes around fast but its not long before the leaves are gone too; bare trees don’t look half as good.

Misty Mornings

Getting up early is hard enough, let alone in autumn when its getting darker but morning and evening are the best times to capture atmospheric misty shots, even add in some silhouetted trees and the sun back lighting the whole scene in a warm glow and you’ve got your classic autumn shot. These scenes can make great moody landscapes, just remember to adjust your exposure accordingly (or bracket) if you’re looking to get silhouettes.

The change in seasons not only brings a change in the landscape, but a change in the way we approach photography, and autumn is probably one of the better ones to get to grips with. The colours, light, and atmosphere come together to produce some of the best conditions for photographers, and I know I’ll be one of them out there, trying to make the most before winter comes knocking. Look out for the Winter article coming next season!

Apologies to those who missed the deadline. We do have something else coming up soon that you might want to get involved in though, more on that later!

Thank you to everyone who did take part. Here are some of the photographs that you sent us:

Taken by Quentin

Taken by Roger Chapman

Taken by Marcelo Campiglia

Taken by Coffee Break

Taken by Michael Kristensen

Taken by Aman Reaka

Thanks again to everyone who took part in our first photography challenge. Mark has an awesome tutorial coming up next week so don’t miss that and we’ll also be announcing a brand new feature!

With so many different possible settings on today’s cameras, it can be overwhelming and confusing, especially for those just starting out in the field and when we are faced with so many options it can be tempting to just give up rather than going through the stress of getting everything wrong. Obviously doing that means we’re never going to learn which setting is the right one, so let’s take that stress away, remove the decision making process and concentrate on the one thing that is most important, taking the photograph.

Choose a Single Subject

It could also be a good idea to take your photography minimalism to another level by concentrating on just one subject. Find something or somewhere with one main focal point, no background clutter, no distractions, just the subject you’re going to photograph. When you’ve found it, shoot the **** out of it!

Concentrating on one main subject will allow you to try new things with the camera without getting overwhelmed. Take as many different photos of the same subject as you can, trying new angles, different camera settings, a range of filters, whatever you want!

The key is to just shoot without thinking so much. You’re not trying to create a masterpiece everytime you press the shutter, just trying to get new ideas and see the subject in ways that you wouldn’t normally see.

Learn New Skills by Slowing Down

When you get the photographs back, look through them all and you may be suprised that your best images aren’t the ones that you expected. If that’s the case, you will have learned something new.

Learning just one new skill doesn’t sound like much, but if you learn one new skill every day, week or month, you’ll be a much better photographer than if you just gave up because it was all too overwhelming.

Don’t try to learn everything at once, slow down and your photography will improve. Next time you get your camera out, think to yourself, what is the one main thing that I’m going to learn today?

Examples of Minimalism in Photography

Lonely Water photographs by German photographer, Bernhard Quade.

Iceburg Series by Canadian photographer, David Burdeny.

Minimal photographs from the world of Flickr.

Last land standing

France minimal

The trail

H13

nolineonthehorizon

The Pool

bandon

where land ends gently

Lough Erne Jetty

Broken Jetty at Lough Neagh

How it Works

Each challenge will have a unique theme, designed to take you out of your comfort zone. Your task is to shoot your best picture related to the set theme and send it to us with it’s technical details and if you like, the story behind the photo. We’ll then compile a gallery with the best entries and showcase them on the blog the following week.

Photography Challenge #1

The theme for our first photography challenge is… Water!

It’s a pretty broad theme, so nice and easy to start with; we’re hoping to see some quality entries, so grab your camera and get shooting! Send your best attempt along with your camera settings to: hello@smashandpeas.com

The deadline for sending your entry is Wednesday the 30th of September.

Dont worry if you’re only just starting out, it will be great to see a broad range of entries, so submit your best efforts and good luck!

What is Raw

Pretty much all DSLR’s these days come with the option of choosing to save your pictures in Raw format, JPEG format, or both at the same time. Raw, as the name suggests is the raw unprocessed data, saved to your memory card direct from the camera sensor, and to some peoples surprise, is not actually an image; further processing by your computers Raw processing software is required to crunch the data, and spit out an image file that we can view. JPEG on the other hand is already a viewable format, so if your camera is set to this, you can preview your images, and can dump them onto your computer and view them without any additional processing.

Raw Vs JPEG

It seems to be a fairly well known ‘fact’ that Raw image data produces the ultimate in quality images. But does it? Comparing an image derived from Raw data with a JPEG (fine mode) straight from the camera, the results are startlingly similar, with Raw performing only slightly better in tests (See here). So it seems there’s little quality advantage from a Raw to a JPEG; what else does a Raw have over a JPEG? One thing it does have is a higher dynamic range, Raw data stores more light information than a JPEG, so this could be an advantage if you were into HDR and wanted to try and create a limited range HDR image by processing it a few times then combining the resulting files later. Also, Raw data does have greater flexibility in that, it can be processed to get the most detail out of highlights or shadows, depending on what the photographer wants when processing the data but when compared to JPEG, there really doesn’t seem to be that much of an upside when shooting Raw. Raw files are inherently larger than JPEGs, taking up more space so you can fit less on a card, and not to mention increased write times means that fast shooting at sports events/fashion is out. The processing time associated with Raw images has got to be a bit of a downer too. Any professional photographer on a tight schedule would surely choose to shoot JPEGs, than waste a few hours processing and tweaking the final output? I know what option I would choose but this decision is probably more down to the personal preference of the individual photographer than anything else.

So while it’s nice to have the option of shooting Raw, for me it just doesn’t hold enough over JPEG to make me want to switch over and I know in my work flow, the faster the better. Why shoot Raw? Why indeed.

Let us know what format you shoot in the comments below!

The Redesign

The eagle eyed of you may have noticed that we’ve redesigned! Although it’s nothing too drastic, we felt things needed freshening up a little so hopefully you’ll like the changes we’ve made! I still need to go through all the old posts and change a few things for it to be perfect, so excuse the odd thing or two that might look a little wrong, it will be sorted in the next few days.

The biggest change is something that you wont notice, the backend. We’ve completely re-coded the design to make it easier and faster to update! Other changes include a “shorts” section where we’ll be sharing the best links from around the web, the comments section has been redesigned to make your thoughts a more prominent feature and we’ve cleaned up the whole sidebar, removing all the clutter and keeping only what’s important.

More Updates

So far we’ve been updating the blog roughly on a weekly basis. That is about to change as we’ll be publishing new articles far more often and there’ll be a more diverse selection for you to read through as we delve deeper into the world of photography! We’re also looking for guest contributors to share their opinions, knowledge and stories on all things photography. More on that later!

Assignments and Challenges

One of our biggest aims for taking the blog forward is to get the community more involved. We are not only here to help improve your photography, but our own as well and there is no better way to do that than to get out there and practice! We’ll be setting regular assignments that everyone can follow and every so often we’ll be throwing a challenge into the mix where you can compete against other readers to get your work showcased on the blog.

Your Thoughts

We want you to play a bigger role in the blogs future and would appreciate you sharing your thoughts. What do you think to the redesign? Will you be taking part in the assignments? Have an awesome suggestion? Let us know in the comments below!

Thank you for taking the time to read and we will look forward to reading your ideas and suggestions.