Jeff Wignall's "The Joy of Digital Photography"

Read (and Believe) the Wildlife Warning Signs!

Recently I've been researching a possible trip to Yellowstone National Park this fall. It's a place I've always wanted to photograph and I need a lot of photos for a new book so hopefully this will be the year. While I was researching the trip I came across a page on the park's official site that gave some very serious warnings (including a video of elk attacking cars) about keeping yourself safe from wildlife and vice versa.

I take those kinds of warnings seriously (and so should you) because I've seen wildlife in parks do some very unpredictable things. Last year we revisited the Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa, a wonderful prairie preserve that has a free-roaming heard of bison. There are signs when you're entering the bison area that warn you that these are wild (and big--they weigh in excess of a few thousand pounds) and unpredictable animals. People take the signs for granted though and somehow think the bison know that you're visitors and they'll remain calm in your presence.

Trust me, the animals will do exactly as they please--always. While we were driving (very slowly) up a gravel road, suddenly we saw a heard of 40 or so bison heading right for us and as they got closer, their pace picked up dramatically. Within seconds they traversed several hundred yards and were heading right for our car (and the car in front of us--see the photo) and in a few more seconds we were completely surrounded by huge, snorting, excited bison. I have no idea what sent them off on a tear or why they ended up on the gravel road around us, but to unexpectedly be engulfed by dozens of two or three thousand pound wild animals (with horns) is a weird and insecure feeling. I have almost no fear (but lots of respect) of most wild animals, but this was still an unnerving experience--and we were in a car! I remember thinking that our SUV probably wasn't much of a match for one of these guys running at full speed. To make things even more edgy, there were a number of babies in the herd and parents are much more unpredictable when there are young nearby.

Fortunately the animals remained very calm and ended up just grazing and feeding their young almost within arm's reach. We sat for about a half an hour watching and photographing them at super close range and wondering what was next. Then, on some secret signal from one of the herd elders, they left as quickly as they'd come.

If you're traveling to a wildlife refuge this summer, pay attention to the warning signs, even if other people don't. And take time before your trip to research exactly what type of animals you're likely to encounter in a particular park. If you're going to hike or go into the back country, be sure to know also what types of snakes and insects you're likely to encounter and how to protect yourself. Can I tell you the dozens of times I stepped off into the brush in various Florida refuges to take a leak before I was reminded by two kids walking along with an eight-foot Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake on a stick that Florida is overrun with venomous snakes!

What Lens Next for Your DSLR?

Other than asking me what camera they should buy, the question I get most from friends (and students) with DSLR cameras is: What lens should I buy next? Most people buy their DSLR as a kit these days and that usually includes a fairly substantial zoom lens that covers a range from moderately wide angle to moderate telephoto. These lenses are typically lightweight, fast-focusing and, for the optical range they cover, offer a lot of flexibility.

The larger issue for me is that these lenses are restricted to a fairly moderate (i.e., creatively safe) optical zone. You get a moderate wide-angle lens through a moderate telephoto lens range and that's it. I much prefer working with optics that are capable of providing a more extreme view of the world--either extremely wide-angle or extremely telephoto. Let's look at wide-angle lenses first and in the next posting I'll talk about teles.

Most consumer-level DSLR cameras have a DX sensor that is about one-third (in terms of diagonal size) the size of a 35mm frame of film. One of the byproducts of having a digital sensor that is smaller is that, because the sensor is only seeing the center of the lens' coverage, the focal length of whatever lens you're using is effectively longer. This magnification is called the cropping factor. Typically you have to multiply the focal length of a lens designed for 35mm by a factor of 150% (it varies by camera and sensor) to get the effective focal length. (And again, I'm only talking here about cameras that have a smaller sensor; lenses used on digital SLRs that have a full-frame sensor provide the same coverage that they would provide on a 35mm film camera.) This is great if you're a telephoto lens user (if you often shoot wildlife or sports, for example), but not so great if you like using very wide-angle lenses.

If, for example, you're using a 24mm lens--which provides a stunning wide-angle view on 35mm--you're working with what is effectively a 36mm lens on a DSLR. That's only a moderate wide-angle at best and is actually closer to a "normal" lens. In order to get really wide-angle effects with your DX-sensor DSLR you'll need a much wider lens. I recently bought a 10-20mm Sigma ultra wide-angle lens and I love it. In terms of 35mm lenses it provides the angle of view of a 15-30mm lens and so restores the ultra wide-angle view that I'd get with a lens in that focal-length range. Nikon makes a 12-24mm lens that provides coverage equal to an 18-36mm lens on 35mm and Canon's EF-S 10-22 USM is approximately the same.

The beauty of a really wide-angle lens is that it exaggerates spaces like crazy and can elongate shapes and provide a much greater feeling of depth in all kinds of photos from landscapes to still lifes. I shot the photo of the old freight train show here (shot in Greenville, Maine) using the Sigma 10-20mm lens specifically to exaggerate the shapes and length of the train cars. Look at how that near car seems to be looming over the rest of the train and really draws the eye into the composition.

If this type of visual exaggeration appeals to you, you might want to consider adding an extreme wide-angle lens to your DSLR kit. I would suggest getting something that offers a minimum focal length in the range of 15-22mm (in terms of 35mm coverage), so 10-15mm in the DX lens format. (I wouldn't go for a "fisheye" lens as your first ultra-wide lens, but I will talk about those in a future posting.) In the next posting I'll talk about the advantages of adding a more extreme telephoto lens.

Big Photo Print Sale: Blow Yourself Up

If you're never seen one of your photos blown up big--really big--you need to try it. Seeing your photos as an 8x10 is fine, but when you see a 20 x 24-inch print, or better yet, a 30 x 40-inch print, it will blow your mind.

My friend Dave Z who owns ConnTech Imaging here in Connecticut has just announced a summer print sale that will let you see beautifully made color enlargements of your work at amazingly low prices. I've been using Dave's lab for years to make both personal and commercial client enlargements and the prints are the best you'll see anywhere--and I'd say that even if he wasn't my friend.

All of the prints are made from digital files on lustre finish Fuji Crystal Archive photographic and they will probably outlive your kids. I had Dave make some prints for one of my clients last summer and the client (an oil company) was blown away--they immediately had the prints framed for their office lobby. All that you have to do to get a print made is send a 300 dpi file (they'll help you set up an ftp for file transfer) sized to the size of the enlargement you want. Color corrections aren't included at this price--but the lab will match your file colors precisely. (They do, of course, offer color correction and other lab work for additional fees, but if you send them a great file, you'll get a great print.)

The lab will print from jpeg or TIFF files and they'll ship prints for $5 priority mail to any address in the United States. Here are the sale prices (the sale ends July 31st, so don't procrastinate!).

16x16 $7.00
16x20 $8.75
16x24 $10.50
20x24 $13.10
20x30 $16.40
24x30 $19.65
24x36 $25.90
30x30 $26.60
30x40 $32.75

As I've said before, I don't like to promote anything commercial in this blog, but this is a great print sale and worth knowing about. You can call the lab if you have questions: 203-878-8100. Or just go to the ConnTech site and get more details.

Exploit Lighting Contrast for Dramatic Images

One of the most difficult issues in getting a good exposure is contrast. The problem is that both digital sensors and film have a limited dynamic range--the range between brightest and darkest tones. When you go beyond that range you start to lose detail in either the highlights or the shadows (depending on which exposure decisions you make). If you expose for the bright areas you end up with shadows that are pure black with no detail, and if you expose for the highlights, you get whites that look very washed out.

Does this mean you can't shoot in very contrasty situations? No! You can actually exploit those contrast limits to create very dramatic images. Since there's usually not that much visual information in shadows anyway (there are exceptions to that), what I tend to do is to expose for the brightest areas where I want detail and let the shadows go dark. That's exactly what I did in this shot of daffodils: I took a reading (in matrix mode) with the flowers in the center of the frame and then shot at that exposure. I knew that the flower stalks and the greenery around the blossoms was going to go dark, but I like the way the lighting spotlighted the bright yellow daffodils.

I shot this photo in the late afternoon, by the way, just before the sun disappeared behind a hill. That late sun is very low angle, of course, so it helped with the spotlighting effect. The light, while it was fairly intense, was also very warm, so that helped too. By exposing just for that highlights though, it saturated the warm lighting and the colors in the flowers.

Next time you're faced with a contrasty situation that seems impossible to expose for, try taking a reading from the brightest object where you want detail and let the shadows go dark--it's a contrasty look, to be sure, but sometimes also very dramatic.

Photoshop Hue & Saturation Fun: Leave Reality Behind

I have a friend that is a DJ at the FM station where I do a monthly music and interview show (WPKN 89.5 FM) who is always quick to remind me that, in art at least (and lots of other things), reality is far overrated. And when it comes to playing around in Photoshop, he's certainly right. While I use image editing largely to enhance reality and make my images appear more like they appeared to me in person (but even that is a bit of an abstraction since the way your eyes/brain see a scene and the way the camera sees them are two different things), but sometimes leaving reality far behind is a lot more fun.

The simplest way to alter reality in a photograph is just to turn the colors inside out. Changing the colors of familiar objects is fun because while people recognize what your subject used to be, they have to view it in a brand new light. And in Photoshop (and most editing programs) altering color is a piece of cake. In fact, I only used two tools to turn this normally blue and green peacock in a shocking mix of red and blue. The first thing that I did was to simply play wiht the "hue" slider in the hue-saturation tool. As you move that slider left or right all of the color relationships change. Once I had a color combination I liked, I used the "saturation" slider in that tool to really intensify the colors. Next I used the curves tool to heighten the contrast (by making the darks darker and the bright areas brighter) and further saturate the colors.

While I played with the image for 20 mintues or so, the actual work only took about five minutes. Remember that there is no right or wrong when it comes to mixing up colors in an image--whatever looks good to you works.

Visit My Photo Tip of the Day Blog, too!

You may have noticed that I haven't updated this blog in a few months and that's partly because I've been busy writing a new book for Lark Books (on how to win digital photo contests). I've also had an unusually high number of photo assignments for some reason. No complaints!

But the real reason that I haven't updated this recently is that I've started yet another blog (my third) called the Photo Tip of the Day blog. I began the blog about three months ago and, miracle of miracles, I've actually been able to keep up with the daily postings (well, OK, occasionally I'm a day or two behind!). So please visit that blog, especially if you're just learning photography or want to move to a higher level of shooting. I think you'll find the daily tips both useful and interesting. And I'm always open to suggestions for topics, so feel free to write!

I will keep this blog fresher from now on and will probably use it more for industry news, equipment reviews, longer shooting tips, etc.

By the way, the shot here is of my girlfriend in Monument Valley in Utah and the photo is the subject of one of the tips on the new blog: when it's OK to break the rules of composition.

And by the way, as of this posting date, I'm still looking for contest-winning photos to illustrate my new book (the entire book is being illustrated by contest-winning photos by amateur photographers), so if you've ever won a photo contest, send me the details and the photo and we'll see if we can't work it into the book. You'll get a small fee, a free copy of the book and your name in lights :)

Photographing People at Work

Every day we're surrounded by people at work: men putting a new roof on the house next door, people selling produce at the farmers' market--even just the crossing guard that gets your kids across Main Street safely. But how often do you stop and capture these bits of daily life with your camera? In large part all of these people who keep the fabric of our life together go unnoticed and undocumented. We tend to develop a blind spot to everyday events, but the things people do for a living are often quite interesting visually.

More importantly you never know just how valuable those images might become--particularly to the subjects themselves. Recently I had a big old maple tree taken down in my backyard and I got so fascinated watching them work I decided to document their amazing skills (and courage--the tree was nearly 90-feet tall). These guys swung around the tree tops with a four-foot chain saw like ballerinas on an aerial stage. I probably shot 100 or so images during the several hours that they worked.

Once the tree cutters had the tree down, I went inside, downloaded the images and printed a few of the guy that did most of the cutting. When I gave him the prints he was pretty shocked and I thought it was because I was able to hand him an 8 x 10-inch print in a matter of minutes. But the story was far more interesting: It turns out he'd never seen a photograph of himself at work and--even more incredibly--his mother back in Central America hadn't seen a photo of him in the 12 years he'd been living and working here. I was stunned. In all the time he was living here--and living here legally--he'd never had a photo taken of himself to send home.

Of course I gave him a set of prints to send to his mother and he was overwhelmed and very grateful. Here I was just trying to pass the time and put some more images into my library and those photos became a connection between a mother and son thousands of miles apart. Everyone has a story to tell, as a photographer it's your job to help them tell it visually.

Software Cinema 50%-off Sale on Select Training DVDs

Here's a quick tidbit that will save you serious bucks on some great training DVDs: Software Cinema is having a 50% off sale on selected older titles. Titles on sale include Katrin Eismann's "Image Restoration, Repair & Enhancement" (everything you always wanted to know about rescuing older photographs), Jane Conner-ziser's "Pro Studio Retouching with Photoshop" (including a master class on retouching eyes), Jim DiVitale's "Compositing Images" and Dave Montizambert's "Scanning Images for Photoshop. Also on the sale list is Ben Willmore's  DVD on "Advanced Masking" which I haven't seen yet but I'm sure is just as great as all of Ben's extremely useful training materials and books. (Hey, speaking of Ben, check out Ben Willmore's blog for some good reading.)

I'm a huge fan of Software Cinema's training DVDs and hardly a week goes by that I'm don't pop in a Katrin Eismann DVD and learn something new. These are all older DVDs (most of them probably CS2-based training) but the information never goes stale and can easily be adpated to newer versions of Photoshop. The training that Eismann, Willmore and others put into their lessons is world-class information that you shouldn't be without--and now you can get it at half price.

The sale code (only on selected items) is SCW1008A and is only good until November 1st, so tarry not! 

PDN PhotoPlus Expo: New York's Annual Photo Extravaganza

The PDN PhotoPlus Expo is New York's big annual photography event and it's coming to the Javit's Convention Center next week, Thursday through Saturday, October 23-25. The show is really two shows in one: an enormous trade show with literally hundreds of exhibitors showing off the latest cameras and accessories and an educational conference featuring more than 100 seminars.

I'm a trade show lover and so the expo part of the show really calls to me. I'm as much of a sucker as the next photographer when it comes to collecting camera brochures and fee inkjet paper samples. But if you're heading there, wear your comfy walking shows: the expo is (to say the least) a busy and tiring event (last year there were 27,000 visitors during the three-day show). I suggest studying the site carefully and mapping out a plan (especially if you have particular things you want to see on the trade-show floor). I covered the PhotoPlus show for years when I was the Technical Editor of PDN (Photo DIstrict News) and I used to come off the trade-show floor each day feeling like I'd run a marathon (on carpeted concrete). But if you've never been to the show, you should absolutely go, you'll have a blast and you'll bring home far too many camera brochures and pieces of demo software. (If you happen to be traveling, you can ship stuff home from the Javit's lobby and while that's expensive, wow, it's such a relief!)

The seminars at PhotoPlus are always top shelf--you simply won't find better seminars anywhere. There are eleven different seminar tracks covering business, digital tools, photo markets, promotion, technology that are being taught by some of the biggest names in the business, including: Stephen Johnson, Joe McNally, sports shooting legend Walter Ioos, Seth Resnik, printing master John Paul Caponigro and one of my personal color-photography heroes Jay Maisel.

And speaking of heroes (and heroines), Katrin Eismann, the woman I consider the best Photoshop teacher on earth will be giving a seminar called "Skin, Skin, Skin." To spend a few hours with Katrin is inspiring and mind expanding; it's a life-changing experience for me each time I take one of her seminars. (continued)

Flaming Pear's "Flood" filter: Add a watery reflection to any scene

I don't spend a lot of time playing with creative Photoshop plug-in filters, but I have to admit they are a lot of fun. (In fact, if I had more time, I'd probably spend my life doing nothing else.) One of my favorites is Flaming Pear's "Flood" filter that lets you add a watery foreground reflection to virtually any scene. It's a lot of fun to add reflections to subjects like desert landscapes or city streets where they just don't belong.

The filter is super easy to use and so far I haven't come across (or gone looking for) much in the way of documentation, so most of what I do is just click on various tool icons to see what happens--a great way to learn what a filter can do, by the way. You can alter the appearance of the reflection by adding things like waves and ripples and you can also control the perspective of the reflection and where exactly in intersects you subject. I created the shot of the reflection of the Eiffel Tower in just a few minutes of playing and experimenting. For $29 it's a filter that's well worth owning and you can download it immediately from the Flaming Pear site. The company offers several other interesting filters, too.