Photographing Animals

This has been on my to-do list for a while and now I've got a bit of spare time I'm finally getting around to it. I've had a chance to do a bit more animal photography than I usually do (not counting small kids, which are kind of like trying to photograph wild animals ...). By no means am I an expert on this, but I've found a few things that I have liked in some of my animal photos I've taken recently.

Despite my joke about kids and animals, these same principles also apply to portrait photography of people.

Focus/Sharpness

The number one thing - make sure the photo is sharp and in focus, particularly the eyes, or in the case of the shark, other "notable" features, such as the teeth:

Get in close - use that zoom and/or blur the distractors

I believe that it's often hard to reveal personality though a photograph from a distance. If you want to reveal the subject of the photo, you often need to eliminate distractions in the frame; this can be done either through a selective depth of field or zooming in to fill the frame with the subject or a part of the subject.

This eagle looks like he's analyzing me. The specular highlight in the eye adds that little something extra to the shot (just happened to be there - no planning on my part).


Put the animal in context

On the other end of the spectrum from zooming in on a single subject is placing the subject within a broader environment within the frame. How you do this depends on the story you want to tell with the photo. In the case of the eagle and the mountain, I wanted to tell the story of this magnificent bird flying free above the Andes mountains in Ecuador.

For this next picture, I wanted to tell the story of a morning at the beach - we've got the sunset, a couple of birds on the water, and the early riser, who's basking in the early morning rays from the sun. This is a closer shot, there is more detail in the bird and you can see the light filtering through the large wing feathers.

Show the animal in action

This relates to putting the animal in context. We are telling a story, possibly more limited, that shows the animal doing what it does - flying, jumping, running.

In this case the eagle is diving in to catch a piece of meat thrown into the air by his handler.

Show relationships

Once again, this is related to a broader context, but this time we want to show the animal interacting with others - humans, animals - to tell a story about their relationships.

In this first one, the eagle is returning to his handler. The eagle lives on a rescue reserve and had been badly mistreated for some time. After a great deal of care and nurturing, he learned to fly, though he will never be able to return to the wild.

Quotes from "Nemo," anyone?

Location Shooting

As I've been doing more portraits, I'm finding that I enjoy doing location photography more than studio portraits. This past weekend I got to do some photos at a park near our home.

Some of the things I like about location shooting:

- A more natural feel. A studio is a very unnatural location - people don't go there to relax and hang out. On the other hand, a park is a place where people go to relax, be with friends and family, etc. Just being in an environment like that helps people be more natural.

- Variety. A location like a park gives lots of different possibilities. You've got trees, benches, swings, etc.

- Landscape. I really enjoy landscape photography and being outside helps me combine portraits and landscape.

So, here are some examples from this past shoot:

Take Advantage of the Opportunities

Not too long ago the son of one of our neighbors got married and they decorated the common area where we live. It was a great opportunity to take some pictures of the girls by all of the beautiful flowers. As I was taking pictures the grandma came out and was cooing all over the girls and the mother of the groom came out and wanted me to take pictures of the girls with all of the different flower decorations! Here are just a couple from that photo shoot:

Camera Info:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/80
Av( Aperture Value ): F8.0
Exposure Compensation: -1
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 30.0 mm

Lit with homemade beauty dish, 1/4 power

Camera Info:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/160
Av( Aperture Value ):  F8.0
Exposure Compensation    -1/3
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Canon EF70-200mm f/4L USM
Focal Length: 109.0 mm

Lit with my homemade beauty dish, 1/4 power, about 2ft from her.

Home-made Beauty Dish

So, what to do when you want a beauty dish (a flash modifier), don't want to cough up the money for it, and have an old stand fan lying around? Make your own beauty dish! Zip ties, aluminum foil, and gaffer's tape ... just a few of my favorite things ...

I wanted to try using a beauty dish for my portraits, but couldn't justify spending the money on a "real" one. So, inspired by the website http://www.diyphotography.net/, I decided to try my own DIY project.

First disclaimer, it's not lightweight. The fan front I used is metal. I'm sure the real beauty dishes are a nice, lightweight aluminum or similar material.

OK, so we had an old fan lying around and the post was broken. Rather than fix it and have a functional fan, I decided to further dismantle it and make it totally useless as a fan. Perhaps that will make sense to some people ...

I took the front grill-work off and it conveniently had a hole right in the middle of it, which also just happened to be a great (but not perfect) size for my flash head. The round - and slightly curved - plastic circle that was over that part would soon become the reflector, taking its place in the center of the grill-work again.

I needed to line the inside of the dish with a reflective material. Knowing that only the best would suffice, I grabbed a roll of aluminum foil from the kitchen. This also covered the circular reflector.

The trickiest part of all of this was the mounting bracket. As luck would have it, I had a couple of metal bracket things in my toolbox that fit the bill. That and a few black zip ties did the trick. Before I zip tied everything to the grill work, I checked the distance so my flash head would be right through the hole and the flash, with remote trigger attached, all were the proper height with the bracket.

Next was how to make sure the flash head stayed in place, but I could take the flash away and also not mar/damage the flash body. Bungee cord to the rescue!

A few photos of the finished product:

The reflector is suspended using high-gauge fishing line.

OK, so now the real test- how does it perform in real life? Here are a few shots I took using my Frankenstein beauty dish:

Here it's used with the flash at 1/8 power - just enough to bring out facial details, but balancing with the ambient light:

This next one was shot in my indoor studio, flash at 1/4 power, just about at eye level (see highlights in the eyes). There is also a second flash, high and pointing down, shoot-through umbrella, that it providing some of the light on the backdrop as well as some hair highlights.

Next shot, high, subject looking into the light. I held the light stand in one hand, camera in the other ... managed to balance it all without dropping anything or beaning my daughter with any equipment ... Flash at 1/4 power.

So, a broader, somewhat softer light than using a bare flash, plus some directional control on it. All for a bit of time invested and an old fan on hand...

It's a stitch - Panoramic photos

Now that summer is winding down, I am slowly beginning to work my way through my photos that I have taken all summer. One of the things I focused on in my photos was panoramic shots. There were so many places we went that a panoramic was really the only way to capture the breadth of the scene.

A few tips and things that I've learned in trying to take photos to stitch together:

- Use manual mode on your camera. If you are shooting in a different mode, find the proper exposure you want and then set you camera to those settings in manual mode. This way you won't be changing aperture, shutter speed, or white balance across the different exposures.

- If you shoot holding your camera in portrait mode (vertical) it helps mitigate barrel distortion.

- You need about 25% overlap in each shot in order to help the automated processes in the various stitching software.

So here are a few examples from this summer:

Lake Cuicocha, near Otavalo, Ecuador




Imbrabura Volcano, near Otavalo, Ecuador




Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia:




Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia:




My program of choice for creating panoramas is Hugin, a freeware software program.

Details - Otavalan Market

I had been looking forward to getting back to Otavalo to take some pictures. As I was going through the market, I decided that I wanted to focus on details - not the usual broad shots of market stands, etc. Here they are:

Side shot of stacked blankets:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/13s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 33.0mm

Belts, a top view:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/20s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Alpaca blankets:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/10s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 46.0mm

Cinnamon sticks:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/10
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Anise seeds:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/25s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Spices:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/800s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Finger puppets:

EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/100s
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Perspective - Getting Low

So, what does the world look like laying on your belly?

While I was looking for photos to take in black and white (see previous post) I thought I'd give it a try. Despite Christy's comment ("Hey, why are you laying there taking a picture of concrete?), I got a couple of shots I liked.

I also liked this first one for the patterns and lines:

EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/15
Av( Aperture Value ): F20.0
Exposure Compensation: -1
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

And, of course, a shot of the kids:



EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/160
Av( Aperture Value ): F9.0
Exposure Compensation: -2/3
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

And a couple of kind of random shots to close it off ...



EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/20
Av( Aperture Value ): F22.0
Exposure Compensation: -2/3
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

 

EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/200
Av( Aperture Value ): F2.8
Exposure Compensation: -1
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Black and White - Textures and Pattern

I decided I wanted to try and look for photos with pattern and texture. In order to help myself out with this, I decided to shoot black and white so I would focus more on my themes, not worrying about the color. Both of the below shots were done in Aperture Priority mode, all natural light, and with an exposure compensation of -1 since I wanted to focus on the aperture and, since I was shooting black and white, to up the contrast a bit with darker shadows.

This first one, of a short wall in our front garden, you get both lines and texture. The light kind of rakes across the front of the rocks, accentuating the texture. The shallower depth of field (F6.3) works for this shot because the subject does not have much depth to it.

EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/640
Av( Aperture Value ): F6.3
Exposure Compensation: -1
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

This next shot has a couple of different patterns from the two kinds of wire fencing there. I wanted to anchor the shot with the post on the left, which gives the eye a starting place, "reading" the picture left to right. I also wanted to have most of the fence fairly in focus, with it just beginning to unsharpen at the far right of the picture, so chose the larger F-Stop of F22.

EXIF Data:
Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/50
Av( Aperture Value ): F22.0
Exposure Compensation: -1
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 50.0mm

Capturing Motion

I've wanted to try some of these techniques out for a while and I finally got around to it! Overall this weekend has been a good one for photography - I got to take these motion-capturing photos, plus have had two great portrait sessions.

Anyway, I guess that the motion capture worked for me - I still get a bit dizzy looking at the photos ...

Panning

This is where you set a slower shutter speed and then try to move your camera in synch with your subject and take the photo at the same time. The goal is to have a sharp-ish subject with everything else blurring with the motion.



EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/30
Av( Aperture Value ): F14.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

Out of about 20 or 30 pictures I took, only a couple came out like this, with the subject in focus. Here's another example of panning:



EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/30
Av( Aperture Value ): F14.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

Synching with the Subject

The other option is that you move with the subject at the same time/rate by being on whatever is moving. While I wanted to try this, I was hesitant because I tend to get nauseous just thinking about spinning in circles, but I liked the results! No growth without sacrifice! And I managed NOT to get sick, which is an added bonus.

Here we're on a merry-go-round kind of thing; I had Christy push us for a second. I got a few shots and then had to rest for a bit while my head stopped spinning ...



EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/30
Av( Aperture Value ): F14.0
ISO Speed    100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

In this next shot, we were on the basket swing the girls are on above. Clara was the willing victim this time, pushing us.



EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/30
Av( Aperture Value ): F14.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

Stopping Motion

The next option is to use a higher shutter speed to stop motion. In the following examples I also used the high-speed rapid-fire feature of my camera. All you have to do is hold the shutter button down and it continues taking photos at a high rate. The only issue with the below photos is focal point - Clara is jumping off of the swing, traveling forward as she comes off and to her landing. However, the camera is firing rapidly enough that the focal point does not change, so by the time she gets to her landing, she's a bit out of focus.















EXIF Data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/500
Av( Aperture Value ): F6.3
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 26.0mm

Anyway, a fun time with the kids and learning something new at the same time!

Long Shutter Speeds

Today I wanted to put up a couple examples of longer shutter speeds. A longer shutter speeds necessitates stabilizing the camera in some form or fashion. For the first picture of the river, it was sitting on the railing of the bridge over the river; I used a tripod for the other two. Another tip - don't push the shutter button, but either use a trigger of some sort or the delay timer, plus use mirror lock up. All of these things together will help get sharper pictures when using longer shutter speeds.

Anyway, all of the below pictures are from our trip to the thermal hot springs in Papallacta, Ecuador. Can't wait to get back there! All photos are as they were from the camera, no additional post-processing on them.

This first example the shutter speed is 1/8s:

Here's the rest of the EXIF data on this first shot:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1/8s
Av( Aperture Value ): F32.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 20.0mm

For this shot of the river, rather than freeze the motion of the river, I wanted it to blur together. The slower shutter speed allows the water flow to smooth out and appear cotton-like, rather than capturing every splash.


This next shot is with a shutter speed of 1.3s:

And the EXIF data from this one:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 1.3s
Av( Aperture Value ): F20.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Canon EF70-200mm f/4L USM
Focal Length: 154.0mm

For this detail of the tree, I used my telephoto zoom lens to get in close for some details. It was a spot that was under a fair amount of shade, hence a long shutter speed to get the above exposure.

Even though I have a small aperture (F20), the background is still blurry; this is one of the characteristics of a telephoto lens. It tends to have more bokeh, even at smaller apertures. If I had the same shot with my wide angle at a F20, that three behind there would likely be pretty in focus. Contrast this photo with the last one below ...



This last one is with a shutter speed of 25s:

EXIF data:
Tv( Shutter Speed ): 25s
Av( Aperture Value ): F8.0
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: Tamron 17-50mm
Focal Length: 17.0mm

This last one is the classic night shot, in this case of one of the thermal pools right in front of our cabin.

Contrast the depth of field with the second picture - this is a much wider aperture and should yield a much shallower depth of field. However, the picture is fairly sharp from front to back. This is one of the characteristics of a wide-angle lens - you get more depth of field for your F-Stop. In this particular example you get some additional softness because of the steam rising off of the water.