Photograph ideas

I have spoken to Steve today about my photographic ideas for my final 12 portfolio pictures, I have said I want to try and get a range of photographs showing different types of photographic techniques from different shutter speed to silhouettes.

I also went through the issues of my photo shoot at Branston water park as I felt my camera lens was struggling with the distances from the subject.

Steve suggested setting the camera up closer to the subjects and trying to set it off with a remote shutter. The lead on my remote shutter is only about a foot long so I need to see if I can extend this lead in someway to enable me to use the camera from further away.

Another idea Steve has given me to try and get some good flight photographs is to use fill in flash to stop the motion of the wings.

Eric Hosking (Photographs)

After looking through a selection of Eric Hosking photographs, my first initial thoughts are how impressive the results are especially being one of the first people to photograph birds and with the camera equipment he was using (especially in the early days). What I have noticed with his photographs is the way he has managed to capture the birds in such natural positions and scenes. This is definitely something I want to show from my photographs of natural history. You can see the changes in camera technology in Eric Hosking photographs as most of his early work is done using flash bulbs and being as close as he could to the subject. This is because the development of lenses in the 30's and 40's would have been limited. I like the way he changed the style of his photographs as technology allowed him to try new things.










Another part of Eric Hosking photographs I am impressed with are his ones of birds in flight, this is something I really want to capture myself. As in previous blogs at Branston water park I have tried to capture this already (and lets just say I have a lot of work t do!!) however this is an element of natural history I would like to capture if possible as I think the results if done right speak for themselves.

One thing I have noticed from the Eric Hosking photographs above, is the background, because in all 3 of the pictures shown here there is either nothing or very plain backgrounds that means you are not distracted by it and that the focus is completely of the subject. I need to think about this when composing my photographs going forward.

To show what I mean about background, if you look at the photograph below of a Greenfinch which is one I have taken you will notice that the background is very busy compared to the photos above and this does distract the focus from the main subject.

Eric Hosking (Natural History Photographer)

Eric Hoskings (1909 - 1991) is a legendary British Natural History photographer and mainly bird Photography. He was a self taught photographer and seen as one of the main pioneers of bird photography. He also Pioneered the use of flash in bird photography and setting up of electronic or photo cell devices to take photographs.

He believed that to be a good natural history photographer you needed to not only have a good technical ability but possibly more importantly you need to understand your subject and have concern for their welfare.

Famously whilst photographing a tawny owl (owls were his favourite bird) he was attacked by the owl and lost an eye. He blamed himself for this as he felt he did not fully understand the subject. He is to be the first ever (and report ably last) professional bird photographer. This is to say he actually made his living solely from bird photography. There are many other bird photographers that make a living from their photographs but they do not specialise in just birds as Eric Hosking did. Below is a copy of his most famous photograph taken back in 1936.

He regards this as the luckiest photograph he has ever taken as he had no idea the owl had caught the rat and would stand in such a photographic way. He waited to hear the sound of the owl land on the tree then opened the shutter and set off the flash bulb. It was not till he was developing the glass plate that he discovered what he had captured.

To see more about Eric Hosking click here

Health and Safety (Photography)

Out in the field so to speak any self employed photographer must comply with the "Health and Safety at work act 1974" (HASWA) as described in my last blog. This is because as a self employed person they have a duty of care to themselves, any assistant / staff they employ and also members of the public that will be effected by the work they carry out.

What a photographer must do before completing any task (that can be anything from working on the PC to edit pictures, working in a studio for a photo shoot, taking photos at a wedding and even developing film using chemicals) they must complete a series of risk assessment for the tasks they are going to carry out. These are a way of capturing any risks that are involved, assessing the likelihood and severity of the risk and then taking the appropriate action to remove or at worst reduce the risk.

Potential risks for a photographer are as follows.

• Cables for equipment (are they causing a trip hazard)
• Chemicals for developing film (are they stored correctly, do you need protective clothing to handle them, clearly labelled is COSHH being followed)
• Electrical equipment (has it been tested, is there enough sockets to plug it all in)
• Flash equipment (is anyone with epilepsy going to have a problem with prolonged flash photography)
• Computers (if using for editing a VDU assessment needs to be carried out to ensure the equipment is in the correct position to ensure the correct posture for the user.)

This by no means is an exhaustive list but does show a few of the potential hazards a photographer will come across. So it is the photographer to careful plan his photo shoot correctly and then carry out the risk assessments relevent to the task involved.

Also the photographer should have obtained public liability insurance.

I will from now on whenever taking photographs will make a note in my blog about what I have done to reduce the risk to myself and others when I am taking the photographs. This maybe as simple as wearing stout walking shoes, of if stalking wildlife ensure I am wearing warm clothing.

Health and Safety

The Health and Safety at work act 1974 (HASWA). Is statute law and is there to protect everyone in the workplace and members of the public. It is designed to ensure employers and employees work in a safe manner, have the correct equipment to do their work and do not carry out any works that can cause harm to themselves and/or members of the public. The main statements for HASWA are.

• It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.

• It shall be the duty of every employee while at work—
• (a) to take reasonable care for the health and safety of himself and of other persons who may be affected by his acts or omissions at work and.
• (b) as regards any duty or requirement imposed on his employer or any other person by or under any of the relevant statutory provisions, to co-operate with him so far as is necessary to enable that duty or requirement to be performed or complied with.

These statements basically mean that it is for an employer to make every provision for anyone working for the company is given the correct tools to complete their job. That every task has been "Risk Assessed" and a "method statement" is in place for each employee to follow so that the task is completed in a safe manner.

The second part is for the employee to make sure whilst they are at work that they conduct themselves in a safe manner so as not to put themselves or others at risk. Also that they are to follow the safe working procedures given by the employer.

HASWA also relates to self employed people as well (such as Photographers) for this part the statements above are still true if the self employed person has employed someone such as an assistant as this means you now have an employer and employee.

The next main part of HASWA which will really apply to a self employed person is.

• It shall be the duty of every self-employed person to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that he and other persons (not being his employees) who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety.

This means that any actions or tasks undertaken by the Self employed person must not cause a health and safety risk to anyone else (ie members of public).

To see the full Health and Safety at work act 1974 click here.

Twycross Zoo

Today I went to Twycross zoo with my Fiancee and as she had to spend all day there on a training day I spent all day taking photographs. I tried to look at composing my pictures better and making a good point of focus for the picture. As usual with the Zoo a lot of the animals are hard to focus in on as they are behind cages of glass. I tried to get round this by using a large aperture and my 75 -300 lens which would take the bars/glass out of the picture as I had a very narrow depth of field. I will speak to Steve to see if there is anything else I can do to help this. Another hard part of the day was the changing light conditions which meant a lot of changes to ISO and shutter speeds. I am relatively happy with the results as this was all done using manual settings. Although not all images were great first time and when viewed were under/over exposed I was happy that I knew what to change on the camera to take a better picture.

To see more pictures click here.

Spot the Birdie

I went to Branston water park today to get some more pictures and wanted to focus on natural history. I took some wild bird seed with me as suggested by Steve and set myself up at the "Hide" after putting some of the seeds on a few tree stumps. My main aim for the day was to get some flying shots of birds so took a few test shots first by setting a fast shutter speed then adjusting the aperture and ISO to compensate. I did capture some shots of flight however still think the shutter speed could have been taken higher.
I am also a little disappointed with the clarity of the images when you zoom in so will speak to Steve to see what is causing this as I was using my 75-300 lens at full zoom so it maybe right at the limit of the lenses capability. I used a remote shutter release and the hide to steady the camera and also used fast shutter speed down to 1/1000 sec so camera shake should not be the problem. Overall I am happy with the results however need to focus on a few areas to improve the shots next time.

To see more images click here

Ideas for photography

Had a discussion with Steve today on my chosen subject of natural history, we spoke about the photographs I could take at Twycross Zoo and I have told Steve I sent an email to the head of PR at the zoo to volenteer my services for taking photos at events.

This will hopefully get me access to other area of the zoo to take photos which means the cages etc will not interfere with shots.

Another Idea Steve has given me today for taking bird photographs is to think about how to get the subjects close enough to photograph. The idea is to take some bird food with me and spread out to help attract the birds to me and get them nearer.

I will try this the next time I go out as Branston Water Park has some Hides set up with bird tables so if I take some food with me I can set this up with food.

Photograph Ideas

http://www.mikeatkinson.net/index.htm

Sunrise at Branston Water Park

One good thing about having Branston Water park 15 minutes walk from my front door is it is convenient to go to for taking photographs. One of the bad things about sunrise is they happen early so had to get out of bed at 6.30 to get some pictures. I wanted to take some shots of a sunrise and try to use rule of thirds and play about with shutter speeds. What really surprised me was when taking the shutter speed to 1/4000 it gave really dramatic results.

Also whilst taking photographs of the sunrise and not wanting to look straight at the sun I used my cameras "Live View" function which allowed me to see the images in the rear LCD screen and allowed me to frame the shots without being blinded by the sun.

Whilst at the water park I also took pictures of the birds and tried to catch some in flight, although I did capture some Canada Geese in flight was not entirely happy with the results. The issue is I was happy with the exposure of the final shot however wanted to catch the wings without blur. I did not manage the last part, however I know the setting was 1/100 so need to increase this but then change the aperture and ISO to compensate. Hopefully next time I will get the shot I want.

To see a selection of the pictures taken click here.

Shutter Speed

I went out tonight and took some photos to demonstrate shutter speed. I took these looking over the A38 at the Branston junction. I took with me the following equipment to help with the shots.

• Canon 500D SLR
• Tripod (to keep camera steady for long exposure times)
• Remote shutter release

I then decided to use the following settings to start with.

• Shutter Speed - 30 seconds (to capture movement)
• Aperture - f22 (to give me larger depth of field)
• ISO - 100 (usually you need a higher ISO for low light but with such a long exposure I felt an ISO of 100 would be sensitive enough)
• Rule of thirds - I tried to set up the shot using this method to draw your eye into the picture by setting the bend in the picture about 1/3 down and 1/3 across from the right and make that the area where your eye is drawn.

I then adjusted a few setting to see the changes and felt the shutter speed of 20 seconds gave the best result. I then adjusted the shutter speed to get no movement and had to increase the ISO upto 12800 to get this and the pictures at this ISO do show light noise. To see all the pictures click here.

Could not resist

Although I was taking pictures of Tones and Textures I could not resist this photo opportunity, I think the main issue with this photo is that the ISO was set at 3200 as the light was very dull however I think dropping down to 1600 or maybe even 800 would have given a better picture. The shutter speed was set at 1/250 sec to capture the singing of the Robin without blur and the Aperture was f8.0 to give a shallow depth of field as was not worried on the background being in focus.

Tones & Texture

In our last lesson we went through a presentation on how to compose a photograph and what things are needed to make a good picture. A good picture will need at least one of these elements but usually will have more than one, the elements are.

• Rule of Thirds
• Pattern
• Texture
• Tone
• Colour
• Lines
• Shape
• Frames
• Form

Steve has now suggested when we go out to take photographs that we focus on a couple of these elements and just take pictures with this in mind. Yesterday I went to Branston Waterpark and decided to focus on "Texture and Tone" this was because the day was very dull and overcast so felt these would be better to focus on.

The photos were taken in the "Manual" mode on the camera so I was changing the settings for ISO, Aperture and shutter speed and reviewing each picture I would then adjust one or two settings if required until I got the picture I wanted. I now feel much more comfortable using and changing these settings and feel I understand what I need to change to improve a photograph. To see all the pictures click here. (I have added all pictures even the ones showing my trial and error with the settings)

ISO expansion

Having earlier written in my blog that my canon 500d had ISO settings from 100 to 3200, I have now found out that the range is from 100 to 12800. I subscribe to PhotoPlus magazine and it was here that I found this out, basically the higher ISO's are hidden in the default settings so you have to unlock them through the camera menus. I will take some pictures in very low light conditions to show the differences up to this range now.

Shutter speed examples

Below are two photographs taken at different shutter speeds, the ISO was set to 100 and the aperture to f3.5. The top photograph is taken at a 1 second shutter speed and the bottom photograph is taken at 1/4 of a second.

You can see quite clearly that the top photograph is brighter than the bottom photograph and this is due to the fact that the extra length of time the shutter was open for has allowed more light onto the sensor. I will post some more shutter speed photos later showing movement.

ISO examples

Below are two photographs taken with different ISO settings. These pictures were both taken using a shutter speed of 2 seconds and aperture of f3.5

The top photograph is taken with an ISO setting of 100 and the bottom photograph is taken with an ISO setting of 400. It is clear to see the bottom photograph is very over exposed as the 400 ISO setting has made the sensor too sensitive for the light conditions.

Aperture examples

Below are 2 shots showing different aperture settings taken from my set of test shots the top one is taken at an aperture setting of f3.5 (large aperture) and the bottom one at a setting of f14. The two main differences in the photographs are as follows.

1. The bottom photo is darker than the top one this is because the shutter speed on both photos is set the same 1/20th second so as the bottom photograph has a smaller aperture than the top one this means not s much light has got into the lens and onto the sensor
2. The writing on the "Black Grouse" bottle is out of focus on the top picture (big aperture) but it is in focus on the bottom picture (small aperture) this is because the depth of field is smaller for the bigger aperture.

Understanding Aperture, ISO and Shutter speed

From taking test photographs this week and from the ideas given to us by Steve in the lesson and also what I have read about on the internet this is what I understand about the following.

Aperture

This is basically the size of the hole in the lens used for taking a photograph, it is measured in "f numbers" and just to confuse matters the smaller the "f number" the larger the aperture. This means an aperture f22 is a smaller aperture (or hole) than f5.

The larger the aperture in the lens means the light will get in the lens quicker than a smaller aperture. This means in theory that if you are using a fast shutter speed you will need a larger aperture to let as much light in as possible so the photograph is not under exposed.

Another area that aperture will change is the depth of field of a photograph, this means how much of the photograph is in sharp focus. A large aperture such as f2.8 will mean a shallow depth of field meaning only a small area of the photo will be in focus and the foreground and background will be out of focus. However if you use a smaller aperture say f22 then most of the photograph will be in focus from foreground to background.

Shutter Speed

This is how fast the shutter opens and closes to take a picture. the shutter speeds range from (on my canon 500d) 1/4000th of a second to 30 seconds. I can take this higher than 30 seconds to "bulb" setting which means that the shutter will sty open for the length of time I keep the shutter button pressed down (my remote shutter release has a lock setting so can leave it open as long as I need to.

For shots showing movement such as water moving in a waterfall using a slower shutter speed will make the water look as if it is moving, however a faster shutter speed will make the water look like it is frozen in time. When using slower shutter speeds you will need to use something to help steady the camera such as a tripod otherwise you will get camera shake/blur. Shutter speed is related to aperture and need to be adjusted accordingly as using a fast shutter speed with a small aperture will lead to under exposed shots as the shutter speed is not allowing enough light into the camera to take the photograph.

ISO

ISO is basically how sensitive the sensor is, the smaller the number say 100 is less sensitive than 400. The good thing of DSLR over 35mm SLR is the fact you can change the ISO for each shot. Whereas when using film and you loaded a 400ISO film you were stuck with that until you had used all the film. The issue with ISO is the larger the ISO number the more light noise you will get on the photograph. Ideally you need to set the ISO as low as you can for each set of photographs. This means on a bright sunny day you could use an ISO of 100 or 200 however for a dull overcast day you may need an ISO setting of 400 or 800. My canon 500d has ISO settings from 100 upto 3200.

There are times that when taking photos in low light that you may need to use a low ISO and I will try to show these later.

Here are a few links for areas on the internet explaining ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed (click on the links below)

ISO

Aperture, depth of field & shutter speed

In my next few blogs I will show examples of these areas.

The pictures above show changes in ISO settings starting from top 100, 400, 1600, 3200 all the above were taken at 2 second shutter speed and aperture f3.5 to see the full album click here . When looking at the photos in Picasa if you click on the photo then on the right hand side of the page it shows photo information then if you click on the more info button this will show the setting used for ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed.

Test Shots for ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed

I set up a simple method for taking some test shots of still life under constant light conditions to go through variations of ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speeds.
I set up two bottles of whisky (as they were near to hand) but also as they have writing on them would hope this woud show any blurring up due to depth of field changes (aperture).

I set everything up as follows to ensure the best test I could

1. Two bottles up on a small coffee table at a diagonal.
2. Set my camera up on my Velbond tripod to ensure the camera position was constant.
3. I used my remote shutter release to make sure there was no camera movement.
4. I set up the central focus point only and set focus on the label of the nearest bottle.
5. I used the pop up flash on the camera

I then took a series of shots at one ISO setting then changed the shutter speed starting at 2 seconds and moving down by halving this till I got to 1/200 of a second (so 2 secs, 1 sec, 1/2 sec, 1/4 sec etc) Once I had done this I move the shutter speed to 1/30 sec and then went through a range of aperture (f numbers) starting at f3.5 down to f22.

After this I then moved the ISO to 400 and repeated the above process, then did the same for 1600 and 3200 ISO.

As a test the last shot I put the camera in full auto mode to see what the camera though the best settings were.

I will post a few pitures in my next blog, to see the whole session click here.