By Varina Patel, on May 20th, 2011 
Jay and I don’t enter competitions very often, but every now and then it’s fun to print up a few images and see how they do. I recently entered two images at a Cleveland Photographic Society pictorial competition. The two images tied for first place. Now, that’s not necessarily typical. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I don’t. But it did get me thinking. How can a photographer – any photographer – select a “winner” for entry in competition?
There’s no sure answer, but there are a few things to consider. I’ve judged my share of competitions, and I’ve heard comments from hundreds of judges over the years. The fact is – there’s a lot of repetition in comments from the judges. They notice the same things over and over again. So here’s a checklist. This is what I’m thinking when I choose an image for submission. I’d love to hear your comments. I’m sure many of you have experience on this subject! Add to the list!
1. It’s all about IMPACT.
Choose an image that grabs the eye of the judge. Your image has to stand out among many – so make sure it catches the eye.
2. Simplify!
Get rid of distracting elements. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard a judge say “That thing in the corner is really distracting…” I’ve said it myself. Many times. It’s tempting to include as much as possible in your photograph – that pretty tree is so nice, and the little barn in the distance has such character, right? In the end, less is more. Do those elements add to your image? Remove any clutter before taking the shot or compose the shot so that only the most important elements are included. If necessary, crop.
3. Get your exposure right.
Technical stuff matters. Check for blown highlights, and make sure the image isn’t over or underexposed. Correct exposure makes everything better.
4. Don’t overdo the processing.
Some judges love it, and some hate it. But in most cases, if processing is distracting, you’ll end up losing points. Be careful of over-saturated colors, over-sharpening, and unnatural-looking HDR. Also keep in mind that many judges have seen the same Photoshop filters a thousand times. It may look new and exciting to you – but unless it really enhances the image and makes it unique, skip it.
5. Provide a clear “point of interest”.
How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t know where to rest my eye.” Make sure there’s a clear point of interest. Otherwise, you’ll hear about it.
6. Crop carefully!
“Give your subject space, but not too much space.” “Get rid of distractions.” “Don’t crop off someone’s ears or the top of their head.” “Don’t chop off the legs of the elk…” or “the reflection of the duck.” “Either cut out the element – or include all of it… don’t cut it in half.” Cropping depends upon the image, and the rules are flexible.
7. Presentation matters.
It’s usually best to choose a black or white mat when you enter an image in a competition. Your photo may look great in a double gold and green mat – but if the judge finds it distracting, you’ll probably lose points. Let the image stand on it’s own merit. The images here were presented at the largest possible size (11×14 for this particular competition) with a three-inch white mat.
I’m sure there are a thousand more – but those are the bits of advice that come to mind right away. What do you think? Do these two competition-winning images meet the standards I’ve listed here? Please feel free to add to the list by submitting a comment. I’m sure many of you can offer some pretty good advice to others who are nervously sorting through images in search of that one winning shot.
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By Jay Patel, on May 16th, 2011 We get this questions frequently – Do we prefer to use GND filters in the field, or high dynamic range (HDR) processing in Photoshop? Our answer is always pretty much the same. The important thing is to understand the advantages of each option, and to know when to use one of the other – or both.
Each option has it’s place. We teach our students how to use GND filters during our on-the-ground workshops… and we teach our manual HDR blending techniques in our webinars.
These two images of Mount Adams Wilderness in Washington were taken to show a quick comparison. Jay used our manual “Intelligent High Dynamic Range” technique – dubbed iHDR somewhere along the line. He blended two bracketed images using layers and masks. The goal when we’re blending images is to preserve the natural shadows and all the detail in the highlights. In the end, we want to create an image that is as close to our memory of the reality of the scene as we can bring it.
The second image was taken in exactly the same spot – just a few minutes earlier. For this shot, Jay used a 3 stop Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filter. The filter successfully brought down the highlights in the sky, so that the camera could capture the entire dynamic range in just one shot. You may notice that the trees at the base of the mountain are much darker in this image. That’s a result of the use of the GND filter.
In this case, the GND filter worked well to reduce the brightness at the top of the image, but it also darkened the trees more than we’d like. For this particular image, the bracketed and blended shot is just a bit closer to the reality of the scene that evening. In the end, it’s all about understanding the options that are available. Take the time to experiment with GND filters, and HDR processing. Find out what works best in any given situation – and most importantly, make the effort to understand WHY that approach is best.
To learn more about our iHDR process check out our recorded online webinar below:
By Jay Patel, on January 4th, 2011  Continued from Part One – Organizing your Photos
In the first post on this subject, I talked about organizing your digital photo files. Now, I want to talk a bit about handling specific files. Beyond my clean organizational system, I use two simple techniques to help keep everything organized.
First, when I download my files to my computer system, I rename them using the Adobe Bridge download application. It allows me to change the name of the file to anything I like, and I use this feature to make my life easier. If the photos are from Utah, each file gets the prefix “utah”. After that, I use the number already assigned by the camera. Those numbers just let me keep things flowing along in chronological order. So my file name for this shot from our recent trip is new_mexico.CR2. Why does that little label matter? Well – most of the time, I can tell you exactly where any given photo was taken (though I may not remember what I had for breakfast this morning)… but all those desert shots might start to look the same after a while. Some of my less memorable files could be hard to place – especially several years down the road. If I can’t quite place this image in the future, that little file name will help jog my memory… “Ah yes. Right-o. New Mexico. Now I’ve got it!”
Ok – so that’s the first thing. The second? Key-wording. Now, hold on! Come out of the corner! Quit knocking your forehead against the wall! It’s not as bad as it sounds!
After every trip – and before I process anything at all – I keyword my files. I don’t do this one file at a time. I do it in chunks. Let’s say I just pulled 100 photos off my memory card. My first step is to break them down into the appropriate files. For this trip, I needed three files within my New Mexico directory… White Sands, Valley of Fires, and Bosque del Apache. Once the photos are sorted, I select all the images in one file and start key-wording.
Now, I’m not talking about going nuts, here. This should be a quick and simple process. If I start getting too specific, I’ll have to keyword each and every file individually. Instead, I want to give a general overview to help me find a file if I need to search for it later. This image from White Sands gets these keywords: Desert; National Park; New Mexico; Sand Dunes; USA; Varina Patel; White Sands National Monument. That’s all the information I’ll need to find the file in the future… and if someone else is looking for it, my name gives them a little help, too. All these keywords are included in the meta-data for my file, so it is transferred to my website and to Visual Wilderness each time I upload a file. I only have to do it once, and that makes me very happy.
Since most of the images in this file are similar, all these keywords apply to the rest of the files too, so I can keyword an entire set of files in just a few seconds. Some images will need specific keywords – and I can select a few at a time (or just one) if necessary. I have one shot of Jay in this bunch of photos, so I selected it separately and added one keyword: portrait. Done. I have a standard list of keywords that I always use – so I just browse my list and check off the appropriate keywords.
So, that’s how I do it. What about you? I’m sure many of you have simple tips or suggestions that might help others streamline the organization process… or get it started. Why not pass on your ideas to others who could benefit from them? We’d love to hear from you, and I’m sure many others would too.
Good luck, everyone!
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By Jay Patel, on January 1st, 2011 
Happy New Year, everybody! We had a great time in New Mexico last week. What a great way to finish the year! This shot is from White Sands National Monument. The beautiful white sand was great fun to shoot – I love the minimalistic quality of the finished photos. Those of you who are familiar with most of my work know that I tend to prefer very simple scenes. So, the location couldn’t have made me happier. :)
I uploaded my photos to my laptop while we waited for our delayed flight out of Albuquerque – and I took care of descriptions and keywords during the flight. I like to keep things organized – but I know that this is a major stumbling block for many digital shooters. How many of you have made a New Year’s Resolution to get your photos organized? And how many are avoiding the issue altogether?
If you go looking for that pretty shot you took in 2005 or 2007 – you know the one I mean… the shot from Florida or Maine or Arizona… the one with the interesting patterns or the fantastic sky – how long will it take you to find it? Will you find it at all? Is it buried with thousands of other images in the depths of your computer? In one of hundreds of cryptically labeled files? How many folders are labeled “vacation”? How many shots should have been deleted long ago – but are still waiting in folders within folders? How many times have you looked at the mess of files and folders on your screen and thought, “I really MUST do something about this mess!” But where to begin?
It’s a lot easier to organize a digital file system than it was to organize all those prints we used to have in envelopes and boxes – waiting to be labeled and put into albums. Unfortunately, most of us have more digital files than we can count. We can shoot as much as we like… no need to worry about the cost of film. We can easily ignore the enormous number of photos in our collections… just close the window on the computer, and the mess is gone. And so it grows, and grows, and grows.
So, here’s my recommendation to get started… Don’t Touch Anything! Just take a few minutes to think. What kinds of photos are you taking? What categories will work for you? Would you rather sort your photographs by date or location? Do you have photos that should be deleted? Would keywords helps you find your images when you need them?
When I started organizing my files, I decided to begin with the current year – rather than going back to the beginning of time and trying to organize old files first. That way, any new files that enter the system will be introduced into a clutter-free environment. Those old files have been sitting there for years – they can sit a while longer. Why not start clean in 2011? Then, when you are sure you like your filing system, you can work backwards, one file at a time.
 Take a look at the structure I’ve chosen for my own system. It’s really very simple. My photographs are sorted first by year, and then by state (or country). You might argue that it’s best to sort by month as well – and that may work well for you. However, Jay and I tend to return to a location more than once in a year – so that only serves to complicate the system for me. Besides, each photo is tagged with a date in-camera, so if I need to know the month, I can easily look it up. I sort by location so that all my photos from that location are together. If I need to find a shot from, say, Ke’e Beach, I’ll open my 2009 folder, click on Hawaii, and choose Kauai. All the beaches and locations we visited on the island are listed alphabetically, and I just select Ke’e Beach from the list.
Now, you’ll notice that I have just two years represented here. 2009 and 2010. I back up ALL my files to our Drobo system (double back-ups just in case) – but I archive my older files. All these images take up a whole lot of space, so I can’t keep them all on my computer. At the beginning of each year, I move one years-worth of files to the drobo, make sure they are accounted for – and delete them from my main system. They are still easily accessible, as long as my computer is connected to the drobo – and I free up all that memory for new images.
I should also point out that the files represented here are landscape photographs only. Family photos are filed separately, so that I can find them more easily. I also have a file called “Portfolio”. Every single processed image – landscapes, events, portraits, family photos – gets a space here. When I am finished processing, I simply create a small JPEG file with a frame a signature (you can see my frame on the White Sands photo up there) and save it to my portfolio file. When I’m not sure which photo I want – or when I want to show someone a selection of my work – I can browse my portfolio.
There are all kinds of options for sorting your files… do it any way you like. What matters is that you can find what you are looking for – without getting too frustrated. So take a few minutes to think about how you want to sort things and then jump in and get started. It’s not as hard as you think!
Continue reading Part Two – File Names and Keywording
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By Jay Patel, on October 25th, 2010  This image stirred up a miniature controversy over at FredMiranda.com this weekend. I’m curious to know what others (photographers and non-photographers alike) think about images like this one. Of course, the scene is staged. I saw this nice, round spot of lichen on a rock, spent some time searching for a tiny leaf, and placed it (neatly-centered) on the lichen. The shot – titled “In the Spotlight” – is obviously contrived… at least I think it’s obvious. While the scene could appear like this naturally, it’s relatively unlikely. And of course, I wouldn’t pretend that it was natural if it wasn’t.
I included three other shots in my FM post… all of them were “staged”. But interestingly, people seemed to object to “In the Spotlight” but not the second image – titled “Choosing a Dress.” The forest floor is littered with fallen leaves – most of them brown and dry… and I chose three of the brightest leaves I could find. I stacked them and photographed them in an attempt to show the contrasting colors and shapes. Obviously contrived once again – and yet… other photographers like this shot.
So what’s going on here? It seems that staging a shot isn’t exactly unacceptable – in fact it’s almost expected. The faux pas lies in creating a composition that isn’t believable.
I think we’re taking ourselves too seriously.
For me – photography is ART. Nothing more and nothing less. That means I can do absolutely anything I want with my camera (with the possible exception of knocking someone upside the head with it) and the end result matters not at all. It’s simply an expression of my own artistic sentiment. Amen.
(Well. That’s a lovely concept. And yet, as an artist, it is generally important to get the attention of your viewer – not always in a positive way – but at least in a way that holds their attention. Right? So, an artist “succeeds” if the viewer is intrigued. But that’s a whole different issue.)
How about this image? It’s not contrived. Everything in the image was there in reality. Jay stood in the water, released the shutter, and this is the result. And yet – that’s not what the scene really looked like, right? Anyone who has stood beside a river knows that the water doesn’t look like white silk – that it flows and eddies in rippling, bubbling cascades as it pours downstream. The smoothness of the water in the foreground here is a result of a carefully-chosen shutter speed. Does that make the image contrived?
On the other hand – capturing a scene like this is problematic. Shooting a river on a bright sunny day lets you capture the scene with a very fast shutter speed – thereby offering a crisp view of every bubble and rivulet. But – it also gives your shot a nasty case of blown highlights and dead shadows. Instead, photographers generally prefer to capture a scene like this on an overcast day – which means we need a longer shutter speed (or a wider aperture, which limits depth of field – or a higher ISO, which adds noise). And a longer shutter speed means you get this silky effect in the water. So – you choose between creating an unnatural – but beautiful – effect, or trying to capture the reality of the situation… which might not look too great in the end. Here’s another example of a contrived image. Jay created this shot by using a long shutter speed, and moving the camera up and down slightly while the shutter was open. It’s creates a dreamy effect – something I’d call Art.
Just like the rest of the images you see here. Just art. Because we are artists. And don’t artists get to make their own rules? (Except when it comes to knocking someone upside the head with our cameras.)
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By Jay Patel, on August 25th, 2010 “My old camera was a Canon 20D (or another less-expensive, consumer-level camera), but I’m really unhappy with my photos. I recently purchased the new Canon 5D Mk II! Now I should be able to get much better pictures! I can’t wait to try it out!” – How many of you have heard someone say something like this – or even said it yourself? It’s a sentiment that we hear over and over again. But, does your equipment really matter?
This shot from Paria Canyon in Utah was taken with a relatively inexpensive, consumer-level camera – the Canon 20D. The image was published in Popular Photography Magazine a few years ago, and has won more accolades and sold more prints than any other image in Varina’s portfolio. And yet – not a single publisher has asked about the equipment used to take the photo before asking about publication. No judge has asked which camera was used to get these results. And no buyer has requested information about equipment before making a purchasing decision.
Magazine and calendar companies are not interested in the equipment that was used to get the shot. They want high-resolution images for printing – they want to know the size of the image, and they want images that are sharp and free of noise. In many cases, an image will require up or down-sizing… but beyond a few technical specs, nobody (except other photographers) really cares what equipment you are using. It’s the photograph that matters. This shot from Death Valley National Park is Jay’s highest selling image – it was taken with a Canon 10D.
As outdoor photographers, our equipment is very visible… and common perception is that fancy equipment equals skill. Varina brought her Canon 7D to the soccer fields last Saturday – with the impressive-looking 70-200mm lens attached. A photographer friend of ours introduced her to another parent, and added that “her photos are incredible” (Thanks, Joe!). To her surprise, the response from this man she had never met was, “I know!” She thanked him for his kind words, and tried to figure out where he’d seen her work before… but it soon became apparent that he hadn’t seen it. His certainty that her photography was good was based solely on the fact that she was holding some beautiful equipment. Does fancy equipment make a good photographer? The fact is, most of the photos Varina has taken with that fancy lens are snapshots of the kids playing soccer – shots that certainly wouldn’t be considered fine art by anyone outside the immediate family! Her primary lens is the Canon 10-22mm wide-angle lens. It’s a much smaller and less conspicuous lens… which can’t even boast the “luxury-series” designation from Canon. Have any of you had similar experiences? We’d be very surprised if you hadn’t.
Of course, more expensive equipment comes with advanced functionality… that’s not in question, here. However, if you are struggling with photography, you need to consider whether you are limited by the capability of your camera system – or by our own lack of knowledge about photography. If you are struggling with the fundamentals of photography – out-of-focus images, poor highlight control, uninteresting compositions, lack of knowledge of histograms and exposure adjustment, or poor image processing – then purchasing new equipment will not improve your work. Your money would be better spent on a good photography class. Look for classes taught through local camera clubs and look online for articles, tutorials, or discussion forums. (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we offer tutorials, workshops, and webinars as well.) Don’t be afraid to ask questions… and submit your work for critique as often as you can. When you are secure in the basics – when you know how to use your camera and can get the results you want with the equipment you have – THEN think about the limitations of your equipment.
New equipment will not make you a better photographer. Only knowledge and experience can do that.
I know others have had similar experiences. What happens when you go out with your fancy equipment? Have publishers refused your work because it was shot with an “inferior” camera? Are you a better photographer because you own L-series glass and expensive camera equipment? ;) As always – we’d love to hear from you!
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Visual Wilderness Contest: United States Landscapes
When Opportunity Knocks…