Archives For aperture

How Can I Simplify an Image?

Varina Patel —  April 25, 2013

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Simplifying an image can be difficult, but it starts with choosing a simple subject. Look for subjects that draw the eye and stands out from its surroundings. Don’t try to include the whole scene in the finished image – instead, choose a very simple composition that showcases just one area or object. Once you’ve identified your subject, look for distractions. It’s ok to have a secondary element in your shot… but avoid clutter.

Blinded by the Light - Varina Patel

I use lots of other techniques to simplify my images as well. If clashing colors are distracting – try converting to black and white. If dark shadows or bright highlights draw your attention away from the subject, use a diffuser to soften the light. Look for colors that are similar for a simplified color palette.

Trillium - Varina Patel

I like to use a long shutter speed to smooth the surface of a lake or pond to remove ripples on the surface. And sometimes I use a wide aperture to create a narrow depth of field that softens a distracting background.

The Quiet - Varina Patel

What techniques do you use to simplify a composition? Feel free to share examples and ideas in the comments!

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Goodbye to Winter

Varina Patel —  April 1, 2013

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I stood by the window a few weeks ago, watching new snow fall on the snowdrops by the door. The tiny, white flowers were tightly closed against the chill – waiting for a moment of warmth. They were a quiet promise that Spring will come. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed my camera and tripod, and went outside to kneel in the snow. :)

Here are a few tips for getting a shot like this one.

1. When photographing white objects against a white background, overexpose slightly. All that bright white throws off your camera’s meter. Check your histogram to be sure your whites are bright enough – but don’t let the details blow out.

2. When photographing water droplets with a macro lens, look closely at the reflections. Change your position if necessary to make sure the reflection isn’t distracting. In one shot from this morning, I noticed that the water droplet reflected the pattern of siding on my house. No good. I changed my angle and captured this shot instead.

Do you see the distracting lines of the house in the droplet?

Do you see the distracting lines of the house in the droplet?

The reflection in this droplet is much less distracting.

The reflection in this droplet is much less distracting.

3. Pay close attention to your color balance. A slight shift towards blue will leave those greens looking dull and lifeless.

4. I chose an aperture of f/16 for this shot because I wanted to be sure that my droplets and the flower were in sharp focus. I was so close to the flower that a wider aperture would have left me with very little depth of field to work with. Because I was so close, f/16 let me keep the flower sharp while blurring out the snowy background for a very simple finished image.

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You’ll have to get the Black Belt on your own.

Varina Patel —  March 14, 2013

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As many of you know, my oldest son received his black belt in Jujitsu this January. I wanted to capture a few photographs of the testing process to share with family and friends, so I brought my camera along. Here are a few tips for shooting in similar conditions.

1. Capturing photos of people doing sports requires a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. That’s easy enough on a bright sunny day – but indoors, it can be difficult to get a really fast shutter speed. I used my Canon 5D MIII, which handles noise very well, and bumped up my ISO to 5000. With an aperture of f/4.5, I could use a shutter speed of 1/400 of a second. That was enough to capture the quick martial arts moves. I cleaned up the noise a bit with the luminosity slider in Photoshop.

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2. I used AI Servo mode to ensure that my focus was spot on even as my son moved around. AI Servo is Canon’s predictive autofocusing system. I hold the shutter release halfway down, and follow my son’s face with the active focusing point through my viewfinder. The focus adjusts automatically to his movements. It’s not always perfect, but it works very well for something like this.

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3. My Canon 5D MkIII allows me to shoot 6 frames per second max. I often use the high speed continuous shooting mode when I’m photographing the kids playing sports. For action shots, I often take three or four shots in quick succession. Then, I choose the best of the set, and delete the others. I use this mode when I know it will be difficult to release the shutter at just the right moment. I don’t recommend shooting constantly. Instead, choose your moment carefully, and take just a few shots. That way, you don’t fill up your memory cards with junk shots, and your camera doesn’t get hung up trying to process a series of images. Use high speed continuous shooting mode sparingly.

Congratulation to Nick. We are incredibly proud of him and his accomplishments.

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Hey, Dad… Is This Close Enough?

Varina Patel —  December 11, 2012


My dad used to tell me to “get in close” when I was taking pictures with his sturdy little Pentax, K1000. It was good advice! When I’m shooting, I’m often thinking about how I can get close and fill my frame with my subject. I took this shot with a Canon 180mm macro lens. The greatest challenge when shooting macro is getting the focus just right – especially when you are outdoors and working with windy conditions – or a moving subject. In this case, I used a wide aperture (f/5) to capture a very narrow depth of field. This serves to eliminate the details in the background for a simpler image.

In post processing, I check my color balance carefully to make sure the greens looked natural. Then, I used my Wacom graphics tablet and stylus to draw a really quick selection around the tip of the grass and the water droplet. I feathered the selection, created a mask on a duplicated layer, and then sharpened the layer. The mask let me target my sharpening to the areas that needed it – leaving the background nice and soft.

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Composition

Aperture and Depth of Field – A Simple Comparison

Varina Patel —  August 30, 2012

When I teach photography to beginners, I try to use clear visual examples to help make a point. So, when I’m in the field, I’m often thinking about how I can use an image to help explain concepts… either here on my blog, or in future eBooks. Here’s an example.

The technical explanation for adjusting aperture settings is pretty basic… the wider it gets, the narrower your depth of field. But, many students have a hard time visualizing the idea of depth of field. So, during a recent trip to Oregon, I took two photographs in a lovely, open field. This flower called attention to it’s tiny self with a burst of color. For the first shot, I used an aperture of 3.5 (f/3.5). Notice how soft the background looks. Only the flower itself and a few blades of grass are in focus.

Tom McCall Wilderness Area, Columbia River Gorge - Oregon, USA.

Now take a look at this next photograph. I took this shot at f/16. This is a much narrower aperture, and the result is obvious. The depth of field is much wider. Now, you can see lots of leaves and grass in the background, and there’s a lot of brown as well. All those details are distractions – calling for your attention and pulling it away from the flower. You may also notice that I’ve lost some of the sharp details on the flower itself. That’s part of the trade-off when you are working with a narrow depth of field. I love the effect – but  you may wish to choose an aperture in between f/3.5 and f/16 two to get a little more sharpness on  your flower, and a little less softness in your background. (Or, you could stack images in Photoshop if you want to have your cake and eat it too!) The choice is yours!

Tom McCall Wilderness Area, Columbia River Gorge - Oregon, USA.

In this case, I prefer a wider aperture – and the resulting narrow depth of field. The soft background leaves the image feeling very soft and dreamy – and it serves to eliminate a lot of distracting elements.

Of course, the discussion of aperture and depth of field is a whole heck-of-a-lot broader than this – but these two photographs make a great jumping-off point for a detailed discussion of basic concepts. Heck – maybe you’ll see these shots in one of our eBooks someday! ;)

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Sleepy Beauties

Varina Patel —  July 13, 2012

We spent the first seven days of July in Nicaragua with Empowerment International and The Giving Lens. It was an incredible experience. We fell in the love with the children, their families, and the EI volunteers – who were always so generous with their smiles and their hearts.

These two little beauties were still in bed when we arrived with our cameras early one morning. They weren’t quite ready to get up, so I captured a few shots of them as they shook off their sleepiness.

Because of the dim light inside the home, I took this photo with my Canon 5D Mk III at it’s highest ISO setting of 25600, and with my lens wide open at f/2.8. I used a shutter speed of 1/50 because I could hold the camera relatively steady for the photograph, and the girls weren’t moving around. As expected, the image was very noisy, so I increased the luminance in Adobe Camera RAW to reduce the noise overall. The result is a smooth image with beautiful details. I’m thoroughly impressed with the Mk IIIs high ISO capabilites, and I’m so glad I had that camera on this morning!

For more information about Empowerment International, please visit their website at www.empowermentinternational.org. Even a small donation can make a big difference!

For more information on The Giving Lens, check out their website at www.thegivinglens.com. They have lots of trips coming up! Maybe there’s one that’s right for you! :)

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Metlako Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon (OR), USA

How do we determine proper exposure?

Jay Patel —  June 18, 2012

Take a look at this photo of Metlako Falls in the Columbia River Gorge. Besides the vibrant colors, you will notice that every part of the photograph seems to be correctly exposed. A histogram can help us determine whether a photo is properly exposed, and if the photo needs to be bracketed in order to capture the entire dynamic range of the scene. Sometimes, we process a single image multiple times in order to get proper exposure in different parts of the photograph.

Lets take a look at this scene as an example. If you wanted to expose this scene for the highlights, I would look at the bright water in the falls, and adjust the shutter speed and exposure until my histogram showed that I had captured detail in the bright areas of the image. We can do the same during post-processing… as seen in the image below.

In post-processing, I kept an eye on the highlights and histogram. I adjusted the image so that I had the detail and contrast that I wanted in the highlight. Of course, this meant that the rest of the image was drastically underexposed. I can blend the image exposed for the highlights with one exposed for the shadows and mid-tone, and the result will be a natural-looking scene with nice details throughout the image.

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Break Away

Moment in Time

Jay Patel —  August 5, 2011

Photography is all about capturing a moment in time. Sometimes, we use shutter speed as long as several minutes, and sometimes we need something much faster. In order to capture this bizarre image, I used a shutter speed of just 1/2500 of a second!

What is this? It is an abstract image taken just as a bubble burst – in the boiling “mud pots” of Yellowstone National Park.

How do you create an image like this one?

  • Find the right location. In this case, the bubbles were forming in the same location over and over again – if they appear randomly, it can be difficult to capture one at just the right moment.
  • Set you focus in advance.Once you know where the bubble is most likely to appear, focus your lens at that location and disable the auto-focus. Now your lens is set correctly, and you can concentrate on getting the shot.
  • Take some test shots. You need to decide what aperture and DOF you need to use. Choose a shutter speed fast enough to completely freeze the motion – in this case, 1/2500 sec. I chose an aperture of 5.6 in order to get sufficient depth of field. Then, I adjusted my ISO until my exposure was correct.
  • Be sure to check your Histogram! Because of all that bright white mud, I had to manually overexpose the shot (~ 1.5 stops) to get the image nice and bright. But I don’t want to end up with blown highlights! A quick check of the histogram told me that my settings were just right.

On the day I took this shot, there was a light overcast sky, which helped to minimize blown highlight on the wet surfaces and – and to keep the shadows soft.

And now, all you have to do is wait… and click away. To be honest, it was a lot of fun to capture these images. Varina and I, and our students, spent a couple of hours taking 100s of shots of the bubbles…After all, even grown ups like to play with mud! (But don’t actually play IN this mud – it’s HOT!)

I processed the shot with low contrast, and cloned out a few distracting shadows in the smooth mud behind and I had my shot.

The same technique can be applied to capture other subjects in nature – such as a hummingbird that returns to the same feeder, insects visiting a pollen-rich flower, and water droplets falling in the same spot.

Here is an photography by Varina that was produced using similar technique.

Burst - Varina Patel

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