Below is a video I recently made on how to clean the digital sensor on your DSLR camera. I’ve been cleaning my own sensors since 2003 when I first started shooting digital. I am often asked by my students how this is done and very seldom do I show them, since most of the time we’re in dusty, outdoor conditions that should be avoided when doing this procedure. Since I had a little time on my hands here in Costa Rica and a nice clean hotel room to work from, I decided to create this How To Video on cleaning your sensor. Hope this answers the question for those of you who are interested. Let me know if you have any questions by dropping me a note on the Blog.

I recently left Kenya having finished our latest photography tour, workshop, adventure or whatever you might want to call it. It’s one of our ongoing Invitational Photography Tours in a land I dearly love.

This blog entry is a miniature snipit of what our small group of African travelers experienced while in this wonderful land of wildlife, landscapes and interesting culture.

As many of you know, much of my work revolves around wildlife. However, I’m very fond of documenting people and their cultures as well. My early college years introduced me to the world of journalism as I worked my way through school shooting for a small newspaper and a very successful commercial studio in Duluth, Mn. My two dear friends, Tim Slattery and Dan Grandmaison taught me a lot about the world of capturing pictures. Those formative years gave me my first introduction to the world of small strobes and the power they have for making creative images.

On our last evening in the Masai Mara Game Reserve our group was treated to our annual Bush Dinner on the last evening before we all headed back to Nairobi. The lodge we stay at goes all out with grilled meats, vegetarian pastas, and sumptuous deserts.

Masai Dancers. Photo taken with Nikon D700 with Flash to stop action

An added highlight to this nights festivities was the ever present group of young Masai dancers that are on perpetual call for birthdays, anniversaries or other special events at the lodge. Tonight they followed us to the outskirts of camp to add an ambience of traditional song and dance much to the delight of everyone present and an opportunity for interesting images.

More Photos of Masai Dancers

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I’ve been thinking about writing this piece for over a year. What finally inspired me to get this off my chest was the image I’ve included  below. The issue I want to discus is photographers not demanding proper credit lines from their agents and the magazines they market to. I’m completely fed up with virtually all photo agencies that no longer consider the relationship with their photographers important enough to demand publishers give proper credit lines on editorial images. Case in point below. This amazing image was used in a recent edition of an airline magazine I was reading on my way to Kenya. Amazingly, for this stunning picture, the only credit line they gave was the agent who sent it to them. Nowhere is there a credit to the photographer.

An amazing image of a golden eagle being attacked by a gull. © Who Knows/Nature Picture Library

 A little history is in order to understand why this is so blatantly wrong. Since the beginning of photography, photographers have always been given a credit line in editorial publications. It was like a tradition and typically that credit is placed next to the image. That tradition was inspired by another age old tradition – publishers constantly whining they don’t have enough money to pay the photographer what it truly costs to make these types of pictures. So, long ago, the two sides decided to come up with a win/win situation that was mutually beneficial. Since the publishers were always squawking they were broke, photographers decided to subsidize them by giving them quality images at a price that was typically less than what it would cost to produce those images. In exchange, the photographer was given a credit line to help build his/her reputation and drive more business. The credit line was a reasonable tradeoff that allowed photographers to make a name for themselves and eventually have enough business to make a reasonable living. The downside is the building of a reputation that followed took forever and many phenomenal photos were sold for substantially less than they were worth. But at least the photographer got a credit line.

Unfortunately, like the Dodo bird, the photographers part of the credit line seems to be going extinct as well. In the last five years, the markets that used to pay so poorly are now paying virtually nothing AND not giving proper credit. Take for example IStock Photo, the biggest of what is known as the Microstock agents, where you can license the use of an image for as little as $3.00 USD for usage rights that used to command 100 times that amount. Yes, I said One Hundred Times! Microstock agents have been the main offenders for not requiring credit lines. That has in turn set precedent and is now being accepted by even the traditional Rights Managed stock agents such as the Nature Picture Library as we see from the image above. You would think with such a tremendous drop in photo prices, the credit line would be even more valuable to the photographer. So I ask you, are you a photographer that’s not demanding your agent share the credit? If so, is it worth it?

In the end it’s all about pride in yourself and your work. As I tell our workshop guests, anyone can give a photo away. Take pride in your photography and yourself, stand up for what is right and fair. At the very least you should be worth a credit line.

Wow, what a great article written by a guy many of us follow, Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms. I don’t often post from other sites but sometimes it’s the best thing to do for passing information along that you folks can use. If you follow my Blog, or travel with Tanya and me, you know that I’ve been talking for four years about the Mirrorless Revolution that’s in full swing and coming like a freight train. Trey Ratcliff sees the same road ahead although he refers to it as “3rd. Generation Cameras”. He writes a great piece on his blog about his thoughts and predictions and they are dead on with what I’ve been talking about for the last several years. You might want to head over to his informative Blog to take a look. Don’t forget about us over here at Natural Exposures after you see his site, he’s a master at this web stuff and a great photographer to boot. Keep in mind that his images are a bit more processed than what I typically care for, due to my my journalistic roots, but for those of you who have no issues with a more manipulated look, he has some great information on how he does it all.

Nikon's V1, their first entry into the Mirrorless Revolution.

The only difference I have with his take on how the Mirrorlesss Revolution will evolve is his predictions on where Canon and Nikon stand in this exciting new world of cameras. Although I wasn’t excited about Nikon’s decision to go with a smaller sensor size in their new Mirrorless cameras, the J1 and V1,  these two new models offer industry leading, world class technology advantages. If they bring even half the technology in the V1, into updated more professional models, they’ll be industry leaders in the coming new world of photography like they have for so many years in the traditional DSLR industry. Hope you find Trey’s Blog as interesting as I did.

Last night, when we arrived in Nairobi, my wife Tanya and I followed our yearly tradition by stopping by the lounge for a nightcap at the Norfolk Hotel. The Norfolk is part of the Fairmont Hotel chain and it’s one of our favorite places to wind down throughout the world. We always come to Kenya at least two days early to make sure we  have time to acclimate, get rid of the jet lag and enjoy this amazing facility that Hemingway used as a launching pad into the African bush many, many years ago.

As I sat in the comfortable couch sipping my first Tuskar of the trip, the warm lights and the beautiful old world furniture stirred my creative visions.  I just so happened to have my trusty little Lumix GX1 sitting on the table beside me that gave me the option to capture what I was seeing. In this post I’m going to present the images I saw as they first began to develop. There will only be three or four pictures but I want to show you how first saw a potential image and how I eventually added or subtracted visual elements, camera settings etc. to make an picture that I really liked in the end.

This first image was what I initially saw, it was the inspiration to grab the GX1, turn the camera on and take a look at the back LCD. What I sometimes first react to isn’t always as interesting when I review it through the lens of a camera, so I sometimes check myself before working to make it right. After taking a look I new it was a go, it just needed a little something to make it come alive.

Image #1-This was the initial scene. I loved the lamp in the left, the warm inviting light, the framing of the drapes along the window and the reflections on the table. It just needed something to give it life ISO 200, Program Mode Metering on Pattern Shutter Speed 1.3 sec at f/3.5

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Artist Dan Metz-An Introduction
One of the most fulfilling perks of working in the field of photography are the opportunities I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Twenty years ago or so, I met one such individual, wildlife artist Dan Metz. Dan is a true artist. He sells nothing but originals and lives for his art. He stopped by to see Tanya and me this past fall, which he does every fall, on his way down from the Canadian rockies where he had hired a horse pack team to take him fifty miles into the wilderness. There they dropped him off and two weeks later he hiked out on his own. The guy is nearly sixty years old! That’s the dedication this man has to go get just the right material for his amazingly beautiful paintings. I stopped by with my parents, to see him this past Christmas during my time in Minnesota. Photographing artists in their studio environment provides wonderful opportunities for great images and something I enjoy immensely.  However, their typically unique surroundings can provide numerous photographic challenges. Dan’s studio was no exception and I thought I would share with you some of the issues I was up against and how I solved them. Before we go into details on the photography, let me give a short introduction to this interesting man and good friend.

See a small collection of images of Dan’s studio.

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Yesterday I wrote about a technique that involves using flash and ambient light to improve your holiday photos of family and friends. Today I want to discuss another trick that deals with lighting that is equally beneficial for improving your holiday pictures. It too includes the use of flash but with some minor changes that can make all the difference between harsh, unattractive light and soft, pleasing light. It’s called bounce lighting.

Bounce Lighting For More Attractive People Pictures
I’m pretty confident that most everyone who has used on camera flash, pointed directly at their subjects, would agree that direct flash is not very pleasant to look at. It typically produces harsh shadows, contrasty images and lack of depth. The reason for this is due mainly to the fact the flash is coming directly off the camera, blazing straight into the subject. In our Invitational Photo Tour Workshops, when we talk about light, I always remind my students to look for directional light that is low, coming either directly from the side, either right or left, or directly behind the subject.

Light from either of these three places helps to produce the feeling of three dimensions or 3D in what is actually a 2D medium. What I mean by 2D is that a digital chip or a piece of film are two demensional in nature. There’s no way around that, it is what it is. To try and overcome the 2D effect a good photographer works to create the feeling of 3D by using light in the manner I’ve described. Finding this kind of lighting in nature typically requires being out early in the morning or late in the evening and the positioning yourself to either side of your subject or behind. The same effect can be accomplished with people and a flash by setting the flash to either side or behind the subjects as well.

Image #2-My father, mother and sister with her little dog Pebbles taken with a flash pointed at a low white ceiling..

The other most common option is soft or bounced light. This type of lighting is very pleasing to look at and resembles the type of light we would have if we were outdoors on a cloudy day. It’s neither harsh or direct. It’s pleasant to look at due to lack of contrast and harsh shadows. In a perfect world, low, directional light is always more dramatic but soft difused light can be very effective as well, especially for portraits of animals and people.

To accomplish the type of lighting I have in the image labeled as Image #2, I pointed my on camera flash directly at the ceiling. That’s what is called Bounce Lighting, in other words I bounced it off the ceiling. It was very helpful that my parents home has a very low ceiling that is white in tone. Whenever you are bouncing light it always helps for the ceiling to be light colored and the lower the better. When you bounce your flash keep in mind that pointing it at the ceiling dramtically diminishes the power of the light that is hitting your subject. Therefore, your flash will not seem as powerful as it is when you point it directly at your subject. The higher the ceiling the further the flash has to go before it bounces. When it does bounce it then has to travel the same long distance to come back down to your subjects. With this in mind it is always best to use the most powerful flash possible such as an off camera variety like the Nikon SB 900 that I used for this shot.

The other little trick that makes a huge difference is adding a piece of paper to the head of the flash. Above is an image of my setup. It’s difficult to explain but by looking at the image you should be able to get it. The idea of the paper, I used just a plain old sheet of 8×11 office variety, is to take some of the light that is headed towards the ceiling and have the paper reflect it, or bounce it, 90 degrees straight out toward the subject. This fills in some of the shadows that might occur from all light coming off the ceiling and provides a highlight or sparkle in the eyes.

Unfortunately, the little on camera flash that is part of many cameras today, is not able to be turned up for bouncing nor would it be powerful enough if it could. However, there is a new device I’ve heard really good things about that helps to diffuse the light. It’s known as the Gary Fong Light Diffuser. You can follow this link to Amazon to take a look. I haven’t used one but it looks promising and one photographer, shooting Santa Claus for Costco, said it worked wonders for the small, on camera flash of his Nikon D7000.

So that’s my second tip for improving photos where you need to add flash this Holiday Season. Give it a try and let me know what you think and how these suggestions either did or did not work for you. Drop me a note here at the Blog if you have questions or other things you want to share. Good shooting, have fun and make lots of pictures. You’re family will love you for it.

One of the great things about the Holidays, whether it’s Christmas, Hannukka, New Years or any other traditional celebration, is the chance to get together with friends and family. With so many digital cameras around there is no reason we all shouldn’t have fabulous photos of the ones we love. So in this post I want to share with you a simple technique I use for getting much more interesting and beautiful images of  the people I care about.

First and foremost is you need to make an effort to pull your camera out and start shooting. So many people will attend an event or family gathering and forget to bring their camera. Taking pictures is actually time consuming, can be difficult and may sometimes make others feel like you’re a pest. But don’t let any of that bother you and  forge ahead. The historical value for family and friends will be appreciated. As you practice and get better at your craft, you will eventually be able to mostly slip into the background and hardly be noticed.

Night Portrait Mode Setting
The little trick I want to explain is the Night Portrait or Rear Curtain Sync. We’ll start with Night Portrait first.

Scene Mode on a Lumix GX1 camera. Notice the yellow border around the image of the man with a star above left. That's what is called the Night Portrait setting.

Night Portrait is a setting found on many cameras, typically under the Scene mode. If you have higher end, professional camera bodies you may not have this option. For more professional cameras I’ll explain how to accomplish manually what Night Portrait does automatically after we discuss the automatic version of Night Portrait. It can also be a Flash Setting mode that is as simple as changing your flash from the normal lightning bolt to the image that shows a lightning bolt with a person and a star. The options I’m describing are on most cameras, including the smallest point and shoots, that have been sold in the last couple of years. I say this with as much conviction as possible knowing full well that there will always be a model or two that doesn’t’ fit my descriptions. Sorry about that if you have one of those unusual models.

The reason Night Portrait can look so  pleasing is due to the camera shutter staying open longer and allowing surrounding ambient light to be recorded. It’s the ambient light, such as Christmas tree lights, warm ceiling lights, candles etc. that can add so much warmth and feeling to an image. The longer exposure, necessary to get that ambient light can make for blurry photos, but the Night Portrait mode minimizes this by also firing the flash. This is the key to the Night Portrait mode. When the flash is fired it will illuminate subjects that are closest to the camera. Whatever the flash easily illuminates, the closer the better, will be recorded very sharp due to the flash’s ability to stop action. The combination between the closely illuminated subject in the foreground and the beautiful ambient light in the background gives a much more  pleasant looking image. So if you have the Night Portrait mode, set your camera there for the next shoot you have with the family and give it a try.

Slow Sync or Rear Curtain Sync
On the  more sophisticated cameras you have a couple of flash settings known as Slow Sync or Rear Sync that will allow you to accomplish a similar feel and look as the Night Portrait setting on the smaller cameras. Slow Sync is actually closer to the Night Portrait setting talked about earlier. Slow Sync is typically set in the Flash settings menu. On my Nikon D7000 I can access the options for changing the Flash Sync by pushing the little flash button that is located on the front of the camera,  just below and to the left of the D7000′s built in flash. It’s the little button with the lightning bolt on it. By pushing this button and turning the Main Command Dial you can cycle through several different options for firing the flash. You can see your changes in the Flash Setting window on the camera’s top LCD.

Nikon's D7000 has the ability to set the flash to either Rear Sync or Slow Sync to allow you to record darker ambient light with flash added to illuminate closer subjects.

Two of those options include Slow or Rear Sync. By choosing either one of these settings you are accomplishing a similar technique as Night Portrait. Along with setting the flash you have to also set the camera to either Program or better yet, Manual. When I use Slow Sync I like to set the camera to Manual Mode and make sure the exposure is set one to two stops daker than the camera suggests. This will still allow the ambient light to be exposed and register in the image but give you a  higher shutter speed to stop any movement that might take place. It’s always a bit tricky to get a shutter speed that is fast enough to stop the action with the help of the flash and yet still be slow enough to register the ambient light. Each situation is different and it always depends on the amount of ambient light in the room or outdoor situation you’re shooting. When shooting in this manner I’m never shooting long lenses and most often I’m using something fairly wide like a 24mm-35mm lens. For lenses in this range you would want to use a shutter speed of maybe 1/15th of a second give or take a shutter speed or two.  There are no absolutes in photography so just give it a try and see how it works. If it doesn’t come out as planned  try something different but either way you’ll begin to get a feel for what works in these holiday lighting situations. If the background is still coming out too dark, up your ISO to whatever setting starts to record the ambient light. Just make sure you don’t go to crazy on ISO since high ISO settings can create poor quality images due to added noise.

My sister Suzy and her friend Lysa sit for a portrait. The shutter speed was too slow and the camera's flash not powerful enough to stop movement.

The image above is one I actually threw out but retrieved to show you what can happen if the shutter speed is too slow. Here I was shooting at 1/3rd of a second and I had zoomed my lens out to 80mm. As you can see it was just too much lens to stop movement at that shutter speed, even though the flash did stop some. The motion in the image was due to my sister and her girlfriend swaying as they laughed, along with my lack of stability laughing with them. All that motion lead to a fuzzy, difficult to look at photograph.

Getting great images of your family and friends can be a lot of fun and many times you become the family hero since most people just don’t take the time to make pictures. Do yourself and your family a huge favor this Holiday Season and practice your craft. They’ll thank you at some point. If not the night of the event, most assuredly when you send them the images. Later on down the road be it one year or twenty, everyone will be happy you made the effort to capture your family history. Happy shooting and if you have any questions just drop me a note here on the blog. Im happy to help if I can.

I recently posted the image below on our Natural Exposures Facebook Fan Page of my Godson Colter helping me rig one of the newest additions to my image capture arsenal. He was working to connect my Apple iPad and iPhone to a MiniHD, video camera known as the ContourGPS so my two Apple devices could each be used as a wireless viewfinder. A comment that came in on the Facebook page made me realize many of you may not be familiar with this technology and why it’s so compelling for capturing unique moving images.

Colter working on the Contour GPS video camera, getting it hooked up to the IPad via Bluetooth.

The Contour GPS is just one of several options out there that give you a small, HD quality, video capture devise that is super simple, can be placed almost anywhere, and produces stunning video images. The two most popular options include the Contour series of cameras and the GoPro series. Another option has shown up recently made by Delkin called the WingMan but it doesn’t get quite as good of reviews as the Contour or the GoPro.

I’m not going to get into the details of each camera since everybody has their own opinion as to what is important to them. The links I’ve provided will help you make a decision on what features YOU may want. I chose the Contour due to it’s small compact size and shape. I wasn’t to excited about the square GoPro. I also like the idea that the Contour would allow me to use my Apple devices as viewable LCD screens via the Bluetooth connections. The downside to the Contour is that if you don’t have an Apple or Android device you have to basically guess at what the camera is seeing since there is no built in viewfinder. The Delkin does have a a built in screen and the GoPro you can order one as an option, but neither of these other devices has the quality or form factor I wanted so I settled on the ContourGPS. So there you go, those are just a couple of things to chew on that delineates the three different models I’ve looked into.

The question that came up on Facebook was, “what is a Contour GPS camera, and how does it work with an iPad?” The iPad part I explained above but the “What” part is more of a question of, “why”? So here’s how I plan to use this camera in the future.

If you take a look at the ContourGPS web site you notice that they highlight video from vantage points we don’t typically see. Many of the videos where shot from what is known in the video world as POV or (Point of View) of the person shooting the video. Below is a very nice introduction to the ContourGPS by NETWORKWOLRD that gives you an idea of POV shooting.

Along with the HD camera you get software that allows you to work with the movies you produce. They call it SorryTeller and it gives you a fairly nice video editing setup that has easy options for uploading your video to Youtube, Facebook etc. However, I personally use Apple’s IMovie. IMovie is very easy to use, has tons of options for special effects and is also user friendly when it comes to uploading movies to several different places on the web.

How do I plan to use this camera you ask? Well I’m not completely sure yet. I do know that it will be a great option for hard to access locations that I’m sure to run into while shooting for the Arctic Documentary Project. I can see attaching this to the hull of a ship, maybe the tallest mast of a sailboat, on a remote controlled vehicle, on a helicopter, airplane to name just a few. Time will tell but the options are limitless.

The Contour GPS had numerous accessories and the one I picked up when I ordered the camera was the underwater housing. This housing is hard to believe due to the incredibly low price of $39.00. Compare that to the underwater housing I bought for my D2X several years ago that cost well over $6000.00. I realize the Contour and D2X housings are two different animals but for doing underwater video work the Contour GPS housing is a fantastic option. Other add ons for the Contour include the Rotating Flat Surface Mount, XL Bike Mount, Headband Mount, Vented Helmet Mount, Rollbar Mount, Suction Cup Mount, Goggle Strap Mount, Surf-Wake Mount, and the list goes on and on. You get the idea. You can stick this thing just about anywhere. Hope this explains the why that my friend Joel brought up on Facebook. If you have any further questions just let me know.

I recently received a question via my LinkedIn Nikon Photographers Forum that I tried to answer via LinkedIn. However, due to the length of the answer I decided to bring it over here to my blog. The question is, “what shooting mode do most photographs use?” You can read my thoughts below.

Nikon’s Flexible Program Mode

I use what Nikon refers to as Flexible Program Mode or the P setting 98% of the time. As most of the comments above show, using anything but Manual or Aperture priority is not very popular. However, I believe if more photographers would investigate the benefits of the Flexible Program option, in the Nikon system, they would come to understand the tremendous benefits. I specifically state Nikon since Canon’s version of the Flexible Program is a bit different and can be frustrating to rely on.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m attending the 2011 PhotoPlus Expo in New York. It’s an interesting year and the show is a bit different than other PhotoPlus Expos I’ve attended. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is there are many more Japanese engineer types, executives, etc. obviously  from Japan, in attendance. Not sure if I’m on track with this theory but my hunch tells me this has become a much more important marking event since PMA (Photo Marketing Association) in Vegas was merged into CES (Consumer Electronics Show) about a year or two ago. I mention this because it’s very interesting to think that PhotoExpo Plus may turn into an even bigger, better event since PMA is no longer around. Just my observation.

Getting inspired at the Nikon booth.

When I decided to try and keep up with this idea of blogging about the show I made the decision to not try and cover everything but rather just the things I was actually interested in. One of the downsides to attending a show of this size is what I call sensory overload. There are so many products, so much noise, so much fanfare. It’s really difficult to tune all that junk out and concentrate on finding the new and different. So that’s what I’ve tried to do. The following items are some of the things I found most interesting.

Aerial Photography or Videography

By far the coolest new gadget on the floor was Rotor Concept, Inc. This was a company that makes miniature helicopters that you can attach a camera to for either still or video shooting. Unfortunately you can’t hang a large DSLR like the D7000 onto this machine but I was able to see if my point and shoot sized Panasonic GF2 would work and the gentleman at the booth assured me it would. I shot a very short little video, may go back today and shoot something longer. But it was impressive. Here is the video of the guy flying the helicopter at the booth.

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I just flew into New York in preparation for PDN PhotoPlus International Conference & Expo. I’ve been attending this show for nearly twenty years, sometimes as a guest of Nikon and others, sometimes just on my own. This trip qualifies as just on my own. It’s a great trade show, all the big players are here from Nikon, Canon, HP, Sandisk, Lowepro and lots of others. I haven’t been to New York for a couple of years so I decided it was time to pack my bags and head east. It’s always nice to reacquaint myself with some of the folks we work with on a regular basis but hardly ever actually see.

I’ll be snooping and pocking and asking lots of questions about this, that and lots of other things. I’m crossing my fingers that we may see the newest pro or semi-pro Nikon body. However, I’m not holding my breath. Lots of rumors out in cyberspace regarding the devastation Nikon has endured in Thailand due to colossal flooding. Imagine the turmoil they must be going through created by the flood in Thailand the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation event in Japan and the downturn in the world economy. It can’t be easy but amazingly they are more savvy than I have ever seen in the nearly 30 years I’ve worked with them. Nikon has actually become amainzgly astute at marking. That was not always the case. Back in the 1980′s you would have never seen anyone remotely similar to Ashton Kutcher helping sell Nikon cameras. Ashton is a great asset for all of us wanting better and more sophisticated photographic tools. If Nikon can sell to the masses, the technology and research eventually makes it over to the more serious professional side. It’s good for everyone wanting to capture great memories.

My first stop will be the Nikon booth where I hope to see the new enthusiast cameras they recently announced, the Nikon J1 and V1. both these cameras are apparently doing very well. I’m hoping to get my hands on one or both to give them a good once over. Might even be able to talk my friends in to letting me give them a try. Stay tuned and stop by to see what I come up with. I’ll be blogging from the show each day.

I just watched an amazing Youtube video that was shot at Adobe’s Max Conference. Seems the day of soft images due to camera movement or possibly even subject movement will be a thing of the past. Over the past few years I’ve quite throwing images out due to lack of focus with hopes in mind that this technology might be coming down the pipeline. Seems it’s almost here. Watch the video to see one more reason why our creativity as artists/photographers will eventually be the major factor all photography will be judged by. The technology just keeps pushing the envelope to make the technical side a nonissue. Pluses and minuses to that game but overall the photographic field is the most exciting it’ ever been in my thirty+ years as a photograher.

One dilemma a still photographer continually faces is the difficulty of trying to make a still image come alive. To accomplish this feat there are a couple of different ways to bring life and movement to a still photograph. One of my favorite tricks is to create motion blur by using a Slow Shutter Speed and Panning with the subject.  Equally as effective is having the camera travel at the same speed as the subject while the camera and subject are attached in some manner. This second option is the technique I used for the example below.  To add additional sharpness to the image it is often helpful to use a strobe that fires during the exposure and stops the action. A strobe combined with a slow shutter speed created the feeling of movement very effectively in the second of two image. The first picture is a sample of how not to create movement in the same situation.

This image was created with a normal flash shutter speed of around 1/60th. of a second resulting in no movement and a very boring image.

As you can see from the above image there is no movement whatsoever and in fact it’s very sharp due to the light of the flash illuminating the man on the tractor and the bottles of wine zipping by on each side. The reason an image can look so sharp, even though we were clipping right along at probably 10-15 miles per hour in very dark light, is due to the fact a flash fires (turns on and off) at such a high speed, it’s as if you are using a much faster shutter speed than the 1/60th of a second this image was actually shot at. The down side is the flash doesn’t reach very far, it’s very cold, harsh and unattractive and really gives no feeling of where we were at.  To liven it up I made some significant changes from the settings above and created a similar but quite different image below.

The 1 second shutter speed, the above image was shot at, provides considerably more ambient light, mainly from the headlights of the motorized cart, to create the warmth and extended view of the caverns in the distance. Using a longer shutter speed allowed the available light from the cart and the tunnels lighting system to be readily exposed. The on camera flash illuminated just the driver and the closest wine racks on either side creating subjects that are rendered sharp in an otherwise very soft feeling image.

This technique is something I usually do with my Nikons set to Rear Curtain Sync. Rear Curtain Sync is when the flash fires at the end of the end of the long exposure. Normally, flashes fire at the beginning of the exposure. Rear Curtain Sync is the typical setup for creating this type of an image and it can be changed on many cameras including point and shoots. However, in this particular situation I had only my very disappointing Lumix GF2 which no longer has the Rear Curtain Sync option like my older and much more favored GF1. So, to create this image I simply chose a slow shutter speed and because the subject and myself were moving at the same rate, I was in a cart behind the driver, I was able to achieve very similar effects as I would have created with Rear Curtain Sync.

So the moral of this story is don’t be afraid to try something new. I was aware that my GF2 did not have the Rear Curtain Sync but I decided to try the shot anyway. I was happily surprised at how well the image turned out and that’s the beauty of digital. Just give it a spin and take a look. You might surprise yourself too.

I just returned from northern Main where I was one of two Mentors for the Mentor Series World Wide Photography Treks. The other Mentor was my old college buddy Layne Kennedy and as always we had a great time teaching the craft of photography as well as getting to know lots of new photo enthusiasts. The weather was a bit of a challenge but nothing we couldn’t handle with a little luck. The great thing about photographers who appreciate nature are typically pretty flexible.

Main street in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Much of our time was spent photographing in Acadia National Park but we also worked the beautiful little town of Bar Harbor and Isleford. The Acadia region is simply spectacular with phenomenal scenery, interesting faces and fabulous food. Lobster rolls where on every corner and there was often times a friendly, interesting face behind the counter handing it over.

The Schooner Margaret Todd anchored at the dock in Bar Harbor, Maine silhouetted against the rising sun.

Erica Johnson of the Mentor Series was our fearless leader on this Trek although Michelle Cast was along to help out. The main reason I do these Treks has as much to do with the organizational skills of these ladies as anything else. They really do their homework and take extremely good care of everyone involved. Equally important is the enjoyment and inspiration I get from seeing budding photographers work their magic. I would love to be the one who knows and sees it all but even after nearly thirty years of taking pictures I’m constantly impressed and enlightened by the images I see from so called amateurs. Everybody has their unique style, vision and personal approach to photography. With the Mentor Treks I get to experience dozens of different views at one time and I end up learning as much or more than the people I’m helping.

If you’re interested I’ve created a small gallery of images I shot on the Trek. You can see them by clicking on the link below. If you have any questions please feel free to drop me a note via the Blog. I’m happy to help with whatever I can.

World Wide Mentors Trek to Bar Harbor and Acadia, Maine

Greetings everybody. What a glorious day as I type this post, head phones on and jamming out to Steele Dan. It’s a cool September afternoon and I’m happy to be back in Montana. I love traveling but it’s always great to get home.

I was doing a little web surfing this afternoon and found something you folks who are using Aperture might like to know about. It’s a company called Graphic Node. They’re out of Lithuania and they specialize in creating several different Mac related templates including some for Aperture. Aperture comes with a few templates of its own but it’s always nice to have other options so you might want to check these out. I actually had a custom template created   for our business Natural Exposures, Inc. that matches our web site’s design. A young man from Missoula, Montana did the custom CSS for us on that project. His name is Scott Rouse and you can get to his Facebook page by clicking the link to his name. A custom web page is a bit more costly but well worth it to help set your work off from others in photography world. Let me kow if you have any questions or any suggestions.

A sample of the custom template I had desgined by Scott Rouse

Those of you who have spent time with me on our Invitational Photo Tours know that I’ve been predicting that future cameras will be missing the traditional mirror designs we’ve all been shooting the past 50+ years. I’ve been talking about this for over two years now. The new technology that is currently  being used by Panasonic, Olympus, Samsung and Sony, incorporates an electronic viewfinder in place of the old prehistoric mirror box design. The new technology is moving ahead at breakneck speed and Bloomberg News service has a very interesting article detailing exactly what I’ve been predicting. Click on the image of the Bloomberg article to read the whole report. It’s fascinating reading and suggests that the traditional camera companies we all know better start taking this seriously or I have a huge investment in lenses that will be obsolete.

The image below was first run as part of my final post for our Arctic Documentary Project in Svalbard/Spitsbergen, Norway. It’s kind of buried in the main blog so I though I would pull this out for easier reading. The key elements I used to create this image include the Nikon D7000, Nikon SB900 wireless flash, Aperture software and Nik Viveza that was used as a plugin within Aperture.

A skeleton of a Svalbard Reindeer lies relatively undisturbed on the tundra of Spitsbergen, Norway.

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August 10, Danskøya Island 37F

Click on this link to see photos of our favorite images from the Svalbard shoot for the Arctic Documentary Project.

This morning is cold. Most definitely the coolest we’ve experienced. Danskøya Island is on the northwest part of the archipelago and is on the edge of better polar bear habitat. The ice is nearly 80 miles offshore, so any bears that are stranded on the Islands of Svalbard migrate towards the top getting as close to the ice pack as possible. Mark tells me that, “typically the ice is 15-20 miles offshore but this year is unusual.”  Surprising how often I keep hearing something similar to “this year is unusual” from people that work in the arctic. That’s been the description for hotter than normal temperatures and the varying climatic changes they’ve caused. Equally amazing is that I first started hearing people talk about the “unusual year” over ten years ago. My wife Tanya is stepping in here to describe our morning and the rest of the day as we head further north and east.

A Polar Bear wanders the snow-covered rocks in Holmiabukta, Svalbard, Norway. Nikon D7000, 200-400mm lens

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August 8, 2011, Cloudy and 43F

Tanya and I spent the past three days in Lonyearbyen in a small, very European, apartment, catching up on business matters, writing and a little rest before our next group of guests arrived.

Tanya and Dan in the rented apartment having dinner.

The first trip went really well, but every adventure to the field is new, so it’s always in your mind that the the next can be even better. Our boat is full again, housing our eight invited photo enthusiasts that all arrived on schedule. Jeanne, one of our dear and long-time friends, and a retired, 30-year 757 pilot for United Airlines, arrived in Longyearbyen minus her luggage. True to form she had a huge smile on her face and lots of great stories about the turmoil she faced trying to explain to the “lost luggage department” where they needed to deliver her bags once they found them. The story Jeanne described, as usual, was hilarious with the central theme pivoting on the idea that the agent just could not get the concept that the boat she was scheduled to board was something smaller than the typical 1500 passenger cruise ship. And, unlike the cruise ships, there was no port she would be visiting that had an SAS office she could check in with. Suffice it to say, it’s people like Jeanne who take a very bad situation and turn it into a comedy routine, that makes this job so worthwhile. Read the rest of this entry »