The Independent Newspaper

I thought I’d share this picture with you – it’s really a very old one, perhaps 20 year old!. I took it while working on an assignment for The Independent newspaper. As far as I can remember, they sent me to cover a press photocall to unveil a very special new type of one-man mini hot-air balloon. The idea was to cross the Atlantic in it, or perhaps fly over the Alps – but I don’t think that ever happened. I seem to remember that Richard Branson was involved somewhere along the line.

There was a gale of wind and rain blowing outside, so the balloon was inflated inside a huge hangar on a remote airfield in Shropshire. All the other national daily newspapers where there to photograph the event. I saw these occasions as a challenge – they brought out the seriously competitive spirit in me. I simply ALWAYS had to try to beat the pack and get the best picture.

It was very nearly dark inside that hangar and powerful floodlights had been set up. There was a general groan of despair from all the other photographers at what appeared to be the lack of opportunities for exiting pictures.

The great advantage of working for a newspaper like the Independent – at least in the days soon after it was launched – was that we photographers were totally free to photograph an assignment in any way we chose. We were never restricted by having to take the most literal pictures. In fact we were encouraged to look beyond the obvious.

The obvious photograph on this assignment, for instance, was a shot of the pilot suspended in his harness beneath the inflated balloon. But that looked totally boring when it was done inside a darkened hangar.

I have said it before – and I will stress it again – that with an understanding of light, a photographer can create interesting images out of very little.

It was obvious to me as soon as the flood lights were lit and the balloon was beginning to inflate that there would have to be an interesting picture if I could shoot against one of these lights from almost inside the balloon as it inflated. Remember that mantra – BACKLIGHT FOR OUTLINE SHAPES!!

However, that picture would need a sense of scale and a human element if it was to be interesting enough to get published.

I quietly asked one of the technicians to stand outside the balloon between me and the floodlight and open his arms to smooth out any wrinkles in the balloon as it inflated. I worked very quickly in order not to give the other photographers any chance to copy what I was doing. The timing was spot on. No sooner had I taken this picture than the balloon lifted off the floor of the hangar as it inflated – making any similar pictures impossible.

I think the picture was used across half a page - a worthwhile job.

The picture was taken with a Nikon F3, Nikkor F2.8 24mm lens. Fuji Neopan 400 film.

Photography down river - part 2

TIP
Here in SW Scotland the tides can be very high, fast and strong. Be safe – check the tide times so that you don’t get stranded on sand banks on a rising tide. Try to time your photography for the falling tide when the water level is falling.
Buy a local tide table, or check on tides at the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/tides

TIP
Use your fingers

Even the best autofocus system can be a little confused when photographing water, you may find that it ‘hunts’ for something to focus on. Be prepared to resort to the tried and tested method – manual focus. Use your fingers on that focusing ring. If you are photographing a landscape scene and using a wide angle lens, you may find it difficult to manual focus accurately – so use the distance scale on your lens – if you have one. If you set this scale to just less than ‘infinity’ and use a small aperture, perhaps f11 or less, the wide angle lens’s extra depth of field should ensure you get most of the scene in focus.

TIP
Remember those basic rules of light…
Frontlight – Reveals colour – good for the straighforward reflections.
Sidelight – emphasizes texture and form.
Backlight – reveals outline shapes – like silhouettes.
Toplight – go have a beer!

Top photograph

Do not get carried away by the wonderful sounds of the estuary. The haunting call of the curlew does not photograph very well – you need to record only visual information in your camera, and this picture contains lots. The hull of the boat is in pretty low, non-directional light, and this has helped show more colour than texture. The rusty ladder leans at an angle that counteracts the lines of the planking, and the focal point, the sky, is a mass of bold colour. The camera was put on a tripod, a slow shutter speed (1/8sec) and a small aperture (f16) was used to gain maximum depth of field

Photograph 2








It is late afternoon and the last glimmer of sun just catches the superstructure of this scallop dredger as it heads down river and out to sea. I have not tried to counteract the extremely high temperature blue light, but kept the White Balance (WB) setting on the daylight (Sun) setting. This has had the effect of washing the whole scene – except the dashes of yellow sun on the boat – with blue



Photograph 3








Always be alert to those moments that just happen, and don’t get so wrapped up with one type of shot that you ignore everything else around you. When the lifeboat appeared going flat out down river, I stopped photographing the river bank for a few moments, took a couple of pictures of the lifeboat, then carried on with what I was doing




Photographs 4 & 5








Explore each subject carefully and take lots of pictures. Don’t be afraid to return to the same subject if possible to photograph it in different light or tide conditions. In this case, I photographed the boat’s reflection at high water, and returned when the tide was out to take more details.

Photography down river - part 1

Water has always inspired photographers to reach for their cameras. Sunsets dipping into reflective seas, waterfalls, fountains – the possibilities are endless. My favourite watery locations are tidal estuaries and rivers, and I’m lucky enough to live near the beautiful River Dee in Galloway. My students love the area, too. However, all tidal rivers, whether they are industrial or rural, can draw me like a magnet. That soft morning or evening light bouncing off rippled water; undulating muddy river banks; fishing boats setting off to sea or heading home after a long trip… just some of the subjects that have me spending many happy hours exploring the river banks.

The River Dee has a huge tidal range, often 8 metres or more, and at low water an entirely different scene is revealed. I’m not in the least put off by all that mud and exposed sand – it is sure to present me with wonderful picture opportunities. At low water the mud shines silver and vibrant – especially when you shoot into the light. This is the time to look for different shapes and textures in the wet surfaces.

Unless you are aiming for a totally abstract feel to your picture, try to use some readily identifiable object as a focal point or foreground – perhaps a wooden stake, a clump of reeds or a boat. Without this, your picture can be confusing to the viewer, who can easily be disorientated with little visual information to go on. For example, an image full of nothing but mud ripples stretching into the distance can lack a sense of scale and impact… again, I stress that that is fine if you are aiming for abstracts. Personally I find, in many instances, these sort of images are unrewarding.

Sensitive use of light is probably the most important asset when trying to produce evocative images of wide-open rivers. Of course, if you can stir yourself to be in position at dawn, you may be rewarded with the most glorious soft light peeping through the sort of hazy, low-lying mist that creeps silently in with the tide. Do not waste these opportunities. Take pictures as if your life depends on it. Explore each and every subject thoroughly. Do not be afraid to shoot straight into that light. This will not only illuminate the mist, but will bring contrast and texture to the surfaces of the water and mud.

Keep alert for everything that happens on and alongside the river. Everything will be changing all the time, and it is a common mistake to get so focused on one particular type of picture that you miss those fleeting opportunities – when the fishing boat appears through the mist, or a flock of waders take flight.

Top photograph

It is simple enough to capture moments like this provided you stay aware of what is going on around you and anticipate what might happen next. I had watched the lobsterman moor his boat in the middle of the river and row ashore in his dinghy. Obviously he had to walk up that muddy river bank. I took lots of pictures of everything that happened , but this is the one I liked best because it seems to sum up the atmosphere of the riverside town and the man heading home after his day’s work

Photograph 2

Always be on the lookout for reflections in still water. It would have been a great mistake to crop off the bottom of this picture because it contains so much visual information. The soft sidelighting and threatening clouds have certainly helped create atmosphere, but those reflected masts have given the picture its appeal

Photograph 3

I took lots of pictures to record this special morning light as the mist rolled up the river. In this picture, I have included a clump of grass in the foreground and, combined with a wide angle lens, this has induced a tremendous feeling of distance. Mist always photographs really well when it is backlit like this, and that backlight also reveals the texture of the mud. Using Centre-Weighted Exposure mode, I took my exposure reading from just above the grass to the right side. This has underexposed the grass and created bold dark shape

Photograph 4

Remember the mantra – backlight to emphasize outline shapes! In this case the old wooden mooring piles have been completely silhouetted against a sunset. The exposure reading was taken from the sky

NEXT... more tips and more photographs about photographing rivers

Timing your photographs - 1

No matter how interesting your subject might appear, you will not get the most from it unless your timing is just right. Good timing needs lots of practise and is not something that can be mastered overnight. Sure, if you take lots of photographs and set you camera at 5 frames a second or more, you are going to get lucky some of the time. But if you want the satisfaction of capturing exactly the moment that matters, then anticipation is the key.

I think I may have said before that the best sports photographers are those who have a passion for the sport they are photographing, and who know from constant practise and observation what is likely to happen next. They are literally ahead of the game.

Come to think of it, there can be few better ways to hone the ability to time your shots than to spend some time photographing sport. Most local amateur football teams will welcome a photographer who asks to take pictures of their games. This can be a great way to get started. If, though, you are like me and loathe football and everything about it, maybe you should try something else. Even a sport like crown green bowling, which may seem pretty sedentary, needs very precise timing to capture worthwhile pictures.

The photograph above was taken at the Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria, England, and was one of many pictures I took for a magazine feature. The boy in the cloth cap flicked water onto the horse several times. After he did it the first time I realised that the best shot would be just as the water was in the air and about the hit the horse. A fraction of a second later was too late. I almost always use single shot for this type of picture simply because I prefer the picture to be taken when I press the button and not when the camera wants to take it. You really can miss pictures that happen between those 5 frames a second.

The strong 'toppy' back light has also helped emphasize the splashes of water and enabled a very fast shutter seed to be used to 'freeze' the action. Backlight always lights up water frome behind and makes it shine white.

Front or backlight?

I'm always reminding my students about the different properties of the direction of light and how important it is to understand what's going on. Frontlight (light behind the camera and front-on to the subject), I tell them, takes always the shadows and can make the subject look flat and two-dimensional. However, I am quick to point out, frontlight does have a trick up its sleeve: there may be colour hiding in the shadows, and by removing them by using front light you will of course see more colour. So a colourful subject often looks even more colourful when lit by frontlight.

 

Well, as always, there are exceptions to the rule, and photographing flowers and leaves is one of them. Depending on the thickness and translucence of the flower or leaf the thinner and more translucent the better - you can often increase the intensity of its colour by placing the light behind the subject and letting it shine through the leaf.

 

The photograph above is a good example. This is a very simple picture which relies on its colour for its visual appeal. The sunlight is almost directly behind the leaf and is shining through it; and so illuminating the green like a projector lamp.

 

In this case, the backlight has shown up the veins of inside the leaf and brought more detail and interest. Frontlight would have shown the colour of the surface of the leaf, but none of the depth of colour and shapes inside it.

 

Give this technique a try next time you are photographing flowers. Sometimes you can get the best of both worlds by having the light source behind the subject and using a reflector under or beside the lens to bounce some light back onto the surface of the flower.

Photographing aerial perspective

I came across these photographs of mine this morning as I was sorting and cataloguing some of my old travel images. The top photograph shows two people strolling along the Roman wall at Antalya on the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. The bottom photograph is of a fishing boat with the mountains in the distance behind. They seemed such good examples of ‘Aerial Perspective’ I though it might be worth explaining something about it.

There are two very different types of perspective, and an understanding of both can be of fundamental importance to the photographer when creating a sense of depth - the third dimension - in our two-dimensional photographs.

Firstly, of course, there is linear perspective – that’s when objects nearer the camera appear larger than those further away. Photographers can exaggerate the effects of linear perspective by using different focal length lenses, painters and artists simple move their ‘disappearing point’ to create similar effects or distortions. More about all that some other time.

Aerial perspective has nothing to do with flying and looking down on your subject, in fact it would be more accurately described as ‘atmospheric’ perspective. It is the phenomenon that creates a sense of depth in a photograph by capturing the way the atmosphere makes distant objects appear less distinct and more bluish than those nearer the camera.

Aerial perspective is particularly noticeable with backlight (what nice photographers often refer to as contre-jour or ‘against the light’) in a slightly hazy atmosphere, and you can see its effect very clearly in the photograph above. The figures on the wall are in strong, black silhouette. The mountains behind get gradually lighter the further away they are. This gives a very powerful sense of distance and depth.

Painters and artists have been using this effect for many centuries. In particular, Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by it and I believe he was the first to use the term. I can bring to mind at least one of his paintings – Virgin of the Rocks, in which he has used it to great effect to give the illusion of tremendous depth within his picture.

I found this interesting techy page about aerial perspective and I suggest you give it a click and learn more…

http://psych.hanover.edu/krantz/art/aerial.html

Photographing in hard light - part 2

As promised yesterday, here’s the other – very different - photograph taken for The Sunday Times at Aberdaron in North Wales.

This time, rather than use a wide-angle lens and move in close, I have moved right back from the scene behind the village churchyard and looked at the beach through a small telephoto lens. I’m still shooting into that hard, contrasty light, but the effect is quite different.

The outlines of the gravestones are picked out by the backlight – remember, backlight exaggerates outline shape – while the curve of the beach stands out because of the glare of the sun on the breaking waves. This backlight has also isolated the silhouette of each of the small figures in the water and along the beach.

Slight under-exposure has given an almost ‘moonlight’ effect, but in fact the shot was taken around midday with the sun very high in the sky. This under-exposure and ‘night time’ effect can be even more noticeable when shooting into the light and using colour. It is most noticeable when shooting into the light over a bright, reflective surface – like the sea.

Photographing in hard light

Here's a photograph I took for The Sunday Times some while ago. They commissioned me to photograph a whole list of British seaside locations, and this was taken on the beach at Aberdaron in North Wales on a hot summer's day.

The light was very hard and contrasty - what I would normally consider to be poor quality light, especially when shooting in black and white - but as a professional photographer working to tight schedules, I simply had to make the most of what I was given.

I started to look for shapes and shadows, and noticed the shadow of this chap cast on the windbreak. His shape has been distorted due to the angle of the sun, and this has added a touch of whimsical humour to the situation.

It is always good practise to look for unusual angles and the way light and shadow falls on different objects.

Of course, with this shot in the bag, I photographed the man from the other side as well - with the light behind me. But this produced a very ordinary shot.

The other advantage in photographing a subject's shadow is that those of you who are a bit nervous about taking pictures of complete strangers can do so without drawing attention to yourselves. In fact you may not be noticed at all.

Tomorrow I'll show you another, very different type of photograph taken in this same location on the same day.

How to use the direction of Light - part 3

The considered application of light can transform a photograph from the mundane into something with much more visual power. This photograph of an old man is desperately simple – a straightforward head and shoulders – but the power of the photograph comes not only from the man’s interesting face and his direct look into the lens, but from the way his face is lit. In this case from one side - sidelight.

A profound understanding of light is one of the photographer’s greatest assets.

MOVE AROUND – CHANGE THE ANGLE OF THE LIGHT
These three photographs are of the same subject and were taken about the same time on the same day, but look how different the it appears just by walking around it and photographing it with the light from different directions.

Front light has been used in A to show all that wonderful red colour – care was needed to avoid the flare coming straight back at me from that glass in the cabin.

The sidelight B has shown the hull of the boat to have form and shape. It’s also given texture to the tussocky grass in the foreground.

The backlight in this picture C has reduced the boat and the objects on it to a series of silhouettes. There’s no colour shown in the subject at all – just outline shapes.

TIP
HIDE YOUR SHADOW
When moving in quite close with the light directly behind you – using frontlight to accentuate the colours of your subject – you are likely to get your own shadow – just like in photo D. Try moving back a couple of paces and zooming in to cut out this unsightly shadow – unless of course it is part of your idea to leave it in. See photo E. You will alter the perspective of you picture a little, but it may be worthwhile.

How to use the direction of Light - part 2

You must be able to recognise the particular attributes, advantages and disadvantages of any light source instantly. This will let you to get exactly what you want from every subject.

We’ve already looked at sidelight, but just to re-enforce how useful it is take a look at the superb sidelight used in the photograph of the young student. The picture was taken in an open doorway – a very useful location for finding sidelight – especially when the sun is high in the sky - see today’s TIP.

Roughly, the direction of light can be divided into side, front, back and toplight.

Bear in mind that in the real world the direction of light might be a combination of some of these headings…. ‘toppy-back’ light, for instance - there’s a new word for you. Sometimes the light may be totally non-directional. You won’t always be able to change the direction of the light – but often you will be able to adjust your shooting angle or the position of your subject in order to make the most of what you have. For instance, you may be able to time your visit to a certain location to coincide with the direction of light that will show it off best. Sadly, this is not always possible especially for professional photographers under pressure of time and deadlines. They will have to resort to all sorts of tricks – but I’ll tell you more about those in future articles.

TOPLIGHT
This is the one to avoid whenever possible. Professional travel and landscape photographers work both ends of the day – morning and evening. That’s because the light source, the sun, is low in the sky and can be used as front, side or backlight. With the light directly above, portraits look horrible. Landscapes and buildings look boring and no matter in which direction you look at it, the light remains the same.

Photo 1 Ugh! Toplight. This is the one to avoid whenever you can. It’s midday and the sun is high overhead – definitely not a time to take portraits like this – especially if your subject is wearing a big hat. Avoid it. Come back later or ask your subject to step into a doorway where you can use sidelight – anything to avoid toplight

BACKLIGHT
Shoot into the light and put the light source behind your subject and, in the most extreme case, you will create a silhouette - emphasizing outline shape. Backlight does not have to be quite so obvious, though, and with a little diffusion from such things as clouds or reflectors, it can create a soft, subtle ‘atmosphere’. I’ve already touched on this when I wrote about the ‘quality’ of light. Backlight often creates a rim, or halo effect around the subject – this is much-used in studio portraiture to separate the outline of the model from the background. If you intend to emphasize the outline shape of your subject, use backlight.

Photo 2
Using backlight to photograph this street, most of the colour has gone, and the picture looks monochrome. The powerful backlight has shown the outline shape of the street lamps – and notice the effect of using backlight on the shiny, uneven surface of that dark wall. It really has created a dramatic effect. Remember, backlight over a dimpled, shiny surface – like wet mud, ripples on water, wet cobbles or even wet grass, can create spectacular result


FRONT LIGHT
Put the light source directly behind the camera - front-on to your subject - and you take away the shadows. This tends to ‘flatten’ the image; it loses any 3D effect. However, front light has a great trick up its sleeve… shadows often obscure colours. So if you want to see more colour – use front light. The downside is that you lose texture and form in your subject.

Photo 3
With the light almost directly behind the camera and front-on to the subject, I have tried to accentuate the bright colours of these houses by taking most of the shadows away. But at a cost – look how flat and two-dimensional the chimney pots look. The shadows you can see in the bottom of the picture are cast by a row of houses behind me

TIP
Positioning your subject just inside a doorway, out of the direct sun, is almost guaranteed to offer you good sidelight. This is one of the simplest ways to avoid toplight and create beautifully lit natural portraits when the sun is high in the sky at midday. That’s the time to start looking indoors in search of better, more useable light.

Next, in part 3 - more tips on using the direction of light

The quality of light - Part 4

As a final demonstration of the effects of being able to manipulate the light in order to improve its quality, just take a look at my photograph of the Indian tin whistle player. Now I’d say that light was pretty high quality stuff.

But when I first spotted this chap sat on an old oil drum and playing his tin whistle in front of a temple, the light was so awful that I did not even bother to take a photograph at all. He was sat in direct sunlight. The sun was high in an empty blue sky and the shadows across the man’s face were hard and black. Even worse, he was sat in front of the white marble wall of a temple. The background was far too bright.

So, I had hard, low-quality toppy-front light, a glaring white background, but a wonderful subject. What did I do?

The first thing I did was to drop a couple of rupees into his tin – come on, he’s a street performer, so pay the man! I then gently turned him right round on his seat so that he was facing the wall. He was now maybe around 15 feet away from that wall. Now I positioned myself with my back to the wall and used it as a reflector.

Notice that the direct sun, which is now behind the subject, has lit up his silver hair with attractive rim lighting while the reflective wall has pushed all that soft light back onto his face. The added bonus effect is that the background is now darker and further away. So it has fallen out of focus and is far more attractive and less distracting.

So, you see, often you don’t even need to carry a reflector with you – they are there all around you if you look.

If you’d like to know more about light – its direction, quality and colour, - and how to use reflectors effectively, my DVD Light and Composition covers the subject and shows you how you can improve your pictures once you really understand what’s going on. It is available on my website www.photoactive.co.uk and costs just £9.99 plus postage.

Using backlight

This picture was taken for The Sunday Times and demonstrates a couple of sound techniques that can help you create powerful images. Firstly, never be afraid to ask someone to help you by posing them or moving them into the correct position. Secondly, Don’t be afraid of using very strong backlight.

The pictures was taken at the famous Avebury Ring. It was very early on the morning and I had already taken lots of photographs of the deserted stones before this chap turned up. Newspapers prefer pictures with people in them, so I just asked him to stand beside the largest of the stones and shot straight into the sun. The inclusion of the figure has given the stones a sense of scale and has helped inject interest.

You will notice that in order to cut down on some of the glare from the sun, I have partially hidden it behind the stone. Very careful positioning is needed to do this. Hide the sun too much and the effect is lost. Include too much sun and the whole picture can flare out.