Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

Organizing gear in a blizzard in Patriot Hills, Antarctica

So you did take that big DSLR instead of the point and shoot? And you stepped up from that all-in-one 12-500mm lens to some fixed primes, which you are lugging along on your back.

Flying kid on Stone Town, Zanzibar Tanzania

Flying kid on Stone Town, Zanzibar Tanzania, shot from the beach

At some point in time you will likely want to change your lens. Alas, unless you are shooting in a laboratory, you might find yourself in a place like one of these:

Full of dust: the desert, dusty mountains, beach
Full of wind: the same places as above, plus snowy mountains!
Full of rain and snow: anywhere where you can take interesting landscape photos 8)

Guess, what, the moment you switch that wide-angle for the zoom, about a gazillion dust particles and snowflakes are lined up to use those few seconds to enter and smudge your camera.

Why is this bad?

Dust can ruin the inner workings of the camera. I did not know this until recently one small flake of dust had settled on the auto-focus sensor at the bottom, behind the mirror and no lens would auto-focus anymore!

This is quite rare, but the more usual result of dust is that the image sensor will contain smaller and larger dust particles, each covering many pixels on the sensor. This means that the sensor cannot ‘record’ the light there and you will get dust specks (dark dots, lines etc) on your images until you clean the sensor. You will need to spend much time cleaning these dark spots up in LightRoom or Photoshop if it is possible at all.

Snow-covered yak, in Rongbuk, Tibet, near Everest

Snow-covered yak, in Rongbuk, Tibet, near Everest

Why should you not worry too much?

First of all fear of dust should never be a reason to miss a great shot, it is better to have a great shot that needs some cleaning than no shot at all!

Also: nowadays the better camera’s have built-in systems to shake the sensor clean, taking off a lot of dust. (more…)

Nepali boys, Khumbu Valley

The children category on ExposedPlanet.com is one of the most popular ones on the Photo-blog. Likely because you can recognize a part of your own (lost?) youth in the faces of the kids.

Nepali boys, Khumbu Valley

Nepali boys, Khumbu Valley

Interestingly enough, it does not seem to matter where or under what circumstances the kids live. They all have the same desires to play and be happy and usually use whatever is available to them to fulfill these.

Some of the children’s portraits are in the most-commented top list and often I have been asked how I made these portraits. Not technically -that info is available as well, for every photo, just click the ‘Exif’ link to show lens, camera, aperture, speed etc.-, but practically: what makes a photo of a child more than a crappy family snapshot?

Here are some things I learned the past years, illustrated with images from kids I met in Tibet & Nepal:

(0) Know your camera, lenses, light etc etc etc etc. I am not giving this a number as it is a basis without which you will never be able to make any nice pictures of any subject (see also the post about 10 Travel Photography tips). So I see this as a given and will only now start counting 🙂

(1) Get at their level. Literally

3 Nepali Khumbu kids outside their house, early morning

3 Nepali Khumbu kids outside their house, early morning

This is maybe the most important aspect of shooting images of children. With this I mean physically sit, kneel or even lie down, so you can look them in the eyes without looking down on them.

First of all when shooting from above, you usually get a distorted view, often weird looks as the child is looking up -or looking down if he is not interested- and boring backgrounds: mostly the floor or whatever you are standing on.

When you lower yourself, you’ll find yourself in their world and see what they see. The backgrounds will be more interesting and children will be more at ease as well.

Treat them as a full-blown subject, not just some kid you look down upon. (more…)

10 Travel photography tips from ExposedPlanet

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
Street kids in Taschi Dzom, Tibet

(This was originally a part of this post on ExposedPlanet.com, see also the comments there)

I was asked to make a top 10 list of photo tips, focused on Travel Photographers.

So here are some basic and travel-specific pointers. Many have been uttered by fellow shooters and some might seem too obvious, so use them as deemed necessary! As every photographer is (fortunately) different, this might not be useful for you, but for others this might help 🙂

Makalu from 3rd step on Everest

Makalu from 3rd step on Everest

1) Know your gear: not just the functions of the body but also the lenses. Know which lens has the sharpest focal range for a specific aperture etc. but you should also be aware that your sensor is dirty, so you know not too shoot F22 🙂

In the end knowing your gear will save you time as you do not have to fiddle with the settings and try different lenses as your subject will be long gone baking chapatis. You will get better pictures as you will know the gear you use will be suitable for the job.
Also: know your editing software, at least the basics. Some deleted shots (or shots not taken as you thought that the light was wrong) might have turned out perfect once optimized with levels or contrast.

(more…)