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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Extreme •Nature •Sports •Stock •Travel •Technique •

Figures in a Landscape

Tom Bol | 03/30

Use people in your images to add perspective and interest.

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I recently returned from two weeks in Patagonia, one of my favorite shooting destinations anywhere.  Each year I go down I try to mix up my coverage from tango dancing, landscapes, wildlife and ice climbing.  This year we had some marginal weather at some key locations, but luckily the day we went onto the Viedma Glacier near Chalten the weather was overcast and slightly drizzling.  Yes, that’s right, I’d rather be shooting on glacier in overcast than bright sun.  Why?  Because you get less contrast and better color, especially the deep blue ice, when the sun isn’t out.  We hiked out to a great crevasse to photograph, but shooting the crevasse alone wasn’t that compelling.  I needed to add something for reference, and that is where a nearby ice climber came in handy.

Figures in a landscape, or in this case, people in the shot, often help an image.  I love to create dramatic wild landscape images free of human influence, but sometimes adding a person does the trick.  This image is interesting as a glacier landscape, but adding the climber adds perspective, color and a hint of danger as he peers into the abyss.  If the person is interacting with the environment, this will add more to the story of the image.  Don’t have a fellow hiker with you but really want to have a hiker staring at the view from a scenic vantage?  Just try setting your self timer for 20 seconds and posing in your own shot.  Sure makes getting model releases easy!

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Use gels on your flash for special effects.

Tom Bol | 05/11- 05:35 AM

Adding gels to your flash and changing white balance creates unique images.

I like to follow this principle.  “The more skills you have, the better your chances for success.”  I used to use this principle as a climbing instructor when teaching students rope systems.  Inevitably on some climb something wouldn’t go right, maybe a simple thing like getting a rope stuck.  The more rescue and climbing systems you knew, the better your chances of having a solution to fix the problem.
The same is true for photographers.  Every photographer has a story about a ‘photo shoot gone bad.’  Strobes don’t fire, talent doesn’t show up, permits aren’t in order.  What separates one photographer from another is how they deal with these situations.  Clients like photographers who have solutions, not problems.  Knowing more technical skills behind the camera also helps.  And one of my favorite things to do is add gels to flash to spice things up.

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Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29- 10:11 AM

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

When most people think of high speed sync, they think fast shutter speeds and freezing the action.  True, shooting at 1/8000 with flash is going to freeze the action no matter what the main light source is illuminating the subject.  But what about other uses of high speed sync and flash.  Until the release of the Pocket Wizard Flex system and Hypersync (see my last post), I was often frustrated shooting in bright sun.  I needed an aperture of F16 to get the right exposure at 1/200, my fastest sync speed using my Elinchrom Rangers.  What if I wanted to use a wide open aperture like F2.8 to get soft focus and blur out the background?  The answer is use high speed sync for selective focus shots in bright, sunny conditions.  Maybe high speed sync should be called ‘soft focus sync.’

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