Capture the MomentTAKING PHOTOS OF WHAT YOU REALLY SEE

Volume 1: Observe, Aim & Capture.

Capture the Moment

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This book is about:

How we perceive all those moments that happen around us. How to be ready to capture those moments. How best to process an image that looks like that moment.

It is for those who wish to love their photographs more, and how to give your photos impact whilst keeping it as simple as possible..

(No one reads the) Introduction.I sat in the bar, slack-jawed.

Opposite me, a long lost friend from school. We last met in 72. Over 40 years had passed and we had been reunited for a little over 2 hours.

He had asked me the usual Where have you been all my life? question, always a mistake. I had compacted, edited, censored and otherwise strangled my life's history into two hours of rises, falls and unfortunate events. He was even daft enough to ask questions.

Once done and dusted, I relaxed into listening mode ready to hear a similar tale and looking forward to imbibing enough real ale to dumb the senses.

Well, lets see. He started, I left school, went straight into teaching college where I met my future wife. We married, had two wonderful daughters and now we have retired into a life of gentle bliss. (I added the last bit just to introduce some excitement.)

That was it. The perfect life, from my somewhat chagrined point of view.

Not even enough of a story to justify more than a sip of ale.

At that moment I saw the unfairness of life, thus my slack jaw.

I cannot answer which is better, a constantly contented life or one full of highs and lows. We make what we can of it. We must take what we are given. We dont however, have to philosophise all the bloody time.

One thing I can say is that, apart from once when queueing in Disneyland, I have never been bored. I have never had the time to do everything I have wanted to in life, but it has certainly been full and looks to continue to be so.

I have lived in interesting times...

I do, however, have regrets, and one of those regrets, right up the front there, is the lack of time to do things other than my vocation.

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Since the age of 6 years old, my life has been like a projectile heading, obstinately towards being a veterinarian and, once that target was finally achieved, the resultant explosion has been both life-fulfilling and life-destroying. It filled almost every crack of my life, insinuating itself into both waking and sleeping hours, leaving little time for anything else. Yes, a family, yes, friends, yes, fun and yes, fulfilling but no time for anything else.

My perception of times past is somewhat strange. My memory tells me that, at the age of 25, after years of struggling through university (and boy, did I struggle) I was in the kitchen at a party held at our house. Not, in itself, unusual.

After pouring a drink, I turned around and realised that I was 40 years old, freshly divorced and finally comprehending that there must be more to life than working 24/7.

One of many things that had fallen by the wayside was my love of photography. Looking back at my collection of photos there are huge gaps where I clearly did not have the time to take them. Big mistake. There were other mistakes too (and not just with photography).

This book, if you remember, is about photography, so what has all this self-pitying babble got to do with that? Well, look, this is the introduction. No one reads introductions, so that means that I can write what I want. It is relevant though. It means that I know how busy lives can be and how those lives would be made richer by getting a little bit more into photography.

There are, however, ways and means of making photography easier AND more fulfilling. I regret not knowing then what I now know, although, to be fair, much of it relates to modern tech which simply wasnt available then. Even so, there was much I should have known about, if only I wasnt so absorbed with my career.

Now I am reaping the rewards of semi-retirement. I now have time for my favourite thing, photography oops, my family, er... then photography...

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I am not alone. Many of you out there will be up the same creek but with no paddle. My hope is that this book will help you learn to love your photography more.

My career and training in veterinary medicine has given me a great insight into the animal world, and bolstered my observational powers. I have also studied evolution, comparative anatomy and physiology, wildlife etc. all of which have made me more aware with my photography.

Thus, having moved gradually on from my box Brownie camera, I have come to photography my own way with my own quirks.

I am hoping that this book will help you develop your own, personal, techniques and maybe to avoid having to enrol in a veterinary course to do so.

This book is a short-cut.

However, if you really want to be a vet as well, dont let me put you off

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Part 1: OBSERVE.

There are enormous differences between a photograph and the image that we see. Understanding this cannot only change the way that you take and process photographs, but can also fundamentally change the way you look at the world.The camera cannot replace our skills of observation, we must grasp that skill and use it.

CHAPTER 1

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What You See is NOT What You Get

The Camera vs the Eye

There is a great deal to learn about photography, and it can take many years to master its tool, the camera. It is, however, just a tool. It is not a replacement for our eyes. It does not work in the same way as our sensory system and its representation of reality is not the same as that which we perceive.

Most of us assume that we see the world around us in much the same way that a camera does. This is absolutely not the case. Our eyes have evolved over millions of years to a point which may have many similarities to a camera (which, incidentally, evolved much more quickly), but how we assimilate the data that arrives from the eyes is completely different to that of a sensor and associated processor in the camera.

Our eyes may seem perfect (if you are lucky enough to have 20/20 vision) but every part of our vision system can be bettered in other animals.

We have evolved eyes that are just good enough for us. Eagles (as an example) have different needs and their eyes have evolved to be just good enough for those purposes, incidentally, just good enough in this case means being able to see details 2-3 times better than we can.

My appreciation of vision has increased hugely over the last few years. As my vision deteriorated due to bits of opaque grunge floating around in the back of my eyes, I had to resort to (please dont read this if you are squeamish) having the jelly (vitreous humour) in both eyes removed with a vacuum cleaner (or similar utensil), and later both lenses replaced. 4 operations that have given me, after a long break, nearly perfect vision once more.

Each operation went something like this;

Nurse Ah, Monsieur Eede, ow are you today? (Please read in French accent.)

Me Ah, OK, please dont touch my eyes.

Nurse OK Monsieur Eede, we need to put some drops in first

Me OK, but please dont touch my eyes

Nurse On y va

Me Arrrggghhh!

Four bouncers arrive, one for each flailing limb.

Nurse There you go, no too bad was it?

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WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET

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Me

Nurse Now all we need to do is ram this enormous needle into the back of your eye without anaesthetic

This is why I now appreciate my vision more than most.

The image that we see (or, more precisely, what we think we see) is a trade-off between:

1. the detail, as much as possible

2. we need the ability to function at different levels of light,

3. we need to differentiate between ripe food and gone-off food, (well, this was important for our ancestors, we have supermarkets that do it for us now).

4. The necessity to spot predators (hmm, supermarkets are no help here) and

5. All this must not take up too much space in our brains.

That is a hard ask, and it has been achieved by compromise:

1. The detail is good, but only in the very centre of our field of vision,

2. our eyes can adapt to different light levels but this may take time,

3. we can see differences between ripe and gone-off, but we have lost much of our sense of smell, (no thanks to smelly supermarkets) and

4. finally our brains have enlarged to retain and compute all this data but only by making birth necessarily both too early and too difficult, thus in itself leading to high death rates in both mother and child.

These are big prices to pay but we have what we have. Let us understand those differences and use them to our advantage.

What information is needed to make a photo?There are several areas to look at here. Ill take a chapter for each to try to keep things clear.

First, however, Id like to take a small detour into a subject that I, for one, find fascinating; how the eye evolved...

A short history of the eye to help understand how we see and why we see in this way.

CHAPTER 2

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How our eyes came to be

Although we may be very distantly related to plant life, (yes, we really are) we diversified from them very long ago. Some of us may think that there are humans alive today better described as vegetables, but no, we may share much DNA, but fear not, sitting all day in front of the TV wont turn you into a cabbage, although the latter may be more useful.

Whereas plants developed the ability to harness the sun early on by photosynthesis, we animals reacted to the sun in a different way.

Very early on, probably somewhere around 3 billion years ago, give or take a couple of hours, cells that developed the ability to respond to sunlight out-survived those that did not. That primitive response was not, obviously, an eye, but the proteins involved, and the DNA responsible for them, are fundamental to our eyes today. It was probably Retinal, a form of Vitamin A, that first gave cells the ability to sense light. This, combining with a protein called opsin led to rhodopsin, a molecule key to light sensitivity to this day.

Once multicellular organisms evolved, this rhodopsin was incorporated into isolated groups of cells which allowed for some kind of directional sense.

These groups of cells gradually evolved into sensory organs of more and more detail and use. This evolution is shown in the following picture of the development of eyes from a patch of photosensitive cells.

Dealing day to day with animals of many different species, it is notable that all of them have eyes which look and function in similar but also often different ways.

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Fish, for instance, have no eyelids nor do they produce tears. Their corneas are relatively flat as they do not refract light and therefore do not act as a lens as it does with us.

Some animals have a tapetum. This is a reflective layer behind the retina that give cats eyes their bright colour when seen in a beam of light. Crocodiles, fruit bats, cats, dogs and many other animals have these, but not primates.

Reptiles and birds process much of the image they see in their retinas, not in the brain as with us mammals.

Third eyelids are present in most species, but not primates.

Predators have eyes placed at the front of their heads to maximise 3D vision, whereas their prey tend to have eyes on the side of their heads to maximise their field of view.

Many animals have evolved five basic visual pigments, but mammals in general have lost most of these. Most mammals are dichromats (can sense two colour ranges) whereas higher primates like us have three colour ranges. The famous mantis shrimp actually has sixteen visual pigments! Imagine what the world must look like to them!

Most mammals have retractor bulbi muscles which pull they eye back to protect it. Primates (including us) have lost that ability.

A system of double lenses was evolved very long ago, but unfortunately after we split from that line of ancestors. This would have eliminated spherical aberration (astigmatism).

Our eyes may be complex, but not as complex as many birds or even turtles. The picture we receive from our eyes is far inferior to those of many other species, but our large brains do help to compensate. About one third of our brain is given over to processing our visual input. This allows us to analysis what we see in much more detail than most other species.

It is this analysis allows us to process moving images in full colour, colour that exists only in our brains, not in the retina.

Thus, when we think of how we see the world around us, spare a thought for all those millions of generations before us that have led to this point, in this time, on this planet, allowing you to interpret what you see. Dont waste it.

On the other hand, watching the occasional episode of Game of Thrones is acceptable...

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Further Reading:For a very thorough explanation of the evolution of the eye, along with some really great pictures, try out Evolutions Witness - How Eyes Evolved by Ivan R. Schwab

More info on the history of our eyes...

Our range of detailed view is very narrow. If not, our brains would soon be full to overflowing.A wide Panorama like this cannot be seen in one glance, we have to look all over it to see the detail.

CHAPTER 3

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Range of View

Let me first try to discard one common misconception. When we look around us, we do not see it all as one clear picture. The truth is that the bulk of the image that you see is constructed in your head by guesswork.

This may sound insane, but it is not, and it is easy to prove. If indeed we did see things as a complete picture, the memory space taken up in our brain would soon be exhausted (although this may go some way to explain some peoples aberrant behaviours...). When you look at something, you only clearly see the very centre of your field of view. Your eye darts around the scene, taking in information that your mind uses to make up the complete picture.

On the other hand, perception of motion is better in our peripheral vision, resulting in vision being better in the near dark away from the centre of the eye.

For a while, as a student, I spent some time in the Sates working with veterinarians there. Amongst all of the crazy things I did there, I helped out doing some delicate rear-end stuff with a buffalo. Doing delicate things in a conscious buffalo is far from easy. As well as making me the only one of my peers to have their arm up a buffalos back-side, I also learned of the peripheral visual acuity that they posses. By this I mean that they appear to have eyes in the backs of their head.

They are, of course, on the side of their head. Because their eyes have not concentrated on detail only in the centre of their files of view, but all over, albeit in almost black and white, they can pinpoint objects accurately, even if directly behind them.

As I was.

They can kick directly behind them (unlike cattle) with both feet at the same time.

Cattle cannot kick directly backwards, they tend to kick around to one side.

Not so with buffalo.

As I painfully discovered.

In my nether regions

I did the same thing with zebra as well as other animals, which has maybe given me a strange fascination with back ends...

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Our eyes do not behave in this way. Looking a buffalo in the eye could mean standing anywhere near it. With us it means standing directly infront.

The camera does not behave in this way either, otherwise photography would not be so popular! The detail is the same all over (depending on focus) as is the colour.

Testing your field of accurate view:Sit comfortably and stare at a fixed point in the middle distance. Do not stray from this point. Get someone to pick a random card from a pack, then gradually bring it around at about arms length into your field of view. State when you can see the card, when you can see the colour of the card, and when you can see the number and suite.You may be surprised...

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Some 80% of our total sensory input is through the eye. Compare that to, say, dogs where the most important input for them is smell. Imagine what our cameras would be like if the sensor responded mostly to smell! On second thoughts, I dont think I will.

This close attention to bottoms has to stop. We better move on rapidly

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How we see relative amounts of light and dark

CHAPTER 4

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Contrast

The first area to look at is dynamic range. This is not some kind of advertising feature, nor is it a mutant superpower. It simply means that, when looking at a view, there is typically a range of darkness and lightness that we can clearly see. You look at a light area - you see all the details there. You then look at a dark area - your eye immediately adapts to see the detail there also. It takes the eye some time to adapt to really bright and really dark areas, but for the normal view - it is instantaneous.

The camera, on the other hand, cannot do that. Thus your typical photo ends up with areas too bright or parts too dark. In these areas the detail is washed out or just black. Nothing like what you see in your head.

This hugely important sensory system is sensitive to only a very small portion (between 0.4 and 0.8 x10-6m) of the available wavebands (from xrays at 10-13m to radio waves with a wavelength of many kilometres).

This has important consequences. As light gets dimmer less photosensors in our retina are stimulated and our vision consequently gets poorer. Nocturnal animals usually have relatively bigger eyes to compensate for this.

I have always felt short changed by this narrow range of light perception, having spent many hours in the dark (pun intended).

Working 24/7 meant seeing patients in the wee small hours with no help at hand. Taking radiographs at night whilst attempting to restrain an uncooperative patient was amusing enough in itself, but developing the film afterwards was an exercise in blind manipulation.

X-ray film had to be developed in different chemicals for different periods of time. To help do this, the dark room (read cellar) could be lit with a safe light. This, in theory, would allow us to see the cassettes and film without causing exposure of the film. This theory worked only if the safe light worked.

Over 50% of the time it didnt.

This meant opening the cassette, placing film in different chemicals in the right order, and then replacing the film, in total darkness.

Total.

Darkness.

In a cellar with loads of other junk strewn around for the unwary.

At times like that I wished I had sonar detection abilities...

On the other hand, bright sunlight gives us plenty of photons to use.

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In bright moonlight we can still see, although we know that it is a lot dimmer than sunlight. In truth, moonlight is about a million times less bright than sunlight! Overcast starlight is ten thousand times dimmer again! And yet between these extremes, we can see! We have a range of about 1010 or 10,000,000,000! That is mighty impressive.

HOW THE EYE ADAPTS

As we encounter different ranges of brightness, as in dawn, night, full daylight, our eyes adapt to the new intensity level.

The rapid part of that adaptation is with our iris. As the iris contracts or expands, the amount entering the eye decreases or increases, thus keeping the relative luminance of an object in the same range. The iris can change light sensitivity 10-fold.

Outside of this range the eye can still adapt, albeit more slowly. This requires chemical changes in the retina which take significantly longer. Once those changes have taken place, we use the same process with our irises to get that same 10-fold range.

The information passed on to the brain is more or less independent of overall light levels, the adjustment is all done within the eye.

HOW THE CAMERA ADAPTS

We can change the light getting through the lens (the equivalent of the iris/pupil) by adjusting the aperture.

We can adjust the sensitivity of the sensor by adjusting the ISO. This is equivalent to the chemical adaptation of the retina of the eye.

Both these will be discussed in more detail later, but for now lets look at the limitations of the cameras systems.

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Range of brightness

TINTERN ABBEY:

This is a photo of an old ruin (no, it is not a selfie). Ive used all the normal settings with no post-processing.

It bears some resemblance to the picture in my head, but much of the detail that I saw has gone.

Although the main subject was the abbey, the sky was also important with its well defined fluffy clouds.

It also had interesting foreground structures to offset the abbey. These were in the shade whereas the abbey was in full sun.

To see the sky more clearly I saw it, we need to underexpose the photo thus: (dont worry about how to do that for now, Ill explain all that nerdy stuff later)

Well, the sky looks somewhat better, and some more of the detail on the abbey is showing, but the foreground is just black - no detail.

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If we underexpose to get the foreground we get this:

Now the foreground ruins are more clear, as are the hills in the background, but the abbey is washed out, and the sky is simply white.

With a normal single shot in the standard photo format (jpeg) the camera would have processed the first image along the lines that you set the camera up with, or as the manufacturer wanted if you use the auto mode.

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The first three photos of different exposures were in a very basic format called RAW (more on that later). These files tend to contain a lot more information than you can see straight from the camera.

Therefore, if we take the mid-exposure photo and tweak the light and darks areas, we can end up with this:

Ill describe some quick methods of doing this in Part 3.

Finally, we can combine these three photos (something called HDR) and get this which, for me, is what I actually saw...

CONCLUSIONContrast, the difference between light and dark, is the aspect that grabs your attention in what you see. Its huge range is thus important also in our photography, arguably more so than colour. It draws the attention of the eye. It can change a dull photo into something memorable.

We use the contrast in tone with black and white photography, and also in colour, thus to the next chapter.

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Perception of colour can be very personal. What one person likes, another loathes. More than that, how one person interprets a colour, another may see something completely different.

CHAPTER 5

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Colour

Having spent much of our evolutionary history in the dark, where colour differentiation was much less important than light sensitivity, our ancestors started to venture out in daylight. Our retinas had to change, and change they did.

Being in the dark made us safer, as long as we could see. That meant that distinguishing between light and dark was thus more important than differentiating colours, a hopeless task in the dark anyway.

Our ancestors evolved a third colour pigment to better see colour clues around us. This was actually not to difficult an evolutionary step as the new cone differs only very slightly from one of the existing cones, and its sensitivity to different wavelengths overlaps a great deal.

As a result, we are less easily fooled by camouflage, and we can see which are the best fruits to pick - are they ripe or rotten? This allowed our ancestors a great advantage over their two-colour competitors.

Added to this our great squidgy computer in our head, we can differentiate the same colours no matter what the lighting. For example, a lemon is yellow in daylight and artificial light, even though the wavelength given off and sensed by the retina is completely different!

It also allows us to see much more vividly. Make use of this advantage passed on to you by your ancestors!

The range of colour we see lies between 400-700nm. This includes all colours from violet to red. Many species including most birds fish and many arthropods, can see ultraviolet (down to 320nm). Others can see further into the red zone, especially insects which can see colours in flowers undreamt of.

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Our rods and cones filter out different wavelengths. Strangely we have no special receptors for red! It is sensed more as an absence than a presence, we sense colours dependant on the relative stimulation of the three cone types. Those animals without three cones can still see in colour, just without the same range as us. Thus it is not true that dogs and cats see in black and white, although it is true that colour is less important to them. Whatever the colour of poops, they will eat it...

Our colour vision range is relatively small. The blue end of the spectrum is not clear to us, tending to be washed out.

Differentiating colour is clearly important to us. We have moved on from choosing our fruit to much more advanced uses, such as deciding whether to jump the traffic lights.

When I started as a veterinarian, colour choice was important as I was then assistant to someone who worked out of a garage behind his house and had a choice of tablets ranging from red through to yellow. What was in them he didnt seem to know.

We have progressed from there havent we? Well, maybe with the exception of the homeopaths amongst us

Because our brain interprets the signals coming from our eye, we can be easily fooled. This Rubiks Cube is a classic example of how that can happen. The central colour on the visible faces of the above cube appear to us as completely different colours, the top being brown, the one in the shade being orange.

They are the same colour. Our brain interprets them as being different because of the degree of shade. Put the two colours next to each other and you can see:

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This is how we can be fooled by photographs. In real life, our brain differentiates colours in different lighting conditions. In this way, we can see, for example, a lemons colour as the same in good and poor light, despite the fact that the wavelength of light reflected from the lemon is completely different in each case.

CONCLUSIONWe are lucky as a species to have three colour sensors. Although more would have been good, three are enough to differentiate a wide range of colours to use with our photography. Colour is important in all we see. We can pick out dominant colours and use them in our photography.

So far we have been concentrating on the abilities of one eye. Normally we have two! The combined use of those two eyes give us our depth of perception...

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Having two eyes plonked on the front of our heads gives us the ability to see in 3D. Our cameras cannot do this, so we have to use tricks to give our photos some depth.

CHAPTER 6

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Perspective

Seeing in three dimensions requires not only two eyes, but also a brain that can handle all the information.

When we look at a photograph, we effortlessly identify people and objectsre-creating a three-dimensional scene in our mind from the two-dimensional image. As easy as that task seems, scientists have long puzzled over exactly how our brain does it; even the most powerful computers still struggle to pick 3-D objects out of 2-D images. Until now, most research has focused on the simpler neural representation of 2-D patterns, but it is now known that some neurones are also tuned to 3-D details.

We can also judge depth using only one eye. We pick up clues due to relative size, lines that converge in the distance, details being clearer in closer objects, the ways objects overlap and way our eye focuses on objects of different distances.

All these things are important when we look at photos, and are the tool used in many optical illusions.

On a two-dimensional photo, we must strive to give the impression of depth. More of this later.

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Having two eyes plonked on the front of our heads gives us the ability to see in 3D. Our cameras cannot do this, so we have to use tricks to give our photos some depth.

CHAPTER 7

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Perspective copy

Seeing in three dimensions requires not only two eyes, but also a brain that can handle all the information.

When we look at a photograph, we effortlessly identify people and objectsre-creating a three-dimensional scene in our mind from the two-dimensional image. As easy as that task seems, scientists have long puzzled over exactly how our brain does it; even the most powerful computers still struggle to pick 3-D objects out of 2-D images. Until now, most research has focused on the simpler neural representation of 2-D patterns, but it is now known that some neurones are also tuned to 3-D details.

We can also judge depth using only one eye. We pick up clues due to relative size, lines that converge in the distance, details being clearer in closer objects, the ways objects overlap and way our eye focuses on objects of different distances.

All these things are important when we look at photos, and are the tool used in many optical illusions.

On a two-dimensional photo, we must strive to give the impression of depth. More of this later.

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Resolution

CHAPTER 8

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Detail

We can see a lot of detail with our eyes, but some birds, especially raptors, can outdo us with a resolution 2-3 times better than ours.

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CHAPTER 9

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Memory

MemoryThe final important difference is with how we remember what we see. A cameras memory is unchanging (hopefully). Our memory is mutable, it changes. To remember a scene, bits of memory are accessed from all over your brain to make a whole. This is unreliable. Witness statements from crime scenes are notoriously unreliable. Clients memory is something to wonder at.

Picture the scene in a veterinary clinic. One pampered cat, two doting owners. One simple question.

Me: How old is poor little Snugglepuss?

Him: Er... I dunno, A couple of years? What do you think Edith?

Her: Well, I remember going round to Aunt Doris house just after little Harold was born, and he must be about 4 by now, so ...

Snugglepuss: Nine.

(The last bit was me looking at the cats teeth...)

So, when it comes to photographs, we have an interesting dilemma. How much do we change the photo? Is it as you remember it? Is it as others remember it?

If you decide to make significant changes to an image (like removing irksome Uncle George from a group photo) then you must show no-one the original photo. Doing so makes the changes obvious, showing the finished product; no-one should notice. People cannot see what isnt there.

The worst thing that you can do is show your beloved wife/daughter/girlfriend etc a photo youve taken BEFORE photoshopping out the spots and wrinkles. Honestly, theyll have no idea that you have doctored the photo if you dont tell them instead, they may ask you to get rid of some spot or other that you have missed!

Anyway, your final image should be as you saw it, (female portraits excepting) in your head, with your eyes, mutated by your memory. If someone says it looks too real (if that were even possible), simply tell then that it is what you saw (unless, of course, the subject was female...)

Its fine, by the way, to increase the features (er, wrinkles) on men. Who said that it was fair?

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Having struggled through this somewhat academic exercise, what conclusions can we draw as to how we see the world around us can affect our photography?

CHAPTER 10

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Interpreting the world around us

Every picture tells a different story and thus every picture needs tweaking in a different way. To overcome this, camera manufacturers provide you with many in-camera adjustments to try to make the final photo match the scene. If this isnt processing then what is?!?

Now this is all well and good, but say youve gone through the laborious (and often erroneous) process of setting your camera up for a shot of your pet rabbit, then you want to take a picture of the buzzard swooping down to snatch it away for breakfast, and then you want a panoramic photo as the buzzard flies away to the distant sunset - how are you going to achieve all that? (Let alone how are you going to tell your kids that their bunny has given a helping hand to feeding nature?

Well, using all these bloody settings is not (in my humble opinion) the answer.

Look, my current favourite camera (more on this later) has 28 knobs and dials plus a menu the length of a Tolstoy novel. How am I supposed to fiddle with all that between the cuddly rabbit bit and the final departure scene?

Well, frankly, theres no bloody way. Im going to screw up and end up with no proof to show my infant accusers.

Another effect is on your enjoyment of holidays. For normal mortals, holidays are to be enjoyed and then, when finished, sadly missed. For photographers that use the techniques in this book, coming back from holidays is not tinged with sadness, but tinged with the anticipation of looking at all those photos and spending time working on them! Holidays become even longer, and memories of them even stronger.

Open You Eyes!

So, the first step in taking photos is to look around you, use the power in your eyes given to you by three and a half billion years of evolution, observe the detail in everything, spot the interesting shot - then click.

Observe, Target & Edit. Simple

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CHAPTER 11

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Dont Panic!

Dont Panic!

There are ways and means around this problem, and that is really what this book is about.

Although all the knobs and dials are in someway necessary to someone, they are not all necessary for you. There are many of them that you can safely ignore. In the section on camera settings I will explain what I think is necessary, what is not needed, and the bits that you might one day need but will probably have bought a new camera by then!

The one main lesson in all of this is that you should shoot photos in RAW (nah, dont remove your underwear, Im talking about the RAW format).

For years I could see no point in doing this, now I truly wish I had, if only for the reason that I could now go back and re-edit those photos using what I have since learned. That opportunity is lost forever...

Im not saying that using a decent DSLR camera is easy, but there are several ways to make it very much easier.

If you shoot in RAW, the photos you get wont look that brilliant straight from the camera, because youve instructed the camera to leave them alone. Its you that will have to do this at a later date when you have the time.

Importantly, if you know what you are doing, it is FUN!

Long-term effects of shooting in RAWShooting in RAW, as explained above, means that you have to find time to concentrate on your photos not just when you take the picture, but later on as well. This can double the fun you have with photography. Using such methods as HDR (yep, another acronym, this time it means High Dynamic Range) you can transform a photo into what your brain remembered - and more. Because of all the details these techniques bring out, you will find yourself looking out more for these details in real life., After time, you will start to realise that you really do see in HDR!

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Can be what you get...

CHAPTER 12

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What you want

TAKE THE PHOTO THAT YOU WANT!

We all have our own ideas of what makes a good photo. These can vary wildly. When you start into the world of photography, the temptation is to copy the ideas of others. This is fine, but only up to a point. Look at what others do and see what techniques they use. Then decide what you like and try to achieve your own wish, so that you end up with photos that YOU love, not (necessarily) what your neighbour down the street likes.

Much of this book is there for you to follow techniques and master them. That does not mean I am trying to produce clones of my work. Take what I say and do, then distort it as you wish, to make a photo that you can put up on your wall or in your book.

If others like it - fine, but first and foremost, you must love it.

If you love taking photos of animals, do so, but try to make it unique to yourself in some way.

If you want to take photos of birds, do so, but find a way of making your photos something other than a simple collection of stuffed avians; make them interesting.

If you love old buildings, study their detail and individuality then capture them on film.

If you love landscapes, photograph them, but make them interesting.

If you love photographing animals bottoms, see a psychiatrist.

Just joking. Although you do see a serious amount of animals bottoms on safari...

Now that we know what we want, we now have to learn how to get it.

You need to learn where to aim, all subjects have a target to aim for, although they are usually not as obvious as the one above...

Of course, having a camera would also help...

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Part 2: TARGET

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Part 3: EDIT

The Rules of Photography

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The 7 Golden Rules of Photography

1. Always keep your camera with you2. Keep taking photos of everything3. Make the most of interesting light4. Obey the rule of thirds5. Go for simplicity when composing your subject6. Don't be frightened by technology7.Use your computer to find

pictures within pictures

Val Newton