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Issue 43 : June 2015

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Congratulations to Bobby Barramede for the winning photo in this month’s competition ‘water’. Well done! If yours didn’t quite make it, remember it

doesn’t mean that your photo wasn’t good; it only means that somebody else’s was better. So keep trying!

On the subject of being good: I have a friend who gives me a hard time about being a meritocrat, about believing that people should be rewarded for being good at what they do. When it comes to photography there is a big difference between someone who is good, verses someone who is good at promoting themselves.

Often, the best photographers are not very good at putting themselves out there. They are good, because they are supper critical of their own work, and so are always striving to improve. However this always ‘seeing the fault’ prevents them from stepping forward. I would like to shine the spotlight on some of this hidden talent.

If you know of someone who produces exquisite work, but is hiding in the shadows, please ‘dob them in!’. Send me a link to their work and maybe I’ll do a feature on them.

Allan CoxResident JudgeNZ Photographer

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ABOUT Whether you’re an enthusiastic weekend snapper or a

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EDITOR Allan Cox, allan@nzphotographer.co.nz

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NZ Photographer is an Espire Media publication

Allan Cox

Liquid gold!

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Next Month's Competition: Abstract

GET SHOOTING AND WIN!

Photographers - This is a great opportunity to improve your photography skills and get some feedback from professional photography judges in a safe and friendly environment.

Here's what's up for grabs:

• The winning image on the cover of the next issue

• A high quality print of your image and cover to immortalise your achievement for your grandchildren, courtesy of PCL Imaging

• $50 cash

• And of course, bragging rights and the envy of your fellow NZ Photographer fans!

Check out next month’s theme and enter at www.nzphotographer.co.nz!

✸WIN!

The theme for next month’s competition is the colour red. Get creative. Photograph something ordinary in an extraordinary way and send it to us.

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Jake Darwen is a young Kiwi who combines two passions, photography and skateboarding, to produce amazing work. On the one hand, Jake’s

photos are typified by architectural elements with incredibly strong graphics, where words like angular, heavy and bold come to mind. Then juxtaposed against these heavy elements, as if defying gravity itself, is a skater dude flying through the air. The contrast is almost whimsical, and the resulting photos… well they just ‘go off’! Jake has been kind enough to share some of his work and tell us a bit about himself.

Jake Darwen

FEATURE ARTIST

NZP: What inspired you to be a photographer? And what is it that you love about photography?Skateboarding is what inspired me to be a photographer. When you’re a skateboarder you get to see how much you progress over the years and it’s the exact same with photography. You learn and you improve from your own mistakes and experiences. That’s the exciting part of them both, there is no mastering of either, because you’re always progressing.

www.jakedarwen.com

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“NZP: Who do you admire and why?I admire all of my friends that I do and don’t skate with, because without them I wouldn’t be able to do any of this.

NZP: What was your first camera and what do you shoot with today?My first camera was an entrance level Nikon D40x, which for me, lasted about 16 months before I realised I wanted to upgrade. My current camera’s are a D800 for still images and a D3 for sequences.

NZP: What else is typically in your camera bag?In my camera bag, I carry around my Nikkor 85mm F1.8, Nikkor 50mm F1.4, Nikkor 16mm F2.8[fisheye], Nikkor 10.5mm F2.8, and Pocketwizards [flash triggers].And when I’m out skating, I’ll have my pelican case as well, which carries all of my lights: 400ws Lumedyne Action Pack, 2 x 200ws Lumedyne Action Packs, Sunpak 120j flash, SB 800 Nikon speedlight and my light stands.

Skateboarding is what inspired me to be a photographer. When you’re a skateboarder you get to see how much you progress over the years and it’s the exact same with photography. You learn and you improve from your own mistakes and experiences.

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NZP: If you were going to buy more equipment, what would the next item be and why?A 28mm or something along those lines for sure. It’s a struggle sometimes having a vision, but only owning a 50mm, which chops some ideas that I have out of the equation.

NZP: What advice would you have for aspiring photographers?Listen to everyone around you, be open-minded to ideas, and seek advice from photographers that you aspire to.

NZP: To what degree are your photos planned?It’s 90% unplanned. When we are going to a spot to photograph a trick, that I’ve never been to before, I can have all of these ideas in my head, but when we get to the location it can be the complete opposite. If I know the location and trick I’ll have ideas in my head beforehand, but then again they can easily change. So it’s always fairly unpredictable.

”“Listen to everyone

around you, be open-minded to ideas, and

seek advice from photographers

that you aspire to.

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NZP: How much post-processing do you do? And if you do post-process, how do you go about it?I edit everything through Photoshop – I just play around with the curves, selective colouring and dodging/burning. These are the three key tools that I use when editing.

NZP: I notice in some of your photos, you’re using flash. Can you tell us a bit about that?I try to use flashes when it’s the appropriate spot. For example if I’m shooting fisheye I tend to use flash a lot, because I love bringing out the detail of the sky [by underexposing it] and making the skater pop out. As for long lens images, I use flashes if I feel like the spot is kind of busy. I’ll use flash to try and make the skater stand out more.

NZP: What has photography done for you?Photography has taken me around the world and opened up many friendships that I would have never had, if I didn’t shoot photos. It’s also given me a chest full of memories that I have to look back on. And memories for everyone else that I have photographed; the memories are for everyone.

NZP: What are your three tips for others who want to become better photographers?• Listen to other photographers.• Find a favourite subject you love to photograph and

give it your all.• Go travelling.

NZP: What is next for you? Any planned adventures with your camera?Hopefully go to America for a few months this year and do a few other trips but nothing is set in stone yet.

NZP: Where can we see more of your work?The Skateboarders Journal.SLAM Magazine.www.jakedarwen.com

After moving to Australia in 2012, Jake’s talents and prolific submissions of quality work to the skateboarding mag SLAM, soon earned him the roll of youngest senior photographer at the magazine. Based on a small number of emails that have gone back and forth and other info I’ve gleaned, I suspect there is one final important quality, that is part of the mix that has lead to Jakes success: an ability to make friends with people. We wish him continued success. ■

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Macro Number Five

By Allan Cox www.nzphotoworkshops.com

Flash gives us a very short, very bright, burst of light. This short burst of light, lasting only a fraction of a second (from 1/1000 of a second to 1/20,000 of a

second, give or take) is fast enough to eliminate camera

shake so we now no longer need to use a tripod (I can hear

the cries of joy from those who gave using a tripod a go and

found it can be rather frustrating).

As well as removing camera shake; it can be used to freeze

the movement of our subject. If used at the faster speeds, it

will even freeze the motion of insect wings in flight.

Because it is also a very bright burst of light, we can set a large number aperture e.g. f16, so we get a reasonable depth of field, (we still don’t get much).

So all up flash has some big advantages that are worth exploring, but before you start thinking that flash is the answer to a maiden’s prayers, it does come with a couple of wee downsides.

If you’ve never played with flash, chances are that the first downside that pops into your head will be that it’s complicated. In the bad old days of film it was

WITH THIS MONTH'S ARTICLE ON MACRO, I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE THE SECOND WAY TO SOLVE THE CAMERA SHAKE/LIMITED DEPTH OF FIELD CONUNDRUM THAT WE FACE WITH MACRO; LET’S TALK ABOUT FLASH.

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complicated; you couldn’t see your results until you picked up your photos two weeks later, so the only option apart from wasting a lot of time and money, was to learn all the technical theory before you started. Nowadays, thanks to the instant feedback with digital, we can learn by playing, which is a lot less painful.

On a recent macro workshop, one of our students was delighted at how easy flash was; he had been expecting a major drama. It’s not that I gave him some amazing lessons; in fact all that I did was hand him a flash that had been set up to fire remotely, give him a couple of camera settings as starting points, and got him to start taking photos (of an orange on the table). Within a few minutes he was merely exploring placing the flash at different angles and distances and enjoying the different lighting effects it gave.

Flash comes to us in a couple of different flavours. First off we can have the Flash ‘on the camera’, or ‘off the camera’. On the camera, is where we either use the pop up flash most cameras have, or we put a flash onto the camera’s hot shoe. Alternatively, we can have “off camera flash”. In this situation, we have a flash, which is off the camera somewhere, and is set up to be triggered to fire when the shutter opens (fired remotely).

If you have a flash that has been made specifically for the brand of your camera, you may be able to trigger it, while off the camera, without buying more equipment. If not you will need to purchase a ‘remote flash trigger’.

In the above two situations (on or off camera) the flash can either be intelligent, or dumb. If that flash is working intelligently (often with the acronym of TTL in it’s name) , there is communication happening between the camera and the flash. The flash puts out the correct amount of light, to give a good exposure, based on information it gets from the camera. In dumb mode a.k.a. manual flash mode, you tell the flash how much light to put out (full amount, half the amount, one quarter of the amount etc.) and it does this irrespective of everything else.

It may seem counterintuitive, but I’m going to suggest you start with dumb flash. Intelligent flash is great when it’s working properly, but you’ll learn more using dumb flash, and when intelligent flash doesn’t work properly it can be a real nightmare.

Try this experiment one evening (under normal room lights). Set your camera to manual mode, your shutter to 1/200 of a second, your aperture to f8 and your ISO to 200. Set the Flash to manual and half power. Now take a photograph of something in the room. If the result is too dark or too light change one of your settings (either aperture, ISO or flash power but not shutter).

You should see a change in brightness in your photo. Play around with different sittings. When you have a good exposure try setting your shutter to 1/100th of a second. You should see no change in the exposure. Shutter speed has no effect on our exposure in normal flash use.

Try moving closer to your subject matter. As the flash gets closer to the subject more of it’s light will be hitting the subject so the brightness of your photo should go up.

Try setting your shutter speed to 1/500 of a second. The result should be that half of your photo is black. This is what happens if you set the shutter speed too high. Best just leave it at 1/200 sec.

Don’t expect perfect results straight away but if you are prepared to make a few mistakes and keep playing you will soon get it. With flash, there is a little bit of ”need to know” and a hell of a lot of “nice to know”. It’s all of this “nice to know” that seems so daunting and can be very confusing to the beginner. We’ll look at some of this ‘nice to know’ next time. But at this point in time, I’d just like you to get used to the idea of playing with flash and adjusting settings based on the results you get.

A final point. If your are using your cameras pop up flash to light a macro subject, often the lens will be between the flash and subject and so shade it. Putting some kind of diffuser between the flash and subject will solve this problem. ■

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Resizing Your Image

Still on the topic of removing barriers to entering a photographic competition, I thought I’d look at resizing your image, as most competitions

ask for a photo to be a certain size — often stating a maximum number of pixels on the longest side. Any photo editing software worth having will have the ability to resize your images. The process normally involves choosing a few options in a dialogue box, like how many pixels to a side, and clicking okay.

Each photo-editing program will get to this dialogue box via a different path. Below are the parts for Photoshop, and a wee program called IrfanView, which is a free to download, small image editor, that might be worth looking at if you have no other. See www.irfanview.com

In Photoshop go: Image > Image size . . .

In IrfanView go: Image > Resize/Resample . . .

In these dialogue boxes you are also presented with a few other options besides the size of your image in pixels. I thought I would look at some of the more common of these options, as they can be confusing.

By Allan Cox www.nzphotoworkshops.com

Constrain proportions/Preserve aspect ratio:

It is important that constrain proportions is ticked. Or you run the risk of squashing or stretching your image. With this box ticked you only need enter the number of pixels along one side and the program will automatically work out how many are needed for the other side.

Most competitions will ask for your image to be a certain number of pixels on the longest side. If you find yourself entering the number of pixels on both sides, check to see that that the ‘constrain proportions’ box is ticked.

Re-sample the image:

The “re-sample the image” box, is asking permission to make up or throw away pixels. We need to tick this box as this is what we are doing. We are asking the program to produce a photo with a total number of pixels that is smaller or larger than our original. We are up-sizing or down-sizing.

Resolution/DPI/Pixels per inch:

This one can be ignored; as pixels per inch a.k.a. DPI, is just a way of saying how big each pixel will be. It is only relevant if we are going to inkjet print our photo. An inkjet printer, can produce pixels of different sizes, and if our pixel size is too big we see individual pixels.

This is called pixelation. However if the image is only going to be viewed on a monitor, tablet, phone, data projector etc. then the pixel size is irrelevant, because the pixel size of the monitor, tablet etc. is already permanently set (in the manufacturing stage).

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The device will ignore any pixel size you choose, as it can only give you pixels at the size they were manufactured at. The device will only care about the number of pixels you have, not their size.

Once all the relevant information has been entered we can then click OK. Probably the most important bit of the whole process is that at some stage, either before or after resizing our image, we need to go through the ‘save as’ process.

The ‘save as’ process creates a new photo and leaves the old version unaltered. We will now have two photos; the original and the new altered one.

Go to file > save as…

Choose a new file name, a location, a type of file etc, and click okay. Once you have done this you are safe, as any change will be to the altered photo, leaving the original untouched. Some people do this as their first step, and this is probably the safest working method, but it can be left till last. Just as long as you do do it before closing. If you don’t Photoshop will ask if you would like to ‘save’.

Understand that there is a world of difference between ‘save as’ and just ‘save’. Save overwrites the original (and so destroys it) with the new altered photo. Only ever use save if you are happy to lose the previous version. ■

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By Breen Porter FPSNZ ARPS LBIPP

The wide-angle lens is one of the more powerful lenses in your camera bag, but it’s also the hardest lens to successfully master. When you do, you will

find it rewarding and hopefully it will become part of your favourite equipment.

Many people, after using a wide-angle lens, are disappointed when they see their images. This is because their photos have no centre of interest, the whole scene is cluttered, and everything is distant and far away. Maybe after these tips about getting the most out of the lens, you will reach into your bag, pull out that wide-angle that hasn’t taken an image for many months, and click away with great enthusiasm.

First, what do you call a wide-angle lens? I think anything from 28mm downwards is in the category of wide-angle, not forgetting the fisheye. You can capitalise on this lenses barrel distortion to the benefit of the image. The zoom lenses in wide-angles are now excellent and are great for getting several lenses in one. in one, especially in your overseas camera bag.

One of the biggest problems of wide-angle lenses is having the sun in your image; ironically, this can be to your advantage.

To do this close your aperture to f16 or 22, turn 90 degrees and take an exposure reading with your camera — even the most sophisticated camera meters will

PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND INC

The Wide Angle Lens

”“

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Brought to you by the Photographic Society of New Zealand. Find out more at www.photography.org.nz

sometimes overexpose when shooting into the sun. To avoid this, hold the reading before returning to your original position and you will have perfect exposure and the sun will give a nice star like effect.

Be careful when using a polarising filter, as you can get vignetting, so purchase one of the new super thin Polarizer’s, or a step up ring, also look out for your lens hood as that can vignette as well. Another problem that you cannot rectify with a polarising filter is the fall off of light across the sky, from deep blue to white. Although sometimes you can get away with it, more often than not, it will ruin your image, so keep an eye open for this.

Photographing tall buildings can also be a problem, as there can be a converging effect where the buildings end up like leaning pencils. When possible try to photograph the buildings, with as little tilting of the camera away from level as possible. This effect will also be noticed when shooting down; fortunately, with the advent of the computer both these influences can now be easily rectified.

Is not very flattering to photograph people with these lenses, but animals have a somewhat surreal effect. Cows, horses or dogs with elongated faces can become interesting subjects. If the lens you use gets wider it will become increasingly harder to accomplish good images, but with a little technique and perseverance, you will create images that you will be proud of.

When going out in the field with your trusty favourite wide-angle lens expect to get a little grubby (I always carry a plastic supermarket bag for kneeling on).

Unlike the standard lenses, you won’t get good images just standing there. The best effect is from kneeling or lying down. Look around for a strong foreground subject, it may be a rock, ground hugging plants or shellfish on the beach.

To frame a subject try looking through the legs of an animal or adult. This can provide an unusual shot, as can shooting up at the sky with a small amount of foreground. Including cloud formation in your image can make a powerful photo. Likewise lying on your back and shooting up at trees,(the converging affect can be quite appealing here).

Boulders, cliff faces, buildings they all work. When shooting in these positions, throw away your inhibitions to obtain a great image. When you are in a church, try placing the camera on the floor in the middle of the aisle, looking down the aisle and slightly upwards.

If you close an aperture to f16 or 22 not only will you get great depth of field but a slow shutter speed to show movement as well. Use the self-timer to avoid the camera moving when the photo is taken and bingo you will have a great unusual shot.

Very quickly, you will come to realise that your wide-angle is one of the best lenses in your camera bag. You may come home a little grubby with dirt on your shirt and knees at times, but very satisfied that you have some great images in your camera. Good luck. ■

Many people, after using a wide-angle lens, are disappointed when they see their images

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Gail Orgias

Spotted on an early morning walk where the light made interesting converging and directional lines to form an abstract pattern on the footpath. Fuji EX-1, 35mm, 1/200 @ f5/6

Bobby Barrameda

This image was taken at hooker valley glacier terminal lake in Mt Cook National park. Taken with Canon 5D Mark III and16-35mm lens. ISO 50, shutter speed of 1 minutes and 30 sec with the use of LEE little stopper filter to produce the misty effect of water with the foreground of ice blocks from the valley and the background of the majestic Mt Cook.

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Glenda Fawcett

Drops of red water falling to the water trough below. I used red water to drop into a very still water surface, to catch the impact of water on water. Canon 6D F/4 Exp 1/1250 ISO 3200

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Margaret Wong

Huka Falls: These falls are always spectacular and I arrived there in the rain which slowly cleared. I was hoping for some interesting light and finally decided to give up having looked at all sorts of angles around the place. As I slowly walked back I crossed a very narrow band where a rainbow was intermittently visible so set up the tripod and kept shooting until the clouds rocked up again! I preferred the shorter exposures as it emphasised the colour of the water and energy of the foam. Olympus EM-1. ISO 100, 1/160s, f4.5, focal length 35mm, exposure bias -0.3

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Arjay Cosenero

This shot was taken at the rocky coastline at Ocean’s Beach, Whangarei Heads.

Nikon D5300 Focal Length 10, f9 ISO 100, Shutter 1/4 sec.

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Linda Ritchie

Taken on Milford sound. Really a fluke shot as we were cruising the sound and I only had my large lens with me and could not fit the whole waterfall in. I saw the shapes in the water and decided to focus on the detail of the waterfall landing. F8 100s ISO 400

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Sue Block

Ice in the Land of Ice and Fire, Iceland ISO 200 1/1000/ f8

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Steve Harper

Flat Rock Muriwai, Nikon D610, 1.6 sec, f22, ISO 64, 24mm, evening light

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