Fine Art Photography Techniques: Sunday's Snap Shot Tech

The crack of dawn showed great photographic potential: gazing through the hotel window the first sparkles of sun light were trying to creep through the lingering fog that was formed by the drop in temperature overnight – 35 degrees to be precise – sitting on top of the relatively warmer surface. 

Anne and me took a weekend get-a-way to Desoto Park in North Eastern Alabama – our agenda included mountain biking and time for me to capture images for my book.  The area is beautiful, rich in its variety of vegetation and untouched landscapes scattered with miles of walking trails meandering up, down and along the Desoto River.  We dressed warmly, sipped a cup of hot coffee and off we went. Anne carried my camera bag; I carried my tripod with the camera already securely mounted.

To be honest, it was very cold – several times stopping to place my hands under my arms to warm my fingers – Anne moved about with little issue taking opportunities to capture a few landscape shots and me working.  Next time I’ll dress warmer. Looking upriver, I saw the scene in the picture posted above. 

Fine Art Interpretation:

I bracketed[1] the upriver scene using three different angles of view – finding which best represented what I was seeing - what I was experiencing.  In this particular case – and common when using a zoom lens – bracketing included changing the composition, though done so without moving the camera’s position.  The final scene was cropped through the viewfinder using the f/2.8 70-200mm, zoomed to 100mm.

Photo Tech:

We are photographing in low light, and trying to capture the ‘grandscape’ our eyes and brain bring to our senses – In aperture priority mode, I dialed the camera to f/22 – a small aperture to create a very wide and deep Depth of Field.[2]  The camera will automatically choose a corresponding shutter speed to complete the exposure. 

Additional settings included my cameras default or calibrated ISO setting of 100.  As I stress in all my workshops, using ISO 100, (and in some cameras the default setting is 200), provides the least amount of digital noise, (in the film days, grain), in your photographs.  Though it was low light, it was still bright enough that I did not shoot this scene as a timed or Bulb exposure, but instead used an electronic triggering device to activate the shutter release button - reducing camera shake by the absence of the user touching the camera. 

Post Production:

First, I carefully adjusted the color image file for chromatic and luminance accuracy – as determined by my interpretation of the scene – little was done to improve upon what the camera captured: I used the Dodge & Burn tools in CS5 to add a touch of highlight to the foreground rocks and limbs in the back ground.  Only after I was satisfied with the color image file did I convert to a Black & White rendering.   There are a few techniques to find the interpretation you are after in a BW conversion, (in both traditional and digital darkrooms), but we will not delve into these techniques here; in the future I will be presenting a special workshop on Post Production methods.  Contact me for details.  

Again, I hope the Sunday Snap Shot Technique blogs help you better understand, and learn how to use the power in your cameras, thus unleashing your creativity!    Have a great day!

Best regards,

Lance  

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[1] Bracketing – capturing 3 or more frames of a composition: without moving the position of the camera, three or more shots are triggered using different f-stop setting, ISO, shutter speed or other ways to change how the scene is captured – without changing the original composition.

[2] Depth of Field: what is in focus in front and behind the subject, (point-of-focus).  Please, contact

Lance A. Lewin for further discussion on the cause and effects of Depth of Field.