Father’s Day

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Dad portraitI was thinking a bit about my father on this Father's Day – this post is not about nature or photography. I want to talk a bit about how we treat the elderly and especially people with Parkinson's disease because this has been something so close to me. Today, people are living longer and the elderly, such as my dad, are a much more common part of our world. When I was growing up, you rarely saw elderly people compared to now. Truthfully, they scared me anyway. I think that was and is part of our unwillingness to deal with aging.

My dad died about a year and a half ago essentially from complications from Parkinson's disease. My father-in-law has Parkinson's disease. My sister has lived with the disease for a while, having early-onset Parkinson's disease like Michael J. Fox.

Most people who have not experienced friends or relatives with the disease think that it means tremors. That is definitely a very visible expression of the disease and is noticeable in Fox. But that is not the disease, only one manifestation of it. Not everyone that has Parkinson's disease has tremors, either.

Now here's the Catch 22 – medication can control the tremors. That's good for the person with Parkinson's, but once they are gone, people think the vicim of the disease is fine. The tremors are annoying, but most who have the disease will tell you they are the least bothersome of the symptoms.

When Parkinson's disease does not "show off" with tremors, it is easy to dismiss the challenges people face when they have it. There are some things that give the disease away to people who know it, such as a certain way of moving, but you really have to know what to look for. My wife and I, for example, recognized it in the CBS reporter Bill Geist, before he publicly revealed he had the disease, and few people knew before he did that.

So if tremors are not there, is easy to attribute a person's slowness, especially the elderly, to just not getting enough exercise, their wariness of going out in public to just being stubborn old people, their problems with travel to just not taking medication properly, and even worse, doctors writing off these people with, "Well, they are old and they have Parkinson's disease, so we can't do anything."

We all admire Olympic athletes for their dedication to becoming the best athlete they can be. We are amazed at the amount of work they do every day to hone their muscles into superb, fit, highly responsive bodies that can achieve outstanding results.

I admire every sufferer of Parkinson's disease for similar reasons. In Parkinson's disease, the muscles of the body quit cooperating the way they are supposed to. The person with the disease must then fight that body, those muscles all day, every day. They are working really hard to do that. They have no choice but to work hard every day, every hour to just make their muscles do what they are supposed to do. People like my dad, my father-in-law and my sister are doing this internally with little showing on the outside except that they are actually able to function.

My sister tells it this way, "I can still do many of the things I did before, but at a slower speed and with a lot more effort….I compare it to walking across a field. Once that was a task which was almost effortless, without much thought. Now it feels like I am walking through wet cement , wearing heavy boots – I can still make it across the field, but it is a whole different experience."

This can be exhausting, both mentally and physically. No one would complain that an Olympic athlete was tired or not as responsive after a tough workout, yet friends and relatives do that all the time with those who have Parkinson's disease, even though the Parkinson's disease has forced them to have an intense physical and mental struggle that never ends.

I have seen how the elderly with this disease will then retreat a bit inward. This is hard work and they don't want to fight with a world around them that expects them to be different than they are. I saw my dad get upset with things happening around him but then not engage with that because he just did not have the energy to do so. This was a man who was an executive at a large corporation who had no trouble engaging with all sorts of challenges before he retired and before Parkinson's disease.

I think people remember what a person was like before Parkinson's disease and expect them to be the same as they age. Then when they are not that way, even friends and family get upset with them because these "old people" are just "being difficult." They aren't being like they used to be.

But they can't be. Parkinson's disease takes a terrible toll on anyone who has the disease. Medication can help, especially for younger sufferers like my sister, but this can be more difficult for the elderly.

A big problem comes from doctors. For many reasons, folks of my parents' generation feel they must be loyal to their doctor of many years. But a big problem is that treating the elderly, especially those with Parkinson's disease, is not "usual medicine." My dad got better, and actually amazing, care when he changed to a doctor who specialized in gerontology.

My dad had an eye doctor who wouldn't treat his cataracts because he was "old and had Parkinson's disease." My mom and dad were so loyal to this doctor that they would not change. Finally my wife (who is in the eye care part of the medical profession) and my sister convinced him that not being able to see was not okay, regardless of loyalties to the doctor. He went to another doctor who saw him differently and then had cataract surgery. He could see again!

Just because someone is elderly and does not have a long life ahead of them does not mean they deserve to be treated badly. It didn't matter if my dad could see better for a couple of years, a few months, or whatever, before he passed away. It did matter that he could see and that the quality of his life was as good as possible for whatever time he had left.

So on this Father's Day, I am making a plea that we all become more sensitive and more aware of the elderly around us, our fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, everyone who has aged. We will all hopefully be there someday, too. But I am guilty, too, of not truly seeing and respecting our elders as they are. I believe we need to accept them and their aging however it is expressed in their lives and give them the chance to live the best life they can. They deserve it. They have lived a life of many things, no matter how it was lived, and they may be fighting things we can only imagine, such as Parkinson's disease.

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Do We Need Photoshop?

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Photoshop ?Many of you are probably aware that Adobe is now switching to a cloud-based way of selling Photoshop and other parts of their Creative Suite. You will not be able to buy Photoshop as a single-purchase program in the future – you will only be able to get it as part of a monthly subscription cost.

Adobe is determined to go to this model for Creative Suite, now Cloud Suite products, including Photoshop. You can see their reasons here, if you care. At $49 month for the complete suite or $20 a month for Photoshop (which will include Lightroom), the costs add up quickly because this is $20/month "forever" or for however long you use Photoshop. There is an introductory price of $10/month for present users of Photoshop, though that is only for one year. Some people have dubbed all of this the "Adobe tax."

But do you really need Photoshop? Photoshop has many excellent controls and I have used it for nearly 20 years, but I use it very little  now. Still, there are times when I really do need it for its layers, even with nature photography. I am not very interested in this cloud-based fee system because I don’t use Photoshop so much, so what else is possible?

I really believe it is possible to manage quite well without Photoshop without paying for this new cloud-based system and still having the control you need.  There is very little the average, yet sophisticated digital nature photographer cannot do if he/she has Lightroom, plus the latest version of Photoshop Elements, and possibly, Nik Software Viveza 2.

Lightroom has all the controls that Photoshop's Camera Raw has and includes an excellent set of organizing tools (notice that I did not say Lightroom is an organizer – Lightroom gives you the tools, just like Staples sells the tools for filing systems, but you have to do the organizing or filing). It is an integrated approach to working with digital photos, including JPEG and RAW files, that makes accessing photos faster and more efficient than using Bridge and Photoshop.

Having long been a user of Photoshop and Camera Raw, then moving largely to Lightroom, I can tell you that processing images in Lightroom can be faster and more efficient, too. I have occasionally gone back to Camera Raw just to see what it is like now, and I have seen students in classes make the transition to Lightroom, and I can tell you that consistently, Lightroom comes out on top. It is true that Camera Raw is easier to use than Photoshop, but that is not saying much.

For me, Lightroom connects you with your images more solidly than Photoshop. When you are working in Photoshop, there is no question that Photoshop is the “star”, but in Lightroom, the photo is the star. No matter how much of an expert I became in Photoshop, I never felt as “bonded” to my images because Photoshop always made it obvious that dealing with the software was more important than the photo. In Lightroom, I don’t feel that way and feel my connection to images helps me better understand what the photo needs.

Yet, there are times I need layers. I use layers and layer masks when I need more precise control over adjusting small parts of an image. I need layers when I combine a black-and-white photo with a color photo, when I need to double process a RAW file to get the most out of bright skies and dark ground (or I even have two original shots), and when I need to create an illustration of something, such as showing a camera in front of a scene with that scene showing in the LCD.

A few years ago, those things could be challenging with Photoshop Elements. Not today. Anyone who says that Elements is not a capable, viable program for photographers has not used a recent version. There is very little you cannot do with layers and layer masks in Photoshop that you cannot do with Photoshop Elements (other than Smart Objects, which I never use anyway – I know they are useful to some people, but few nature photographers really need them). Photoshop Elements has full layer mask capabilities with adjustment layers as well as every other type of layer, including those with pixels. It even includes a Content Aware healing brush and a superb panoramic feature.

Elements does not have Curves with layers, but since I do my primary processing in Lightroom, that is no big deal. Elements has both sRGB and Adobe RGB color spaces, which are fine because, again, most of my main processing is done in Lightroom which uses a large color space (a proprietary space similar to ProPhoto RGB). Photoshop Elements does allow 16-bit processing if you really need it, too.

Another option is Viveza. This can be used with Lightroom without any Photoshop product or as a supplement to Photoshop Elements. Viveza allows for very precise control of local adjustments, plus it has something called Structure that is similar to Clarity in Lightroom and Camera Raw, but much more refined (Clarity is like working with a crayon, while Structure is like working with fine paintbrushes). If you don’t need to composite photos, such as putting together black-and-white with color, Viveza can be all you need to complement Lightroom.

Viveza uses Control Points to deal with local control. You place a Control Point on a specific part of the photo you want to adjust, for example, a rock that is too dark in a landscape. You can then adjust things like brightness, contrast and color separately from things around it. When you set a Control Point, you set a circle for how large an area it will work, plus Viveza looks for seven different things to match the point you selected, creating a mask without you having to do anything. This can allow you to literally adjust only that rock, or whatever you select, without affecting anything else in the photo.

But wait, there’s more! If your adjustment spills over into adjacent areas because there are similarities in tone, color, etc., you can add Control Points onto those adjacent areas that tell Viveza not to adjust them. This gives you very precise control that does not require you to understand layer masks in Photoshop.

Nik Software is now owned by Google and they now sell a complete package of programs for $149 (which is a great bargain). You can even get a little more of a discount if you use the code, rsheppard.

So you see, you might not need Photoshop after all. Adobe says that they are going to the cloud-based system for Photoshop because that means they can update it in small bits as you go and because it makes everyone have better access to the complete suite. That's probably true on some level, but I also think it is a way for Adobe to increase revenues by limiting choice of how you use the program.

 

Posted in Lightroom, Nik Software, Photoshop | Tagged , , | 37 Comments

The Importance of Blacks and Whites in Image Adjustment

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Fendler's bladderpodWhen I teach Lightroom or Photoshop, I make a big deal about setting blacks and checking whites. In fact, that is something I always do with every photo. I will never allow anyone to use one of my images from a RAW file without doing this. A JPEG file from camera is a processed file, so in a pinch, I will send a JPEG file when I have to quickly (which is one reason I shoot RAW + JPEG).

This is actually not a Lightroom, Photoshop or computer thing. This is about how photographs display and goes back to traditional black-and-white photographers like Ansel Adams. Adams talks quite a bit in his books such as The Print (which is still in print and a superb book for anyone processing images, even in the computer). He discusses how important it is to have a full range of tonality from black to white or a print will never look right. It will be gray and look much less attractive because it does not fully use the tonality available in the print. It then looks duller than it should. Adams talks about how important it is that most scenes and subjects need that full range, something a pure black and something a pure white, in order to look their best, though some scenes, such as a foggy day, will not and should not have that range.

Pronghorn in front of Large Array Radio Telescopes in New Mexico; first without proper blacks and whites (from camera), second with blacks set and whites checked:

BlacksWhites-02BlacksWhites-01In today's digital world, this is still important. There is a range of tonality and color available for any display, whether that is a print or an image on a monitor. If the image is not using that full range of display capability, it will never look its best both in tonality and color.

A RAW file is not set up to give you the best range of tonality and color from black to white. It is designed to be processed. In fact, most manufacturers automatically elevate the blacks to gray because a weakness of any digital camera and its sensor is the dark areas (this has to do with the physics of how a sensor works). If you don't then set blacks and check whites (as well as control mid tones), you are not getting the best from the original RAW file.

BlacksWhites-05BlacksWhites-04Notice that the contrast and color looks better simply by working with blacks and whites. Setting blacks and checking whites ensures that your image is using the full range of tonality and color. Blacks are more subjective and you often have a range of possibility for them. Whites tend to be very sensitive and you need to be careful about them. That is why I lke to use the terms setting for blacks and checking for whites.

All Adobe products make this very easy to do. You press the Alt or Option key as you set blacks and whites and the screen will show a threshold screen displaying exactly when and where blacks and whites occur in your image. This is the first thing I always do with an image. In Lightroom and Camera Raw, you use the Blacks slider in Basic for setting blacks and the Whites slider in Basic for checking whites. In Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, you use Levels and the black slider at the left for blacks, the white slider at the right for whites. And at the risk of being repetitive, you press Alt or Option as you do this so you get a threshold screen to look at. This next image shows the blacks threshold screen in action.

BlacksWhites-06Blacks will show up as pure black on the threshold screen. For some images, this may be small spots of black, for others, large areas of black. It really depends on the photo. If your image is full of color, you might not get a pure black, but you will get spots of color. Whites show up as pure white on the whites threshold screen. I usually just barely have a spot of white or color show up, and sometimes, I back off the adjustment slightly until the whites just disappear. Here is the image that was being adjusted in the Lightroom screen shot, before blacks and whites, and after blacks and whites have been adjusted. No other adjustments were made to this image.

BlacksWhites-08BlacksWhites-07The image may be too dark or too light at this point. This is when you adjust midtones to bring out detail there. I will often tweak dark and light areas with the Shadows and Highlights controls. Use Exposure and/or the Tone Curve in Lightroom/Camera Raw, or the middle slider in Levels or use Curves in Photoshop products. Especially watch for muddy, murky dark tones that digital cameras often struggle with – Shadows in Basic as well as Darks in Tone Curve work really well for this with Lightroom/Camera Raw.

All of the images here are from New Mexico shot this spring. Also, every image in all of my books, including my new photo e-book, Reports from the Wild, have blacks set and whites checked (though foggy or hazy days do not have blacks or pure whites).

 

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Reports from the Wild

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

ReportsWildCover 1400w copyFinally, my fully interactive and multimedia photo e-book, Reports from the Wild, for the iPad is out and available. And it will only cost you $2.99! You can find it here = Reports from the Wild - Rob Sheppard.

This truly has been a journey, and one that has helped me grow as a photographer, naturalist, writer and communicator. Plus, I had to learn a lot about photo e-books along the way. I know that not all of you have iPads, and one thing on my list of projects to do is to create a pdf version of Reports. But I have not been in a hurry to do that yet because then I lose all of the interactivity, and that is one thing that makes working with a tablet like the iPad so cool.

ReportsSS 12 green heron video copyI really believe that there is much potential for photographers with these devices and they are worth investing in as a way of learning about the future as well as simply giving you a great way to display your photos (and videos). The iPad does a wonderful job in showing off photography and video – I believe it is one of the best ways we have today of sharing our photos in a high-quality, easily accessed way.

ReportsSS 8 seasons sidebar copyThe publishing industry today, from books to publications, has become a stressed industry that struggles with the new realities of today's digital and Internet connected world. I think that photo e-books offer photographers a way to deal with these new realities in a positive and exciting way. You have total control over your photography, how it is displayed, how it is presented with text, interactivity and multimedia. And this type of book is available for anyone, from the seasoned pro to an amateur who simply wants to make a photo book for his or her family.

This is not to say there are not challenges for this type of project, too. I often use the analogy of the time when cars first appeared in our country. As cars appeared, they needed gas stations. But investors didn't want to build gas stations until there were enough cars. And people didn't want to buy cars until they were sure they could get gas. Today, photographers don't want to create photo e-books until they are sure enough people will buy them. And the public is slow to buy them because there aren't enough yet to reach a "tipping point" for them to think about photo e-books and tablets. They don't know about them. (This is why I ask a favor of you if you get Reports from the Wild – please write a review on the iTunes iBookstore page for my book and let others know about it at your photo club, in Facebook and so forth.)

ReportsSS 7 seasons copyI did Reports with iBooks Author. This is a really excellent program for photographers. It is not hard to learn and all of the cool things that are possible with a multimedia, interactive e-book can be done largely by clicking and dragging. Want a photo on the page? Drag an image file from Finder onto the page, drag the photo into place and click and drag edges and corners to size. Text automatically wraps around it.

ReportsSS 1 DV copyiBooks Author is template based which means when you choose a design for your e-book, you don't have to think about font selection, styles for captions and so forth. It is all there for you, nicely designed. Yet, this is not a fixed option – you can modify any template however you want. You can totally make a book YOUR book, yet you are not having to start from scratch.

Now some of you may have a PC. iBooks Author only works on a Mac. However, you could buy a Mac Mini for less than $600 (and use your existing keyboard and screen), then download the iBooks Author software for free. That is less than buying any other option, such as InDesign (that will set you back about $700), plus the learning curve is reasonable (InDesign has a big learning curve and no templates). How often do photographers buy an accessory such as a lens for more than $600? And that won't give them as much pleasure as doing their own photo e-books!

ReportsSS 11 sidebars copyYou can do a simple pdf photo e-book quickly and easily in iBooks Author that you can make available to anyone with a computer or tablet. This can be a good way to start if you don't want to deal with interactivity at first. I have done this for classes where I have students select a group of photos, compose a short text, then we quickly put together a simple pdf book for everyone to take with them. We are going to do this at the California Photo Festival this fall, too.

ReportsSS 3 chap flrs copy

Posted in Books, iBooks, Nature photography, Photo e-books | Tagged , , | 18 Comments

Using Black-and-White for Better Color

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

BW + Color before-01 BW + Color after-01These two images show a before and after using a technique that combines black-and-white with color for better contrast and color in a color photo.

This past weekend I was doing some presentations at the Big Photo Show in Los Angeles. Lee Varis was also there doing presentations and he spent a little time talking about his workflow with black-and-white images affecting how a color image was adjusted. That reminded me how often I do this and that I had promised to talk about it here, but I had not done it yet! Lee uses more complex steps than I do, so check out his website if you are interested in that (10-Channel Workflow). My workflow is pretty simple.

Combining black-and-white with color is not some magic trick that will work with every photo. But it is a great tool to understand and try at times. You need to have a program that uses layers – either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements works fine (the most recent versions of Photoshop Elements work great). You also need to be able to work on an image so that you have a color and black-and-white version. Lightroom does that job for me. Here are the steps using Lightroom:

1. Process your photo in to get a quality color image – do the important work of setting blacks, checking whites and adjusting midtones, as well as correcting color and doing any needed local adjustments.

BW + Color Process color2a. Next you need a quality black-and-white image. One way to do that is to make a virtual copy of your color image (right click on the photo and you will see this option). Make that virtual copy your black-and-white image, working on it with the Black-and-White panel. Remember that good black-and-white is not simply removing color. Use the sliders in the panel to lighten and darken colors as they change to shades of gray. Create contrast to define the black-and-white image.

2b. Another way to get a quality black-and-white image is to use Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 (my preferred method). Right click on the color photo for a menu, go to Edit In and choose Silver Efex Pro 2. Allow Lightroom to create a new copy of the photo and process it as it is sent to the black-and-white software. In Silver Efex Pro 2, it is very important that you try the Color Filters at the right to find the best contrast for the photo. Also use the Amplify Blacks and Amplify Whites sliders as appropriate. Be sure to increase the Structure slider to enhance detail, and add control points as needed to balance tonalities in the photo.

BW + Color Nik bw
3. Select both the color and black-and-white photos in the Filmstrip (click on one then Cmd or Ctrl click the other).

4. Send the images to Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). Right click on either photo to get a menu. Go to Edit In and choose your Photoshop program (if you have Photoshop, you can also choose Open as Layers in Photoshop). You may need to do this twice, once for each photo.

BW + Color Two Pix 1 copyNow you move to Photoshop.

5. You need a layered file with the black-and-white photo over the color. If you chose Open as Layers, you will have one layered file. Otherwise you need to choose the Move tool, hold down the shift key, then click and drag the black-and-white layer on top of the other (if you keep the shift key depressed until after you release the mouse button, the two images will line up as the layers). If these two photos first show up as tabs rather than separate, floating photos, drag the selected photo up to the tab for the other image until it displays, then down onto the photo. In either case, it is important that your cursor moves all the way onto the second image or else you will get a warning that you can’t do what you wanted to do.

BW + Color Photoshop 2 copy(Technically, you can have either the black-and-white or color image as the top layer, but the steps are slightly different, so I am keeping it simple by saying to put the black-and-white photo on top.)

6. Change the layer blending mode. Go to the layer blending modes at the top left of the layers palette. This will say “Normal” by default. Click on the word, Normal, then a big menu appears. Go down to the bottom and click on Luminosity. This makes the color image take on the “luminosity” or brightness range of the black-and-white photo.

BW + Color Photoshop 4 copyThe results will really vary depending on the combination of black-and-white and color. Sometimes the results are perfect right away, or with just a little tweaking of the effect by changing the opacity of the top, black-and-white, layer. Sometimes it is worth making a new black-and-white interpretation of the color shot to give different emphasis to tonalities. And sometimes, it never quite looks right, so you quit that line of attack and move on to something different.

I am doing a black-and-white workshop at Light Photographic Workshops in July. This is going to be a fun class where we will explore both shooting and processing black-and-white. We will include some work with combining black-and-white and color, too. This is a great time to be on the Central Coast of California where Light Photographic Workshops reside – days are sunny, rain is rare, and temperatures are nearly always moderate, rarely over 75 degrees (with low humidity).

Posted in Black-and-White, Lightroom, Nature photography, Photoshop | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Better Sharpness Up Close

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

NM CU-03I know, a lot of folks up north got hit by a whole mess of snow. But for most of the country, spring is here and that means great opportunities for close-up and macro photography, from flowers to bugs and more. In the classes I teach, I find that many photographers struggle with focus and sharpness up close.

There are three major challenges we face up close. First, as you get closer, depth of field declines, period.  When you get to macro distances, depth of field can be very small no matter what you do. This is why where you are focused, your focus point, is so critical. Second, autofocus really causes problems up close because there are so many points that the camera can focus on and it often focuses on the wrong one. Third, camera movement during exposure is intensified as a problem and this causes unsharp photos for so many photographers. If you shoot a landscape and your camera moves a millimeter during exposure, you won't see much of a problem. That millimeter means nothing for the size of the scene. But when you are close, even a millimeter can shift the scene enough to cause unsharpness. I find that many, many students do not have critically sharp close-ups for this reason.

NM CU-01Let's look at what we can do with these challenges. First, depth of field: Telephoto focal lengths decrease depth of field, wide-angle focal lengths increase it. This is not simply a wide-angle/telephoto thing -- this applies to any focal length compared to any other. For example, a 60mm macro lens is wider than a 100mm macro lens which is wider than a 180mm macro lens, so the 60mm has the most depth of field, the 180mm the least. This applies to lenses used up close with extension tubes, too, so an 80-200mm zoom lens will have more depth of field at 80mm than at 200mm. While you have limited depth of field no matter what focal length you have, sometimes changing focal length will help. I often use a really wide-angle lens up close for its depth of field. I love using a fisheye lens that is inches away from a flower for this purpose.

There is a specialized technique called focus stacking where you take multiple pictures of a subject at different focus points, then you bring the images together to increase depth of focus with a special program in the computer. I have only experimented with this, though I know some photographers who do a wonderful job with it, such as David FitzSimmons.

Here are some ideas for dealing with the close focusing challenge. Where you focus when you have limited depth of field is really, really important, and you need to pay attention to this. I am often challenged by this issue as my eyes age. First, do not focus with the focus ring or use autofocus. When you are up close, changing focus with the focus ring also causes the size of the image to change so this makes focusing distracting. Do a rough focus, then physically move the camera toward and away from the subject as you watch what is going in and out of focus. Since you are not moving side to side, this can be done without causing major camera movement problems during exposure.

NM CU-02Be sure your diopter setting for your camera's viewfinder is set correctly for your eyes (whether you wear glasses or not) -- this is a little dial or lever by the viewfinder. Focus on something that is supposed to be sharp in your viewfinder, such as the focus points displayed there or the text for exposure. This is such a critical thing for me, and unfortunately, you cannot lock the diopter setting on my Sony EVF finder so I constantly have to check it.

Next, look for contrast, not just sharpness as you focus. When something is sharp it will be more contrasty, which can be easier to see than sharpness itself.

Finally, back to the camera movement issue. The closer you get, the more sensitive the image is to this problem. A tripod can help, but I know that a tripod can also be a challenge to use at times. Don't be afraid of using higher ISO settings so you can use a faster shutter speed to minimize camera movement. Cameras today are outstanding at higher ISOs. On almost all cameras today, you can easily shoot at ISO 400 and even 800 without much of a change in image quality (if any).

NM CU-05And don't be afraid to shoot with using a wider aperture that allows you to shoot at a faster shutter speed. So often I see photographers shooting with f/16 or something like that because they feel they have to have depth of field, knowing it is so narrow up close. Yet, that might mean a shutter speed of 1/60 sec., a speed that is very difficult to handhold when shooting up close unless you have a very wide-angle lens. Yet at f/5.6, the same conditions would allow a 1/500 sec. speed, a speed that pretty much guarantees sharpness for moderate and wide-angle focal lengths (you do need faster for focal lengths of 200mm and higher).

All of the photos here are from the Valley of Fires Recreation Area in SE NM (not to be confused with the Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas, NV), shot when I was in NM a little over a week ago. The top photo is a small onion, the cactus is claret cup also known as hedgehog cactus. I don't know the yellow flower and have not been able to find it in any of my guidebooks. It appears to be a member of the mustard family based on the flowers, but I don't know. Any ideas?

Check out my class on flower photography at BetterPhoto.com. 

Posted in Close Up Photography | Tagged , , , , , , | 25 Comments