Single-Serving Photo

Remember when I told you about that crazy remote-controlled robot carting a DSLR that these two British brothers would drive around Africa, taking up-close-and-personal photos of wild animals? It was called the BeetleCam, and it was the brainchild of William and Matthew Burrard-Lucas, two swiftly burgeoning wildlife photographers from the UK.

Well, they’re at it again, only this time they’re not using a remote-controlled dune buggy and they’re not photographing lions or elephants. They’re using an ingenious tabletop lighting setup and capturing the births of mosquito larvae.

See all of the amazing macro photos and read about the brothers’ technical process on their guest post on Digital Photography School!

Via Digital Photography School, via Burrard-Lucas.com

To the right of your histogram that is. You do remember how to read one, yes? Slightly, ever so slightly exposing all of your photographs to the right of the histogram, which is to say slightly overexposing them, should be your goal, 100% of the time.

Why? Because there is more data in the brightest few stops of sensor attenuation than in the rest of the entire range, which is to say that there will be more detail, less banding, less noise, and so forth, within the brightest areas than there will be in the darkest ones. But you’ve observed that before, right? You’ve seen how terrible shadow areas can look when you try to brighten them up.

“It’s better to overexpose a photo than to underexpose it.“—Will Greenwald

Then there’s this guy Will Greenwald. He just posted a whole article about this in which he says “it’s better to overexpose a photo than to underexpose it.” Awesome, I agree. But neither of us are saying you should “blow out” any of your image; definitely don’t do that.

Strangely, most of the people who commented on Will’s article disagreed with him. Those people are amateurs. (more…)

To say that photographing the fireworks display in Washington, D.C. is a challenge might be hyperbole. Compared to those in Boston and New York City, which I’ve photographed two times each, getting a reasonable spot to shoot from is a cakewalk.

The National Mall opens at around 10 AM, but even at 3 PM there are still plenty of good spots by the Lincoln Memorial, so there’s no need to hurry. The real challenge, it would seem, is the complete and total lack of information about the strategy and considerations of shooting in the heart of the nation’s capital. (more…)

Little did I know of the abilities of so-called “tethering,” for I had never tried it myself.

In the photography realm, tethering is a term generally used to describe shooting while the camera is directly connected to a computer. Most often, it is used to instantly push the photos onto the computer so that they can be previewed or, in some extreme cases, immediately edited by someone else for review by an on-site art director and so forth.

So really, “wireless tethering” is a super oxymoron, but that’s what they call it when you control your camera wirelessly or retrieve the photos in realtime wirelessly. Canon makes a device for this, and it retails for $800. I think you’d really have to need it to spend that much.

At least, that’s what Jamie Carl thought, so he made his own. Basically, tethering nowadays is just a standard USB connection, the same connection that you use to download photos directly from the camera (if you ever do that). They actually make wireless USB extenders now, which basically just separate one end of a USB cable from the other using wireless technology. It works just like USB, for just about anything that talks through USB.

I’m not sure what the bandwidth is like, but for controlling your camera, you don’t need much.

Jamie wanted to have wireless control of his camera because he was going to be riding in a car at highway speed, with his Nikon dangling outside on a mounting bracket! It seems like it worked out pretty well!

Check it out on Jamie Carl’s blog.

Yes, you heard me. Free as in “no charge.”

Over the course of two years, BBC-produced Wildlife Magazine published a 12-part series on photographing the locations and creatures of nature written by talented photographers and including spectacular images. Until now, you would’ve had to find the 12 specific issues of Wildlife in order to read these tips, and for the effort it probably wouldn’t have been worth it. I, for one, am a lazy person, having grown up in the age of the Internet where any and all useful information is a click away, so rummaging through magazine back-issues is right out.

Fortunately for people like me, Wildlife has released all 12 “Photo Masterclass” articles in PDF format on their website for free download. Regrettably, the PDF files are print-restricted, so you can only view them on a computer. If you have GoodReader on your iPhone or iPod Touch, however, you can take these lessons with you wherever you go. (GoodReader is how I take every single Canon and Nikon DSLR manual with me on my workshops I’ll write more about that later on).

To view and download all of the Photo Masterclass articles, visit the Photo Masterclass page on BBC Wildlife.