For a while now I’ve been putting together small articles about long exposure photography with a how to on waterfall photography and another on daytime long exposures. It’s one thing to learn technique but what good is it if you’re struggling for ideas on what to take photos of? This guide should help you with some ideas for long exposure photography. Some styles touched on include:

• Traffic and night long exposure photography - Using traffic to your advantage with the best angles and time to take this style of photography
• Waterfall long exposure photography - What to look out for when taking waterfall photographs. Little secrets to make yours stand out from the  rest
• Star trail long exposure photography - Capture spirals of stars in the sky with these tips that will help your star trail photography
• Sea long exposure photography – Takes a look at what things I look out for when taking seascape photographs and how to combine these various elements to create a great photograph
• Bonus ideas that don’t fall into the above  - Did you know you can use a long exposure to make a busy location like a busy pedestrian crossing appear a ghost town?  This and other neat ideas are included in this section

This list of photo ideas isn’t a definitive list and only touches the surface of what’s possible through long exposures. I love that long exposures offer photographers the ability to transform a scene to how we normally view it.  People are always pushing the envelope and finding ways to use long exposures like this beautiful series from Jakob Wagner entitled Urban Zoom that captures long exposures of cities. During the exposure he zooms the camera to create beautiful streaks. Although not necessarily new, it’s been executed perfectly and a neat little trick that shows the possibilities of long exposure photography. Don’t forget to check out another post that includes a free neutral density chart that’s a must for any photographers bag.

Traffic and Night Long Exposures

One of my first long exposure night photos

Long exposure night photography is where my photography all started with this photo taken looking towards the Tasman Bridge in Tasmania. It’s what started it all for me and gave me the long exposure bug.

Some ideas and tips  for capturing long exposures of traffic:

• Look for a high vantage point that will allow you to look down on the passing traffic (see the first photo below as an example)
• Timing is key. Try to base your timing around peak hour traffic to get a consistent flow of traffic at all times. There’s nothing worse than standing around in the dark waiting for cars to come by. Instead if you’re shooting at peak hour you’ll never have any issues with waiting for cars to come through

• If you can’t get a high vantage point, try get close to the action. Sometimes I find setting the tripod on the corner of a busy intersection and zooming in a little will create a sense that your camera is only centimeters away from the action

• Experiment with varying exposures from long exposures so the traffic creates red and white lines to shorter exposures where you can almost make out the detail of the passing cars. Melbourne is quite iconic for its yellow taxi’s and trams. In the two images in the bottom left hand corner below I wanted to capture the movement of these in a long exposure but to avoid blurring them out completely I opted for a shorter long exposure
• Aim to take your traffic long exposure photographs around sunset, sunrise or blue hour. Your aim is to photograph the tail or front lights of passing cars and it’s only obvious that this will be more around time when light is limited and cars will need their lights on. The bonus of this is that your camera will be able to obtain a long exposure without the need for neutral density filters and you will get some beautiful colour in the sky. My first traffic long exposure photo taken above was taken late at night so the sky is lost and a dull black. If i was to of shot this on sunset or blue hour I would of had a lovely sky against the traffic streaks. It’s little things like this that can make a photo
• When scouting locations suitable for long exposures of passing traffic I’ll try to base it around major entry/exit points of a city. For the top two photographs below, both are major entry and exit points to Melbourne. It was important that I timed the photos for peak hour to ensure there was a steady flow of traffic to capture

Waterfall Long Exposures

A while ago I put together an article that touches on what settings to use for waterfall photography. The article looks at how to shoot long exposures in daylight for waterfalls, demonstrates the effect shutter speed can have for waterfall photography and other little tips. That aside let’s look at some ideas for waterfall long exposure photography:

• It doesn’t have to be just about big waterfalls. Sometimes streams that come further down from the main waterfall can create great composition points for you photo. Take the second photo on the top row for example, the main waterfall is a lot further up stream but the two rocks created a nice composition point for my photo
• Look for little swirls of foam or water coming off the waterfall or further down stream. When shooting waterfalls I’ll try to keep an eye out for little pockets of water doing interesting things. Try to study them for a few seconds and imagine how they will look if you were to use a 3-5 second long exposure. To give you an idea what I mean, check out the bottom two photos on the third row where little lines of spray were flowing down off the waterfall and created an interesting effect in the long exposure. This adds a nice touch to your composition and makes it stand out a bit more from the rest
• Get side on to the waterfall. Most people will generally shoot a waterfall looking directly front on. Why not try something different and go to the side? Just be warned though your lens will quickly accumulate spray from the waterfall if you’re not careful. It’s a matter of quickly planting the tripod, looking through and lining things up, firing the shot and moving the camera out of the spray. Rinse and repeat until you get a shot you’re happy with
• Long exposures are great but make sure it’s not too long. Photographing long exposures of waterfalls looks great with its blurred water but be mindful that over-doing the exposure time can introduce blur to other parts of the image where you may not want it. One example of this is the blur a long exposure can introduce to the foliage area of a photo. Instead of the foliage appearing sharp and crisp, it instead looks blurry and dull. Try to be mindful that 5 second and onward exposures is where this starts to become an issue

Star Trail Long Exposures

Admittedly star trail photography is something I’m still very much learning about but here’s some things that I’ve learnt from my experience of standing out in the cold for hours on end.

• Get out of the city and head out for a drive somewhere that’s not near surrounding housing or industry. This will allow you to get a better view of the stars due to less ambient light from houses and industry. 
• Star trails are best photographed on a moonless evening or when the moon is not above the horizon. When the moon is at it’s peak, it creates too much light in the sky and lightens the stars.
• Use a torch to focus on your composition element. For the shot below I shined a torch on the tree below, focused and then turned the camera into manual focus. Don’t fall victim to my common mistake of leaving the camera in auto focus and have the camera try to find focus again after I’ve preset the exposure. Alternatively you can set the camera into manual focus and set the focus to infinity. This technique works best with an ultra wide angle lens
• Capture the stars spiraling in the sky as the earth naturally rotates. An example of this is the shot below which is achieved by using a long exposure (30 minutes) facing the northern direction (assuming you’re in the northern hemisphere) that captured the stars moving and appearing as concentric rings. What’s that you ask? To break it down a little… As you set up the camera on the tripod facing northerly (pretending you’re in the northern hemisphere here for a moment) and you fire your long exposure, the camera captures the stars spiraling in a circle due to the earth rotating on a north-south axis. It’s a little confusing and I must confess something I’m still very much learning but don’t be put off. It’s not as daunting as it sounds
• Bring a long a torch or head light for some light painting. Being out of the city and in a dark environment it might be hard to see composition so why not use your head torch to light up your composition midway through the exposure. I used this technique on the trees in the shot below to brighten them during the exposure

Seascape Long Exposures

Seascapes offer so much potential for photographers looking to capture long exposures as there’s so many changing elements which come alive with a long exposure. One of my first articles when starting this blog was about daytime long exposures. I love being by the sea and one of my favourite long exposure photos I’ve taken is this photo at Howden where the long exposure created a lovely blur on the clouds and captured the reflections perfectly. Some of my favourite ideas and tips for seascape long exposure photography include:

• Depending on the location, clifftops make a great vantage point for long exposure photographs especially if there’s a wild sea with waves constantly crashing.
• Not much water movement? Look up and take in the sky. Sometimes I’ll arrive at a scene and there won’t be much water movement but the clouds are a mix of overcast and fine which create a nice patchy cloud coverage. I find this type of coverage great as when there’s a bit of breeze about (which there normally is if shooting by the sea) they create a blur to add an extra element to your composition.  Check out the two photos on the second row to give you an idea of what I mean. Both scenes had limited water movement but lots of patchy cloud to balance out the shot in the long exposure
• Keep an eye out for things with that have aged over time. Some of my favourites include old jetties that are still in use and even better, ruins from jetties and other things that poke out of the water. They create a great composition element through the rough textures and leading lines they can sometimes create. Generally I’ll scout around coastal towns or areas popular for fishing as there’s bound to be some old jetties or boat launch ramps that were once used for fishing. Unfortunately these seem to be slowly getting pulled down over time so get in while you can
• Lookouts make a great vantage point for your composition. Tourist lookouts offer a great view of a location making them a great spot to setup your camera for a long exposure.  Try to be courteous of tourists and others coming to admire the view by not getting in other people’s way too much or setup elevated out of the way

Finding Beauty in the Unexpected

One thing I love about long exposure photography is that the possibilities are endless. We could go on all day about long exposure photography ideas but here’s a couple more of my favourite ideas not listed above:

• Patchy skies create a great composition element. Wandering around Hobart a few years ago I snapped the second photo on the top row below.  It’s not a great shot by any means but the clouds blurred from a long exposure against the old architecture of Hobart add a diffferent touch to your average photo
• Dial your camera into a long exposure and stick your camera out the window to capture a sense of speed
• Grab some sparklers or a torch and run around in front of the camera for some long exposure night photography. This style of light painting works best by grabbing a torch and placing some coloured cellophane or even coloured cd cases over the front of the torch. It’s a neat little trick but has nothing on the beautiful work of Denis Smith with his Ball of Light project. A must for anyone looking for light painting inspiration
• Use a long exposure to exaggerate fog of a scene. I hate to admit this but the forth row photo beneath a bridge on a foggy morning there actually wasn’t that much fog as the photo leads you to believe. By using a long exposure I was able to capture the fog as it moved down the river which exaggerated the fog in the photo. Although be mindful that using a long exposure during foggy conditions can fog up your camera lens if you’re not careful. Try to check your  lens often throughout the shoot to ensure you don’t get home with a card full of unusable images
• Remove people from a busy scene with a long exposure. Living in a busy city (Melbourne, Australia) I’ll arrive at a scene to take sunset photos (like this one at St Kilda Pier) and it will be crowded with tourists.  Rather than take a photo with people cluttered all through my photo I’ll set the camera up for a long exposure. It works perfectly and I’m able to take a photo of a scene with no people getting in my shot. Just be mindful that you need quite a long exposure for this effect to work well and also for people not to stand and stop too long in your frame. This post-apocalyptic photo series by Lucie & Simon captures major cities appear as ghost towns by using this effect

What’s your Favourite Long Exposure Subject?

As I said in the introduction to this post that the possibilities of taking long exposure photographs are endless. What do you enjoy taking photos of using long exposure that I’ve missed?

Don’t forget to get your free long exposure chart. A must for any photographer’s bag

If you found this article useful I’d be super grateful if you shared it via your favourite social networks to others who might be also interested in the topic. Feel free to follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ for future posts like this. You might also be interested in a previous post called the magic cloth technique that is a very effective and easy DIY neutral density filter trick.

Have any questions or comments about the article? Feel free to drop an email as I’m always happy to help

Thanks for reading and i hope these long exposure photography ideas have been of help!

- Alex

Fujifilm X100 – The latest addition to my camera bag

For a while now I’ve been feeling a little anxious about not shooting as much as I’d like. Before moving to Melbourne from Hobart I was a student with all the time in the world living close to coastline and lush waterfalls. Living in inner city Melbourne it can be a little difficult trying to balance photography around full time work as I’m often leaving for work when the sun is rising and leaving just as the sun is about to set.  I then had an idea. If I’m riding to and from work every day why not carry a camera and make the most of sunset and sunrise light? So I did.

After much procrastinating I thought the Pansonic Lumix LX7 camera was the camera for me so ordered it. Although a nice camera, it wasn’t the one for me so I sold it on Gumtree for about what i paid. A few days later I noticed a Fujifilm X100 pop up for sale on a forum I frequent. I couldn’t resist the price and from all accounts even with a few niggles, it’s a great little camera.

Since purchasing I’ve started carrying the camera every day and have found it a great little camera to use. Sure there’s a few little issues with the camera but hey, no camera is perfect and I can tolerate any slight niggles. The camera is a great ‘daily carry’ camera as it fits nicely into my bike bag and isn’t too cumbersome to carry if I’m out and about of a weekend.  If you’re in the market for something more portable than your DSLR I’d recommend you seriously consider a X100 (or X100S if budget permits!). I still plan on using my DSLR for long exposures, my baking blog and other bits but why not have something you can easily carry and still get some great shots?

Here’s a collection of some of my favourite photos since purchasing the camera a month ago. All images are captured around Melbourme with most being on my way to and from work. I spend half my time riding keeping an eye out for things to photo. Sometimes it means I’m a little late for work but the results are worth it. In case you’re wondering, I went for a slight film look to the photos which was achieved by using Adobe Lightroom and the VSCO plugin. I’ve been a little skeptical of the plugin in the past but for some reason it just works perfectly for the style of images I’ve been shooting with the X100. I guess in the past it wasn’t appropriate for long exposures and landscape photos where accurate colour rendition of the scene is crucial. If you’re after a plugin for Lightroom that imitates film well, I can’t recommend VSCO highly enough. It’s great!

I can’t wait to give it a test run for some long exposures of waterfalls and seascapes. David from Flixelpix has posted some beautiful long exposures using the X100 on his blog so it’s definitely achievable.

PS, Sorry for overwhelming you with a ton of photos

- Alex

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Pre-sunset with no filters attached (Click for large)

Black Rock is only 18km south east of the Melbourne CBD and not too far from where I live. I’d seen photos of the marine navigation marker in other people’s photographs so with an idea in my head I waited for the ideal conditions of wind, forecast rain and some swell to get down there and add my own take.

Working full time I find the best conditions seem to be when I’m stuck at work. But luckily yesterday the weather forecast was looking just right with late rain forecasted. The plan was to capture some nice clouds and hopefully some colour from the sunset with some reflections. The tide was just high enough that there was some water around to create the reflections and there just enough water movement for the water to be nicely blurred from a long exposure.

5 and a half minute exposure captured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, B+W 110 and Cokin Z-Pro neutral density filters

Quick photo as I composed and focused the shot before attaching filters (Click for large)

Towards the end of the exposure for the above image the sun began to unexpectedly peek out between the clouds. Luckily the exposure for the shot was nearing its end so I waited for it to end and quickly moved the tripod in place so the sun was directly behind the marker.

I must admit that photographing directly into the sun has never been my strong point. I always manage to screw it up by over or under exposing the image and it never comes out as impressive as of photographers like Everlook Photography. Not prepared to stuff it up this time I decided to take a few exposures as a back up. The idea was to take one short exposure without filters (so a second or so), a really long exposure (6 minutes) with filters and a mid range exposure of around 3 minutes.  In doing so this would mean I could cheat later and combine different parts of the images to get the result. It’s not how I would normally capture the image but this time I was taking no losses!

It was lucky I captured a few exposures as my single exposure of 6 minutes didn’t capture the sun how I’d expected (partially due to the sun going behind the clouds) so I opted to blend parts of the three images into one exposure in Photoshop. As I said, it’s not how I’d normally capture and process a finished image but I really wanted to include the blazing sun rays as the sun went below the horizon. It came out okay in the end and didn’t take too long to process.

6 minute long exposure shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, B+W 110 and Cokin Z-Pro neutral density filters

As conditions started to get dark and the sunset was well and truly over I decided to take one more image with the idea of giving it a cold processing feel in Lightroom. For this image I used the split toning feature in Lightroom and added a very subtle blue to the shadow of the image and dropped the saturation. Below was the result.

Just under a two minute exposure captured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40 and Cokin Z-Pro neutral density filters

Another successful trip in the car.  Why I stopped driving I’ll never know. Where to next? Who knows but it’s nice to be shooting the sea again.

Take care,

- Alex

This year my photography increased quite a bit over the previous year partly due to a little side project called the Art of Baking that I’ve setup with my girlfriend (more on this towards the end). I’m happy with the direction my photography is going in. Probably like you, I’m never happy with my photography and there’s always a little thing or two that bugs me when I go to look back as the months pass. But finally I feel that I have a grip on the processing and composition where it’s feeling natural and isn’t just riding the current trend like others are known for. I love with photography that there’s always room for improvement and we’re constantly learning and developing. This is what keeps me coming back to apply new things and styles I’ve learnt.

Some of these things I’ve learnt throughout the years I’ve tried to document in various articles on this blog. Just in case you missed any here’s a recap with links through to the articles:

• Waterfall photography guide

• Exploring the split toning feature in Lightroom

• The Magic Cloth Technique (DIY neutral density filter)

• Neutral density reference chart (or a long exposure calculator if you wish)

• Understanding the automatic exposure bracketing feature on your camera
• SEO tips for photographers
• Tips to improve your photography composition

Bay of Fires, Tasmania

The year started off on a huge high for me photographically speaking. I’d spent a lot of time as a kid around the St Helen’s/Bay of Fires area when I wasn’t into photography so it was always high on my list to take some photos around there with nice light and colour in the sky. My family booked a holiday house up there after the New Year and we spent a few days up there. We spent a lot of time as kids around Beerbarrel Beach catching waves on our foam boogie boards at the time. It’s some of my favourite memories so it was nice to go back with camera in hand and get some photos. This was the result from a spectacular sunset one evening.

Aami Park

After coming home from a few weeks in Tasmania over the New Year, I was itching to take a photo of Aami Park on sunset when an A-League soccer (err… football rather) game was on to capture the stadium all lit up. Lucky for me I didn’t realise they used fireworks upon a goal being scored. It was a nice way to start the year shooting in Melbourne.

Docklands, Melbourne

Photo Mingling

Last year I tried to make an effort to meet new photographers as it’s always nice to meet others that share our odd obsession for standing around as our cameras expose for a long exposure. After many emails back and forth I met Jon Sander, a talented designer from Melbourne. We shot a few times throughout the year and are hoping to pull our socks up and do it at least once a month over 2013. Here’s hoping! PS, you owe me a beer Jon

Daily Carry

This year I tried to make an effort to carry my camera when riding to work or visiting friends for lunch of a weekend to capture things I might normally capture with my iPhone/Galaxy S3 on Instagram. These were a  couple of my favourite photos captured from randomly carrying my camera over the year.

Double Exposure Blending Tutorial

I’m always eager to read about new techniques whether it be in camera or in photoshop. One of these techniques was creating a double exposure blend which I created a tutorial about on YouTube. It’s a neat little trick that is worth a try if you have a close up photo of yourself and an image to blend over the top.

Landscapes and a Slight Mishap…

I also shot quite a bit with Ben Jensz over the year. Ben is someone I met when I first moved to Melbourne. We’ve tried to get around recent ish places to Melbourne as much as we can and this year was no exception. Although not shooting as much we would have liked, we got some photos in at Cape Schanck and various water falls around Victoria.

But there was one slight hiccup for me this year. The day my camera fell and went for a swim. It was all set up ready to capture a photo of Turpin Falls and was exposing for the minute until mid way through the exposure it somehow moved and fell into the water. As you can imagine I was devastated and had the camera inspected by Canon who declared it dead. Cutting my losses I quickly bought another Canon 5D Mark II to replace the camera so I could get back out shooting again and put the loss behind me. Sucks.

This was a photo of Turpin Falls captured just before the camera slipped and fell into the water…

But as I said, a replacement camera wasn’t far away and I quickly made sure to order a new one. Here I am with my baby

Last Couple of the Year

Unfortunately there wasn’t a whole lot of shooting towards the end of the year and here’s a couple from December at Park Beach and Clifton Beach both in Tasmania.

 Art of Baking

We’ve had a lot of fun with the project with a rising amount of traffic coming through and features in a couple of local magazines. I’ve found it quite challenging shooting with lights due to the obvious difference over my normal style of long exposure photography. But for the most part it’s been a fun project that I’ve really enjoyed doing with Rani. Without her baking prowess it would be nothing. I’ve tried to separate the baking photos by presenting them at the end. Be sure to check out our little blog.

 Thanks!

And that’s it for another year. Thanks for all your continual support over the year. It never goes unnoticed and I appreciate it a lot. I hope you had a great year.

You might also be interested in my 2010 Retrospective and 2011 Retrospective posts from previous years.

If you have any comments or just feel like saying hi, be sure to drop a line. I always look forward to hearing from people so don’t be a stranger.

Thanks,

- Alex

What is the Automatic Exposure Bracketing Tool?

The AEB tool allows you to automate the process of taking multiple exposures of a scene. Rather than take a photo, adjust the exposure and then press the shutter again, AEB allows you to automatically expose the scene  once you press the shutter button. Some describe this as in camera HDR as the shots can then be stacked and converted into a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image or manually blended. Using this feature will give you one over exposed image (+1 EV), one under exposed (-1 EV) and a normal exposed image (0 EV). How much the camera over or under exposes can be changed within the camera so it is possible to over expose by 2 stops (+2 EV) and under expose by 2 stops (-2 EV) if you wish.

Why is automatic exposures useful? Manually adjusting the exposure between each individual shot can misalign your images from constantly changing the exposure and pressing the button each time. Sure this can be fixed in Photoshop by aligning your images but why not get it right and avoid this issue?

I must be honest and tell you that I don’t really use the automatic exposure bracketing feature on my camera much. Instead if bracketing for a scene I’ll manually take exposures for different parts of the scene (i.e. an exposure for the sky, land and any specific parts of the scene which the camera is having difficulty capturing in one exposure). But for my friend learning about photography and his new camera, it’s a useful feature to know about especially when you’re still having difficulty exposing your images and getting it right in camera.

Firstly enable the shutter delay on your camera. For this photo I’m using a 2 second delay.

How to use the Automatic Exposure Bracketing on your Camera?

The AEB feature can vary between camera brands and models but fortunately the feature is available in most modern DSLR and high-end point and shoot cameras. For the purpose of this tutorial I’m using a Canon 5D Mark II to demonstrate how to enable and use the automatic exposure bracketing tool but if you own a Nikon D90 or Canon 60D, it shouldn’t vary much between the models. The principle it still the same and it might just require different steps along the way. I’ve tried to compile a few different step by step processes if you’re using a different make or model to what I’m using.

Select the Exposure comp/AEB Setting

• Canon 60D
• Canon G12 (4th post down)
• Nikon D700 (pp 75-76)
• Pentax K100D (pp 149)

Before taking your shot using automatic exposure bracketing, there’s a few steps you have to go through first.

• Set the camera up on a tripod as it’s important the camera doesn’t move during the exposures. Any movement can create misalignment issues if you plan to merge the images later into a HDR image
• Know which camera mode you intend on using. I have the camera set to aperture priority mode but you might want to use shutter priority depending on what you’re shooting. Basically setting the camera to aperture priority will mean the camera will stay on the defined aperture value (in this case f13) and change the shutter speed as it brackets the exposures. If shooting in shutter priority the camera will instead stay on the defined shutter speed (i.e. 2 seconds) and change the aperture as it brackets the exposures. Makes sense? Not really? Don’t worry, once you’ve taken the bracketed exposures and look back over the exif settings for the shots it will make a little more sense
• Disable auto focus once you’ve composed your shot and are happy with the focus for the scene. Leaving auto focus on during the bracketing could result in shifts in focus throughout the 3 shots which we don’t want
• Turn on the shutter delay. This may or may not be limited to the Canon 5D Mark II but AEB requires either the 10 or 2 second shutter delay to be enabled
• Select the Exposure Comp/AEB setting and dial this up with the wheel on your camera. Lines like in the third screenshot should appear which shows that three images will be taken, one  under exposed (-1 EV), one neutral exposed and another over exposed (+1 EV)
• Press the shutter and hope for the best
  

  Using the dial on your camera, dial to this to the right and lines like above will appear. This indicates that an under exposed, normal exposed and over exposed image will be captured

Examples of Exposure Bracketing and the Results

You will now have 3 bracketed exposures on your memory card. Using the settings described in this tutorial I now have one under exposed image (-1 EV), a neutral exposed image (0 EV) and an over exposed image (+1 EV). Let’s look at the results of two recent trips out where I’ve used auto exposure bracketing and what results it gave me.

Melbourne Overpass

In this first photograph taken on an overpass in Melbourne you might be wondering why I’ve bothered using the dark under exposed image. The idea here was to use and combine the traffic in the three images to give the impression there was more traffic than there actually was. It worked quite well.

Processing this image I wanted to try something different by loading it into Photoshop and trying the HDR tool (Note – Trey Ratclliff has created a great guide that goes into detail on using the Photoshop HDR tool that might be of interest). I’d never used it before and didn’t intend on using it but the result was quite good so I decided to stick with the image and not manually blend it. Just one piece of advice though. Go easy on using HDR whether it be Photomatix or Photoshop. I’m not staunchly against HDR like some others in the photography community and believe it can occasionally look good when applied correctly.

Not happy with the warm temperature from the nearby street lights I decided to use various curves layers to play with the individual colour channels. The idea was to make the image seem cold while still retaining some of the warmth created from the street lights. In the end it was processed a lot more than I normally would but I’m quite happy with the result.

An under exposed (-1 EV), neutral exposed (0 EV), over exposed (+1 EV) and final image with all exposures combined

Hobart Bush Fire Haze

Similar to the previous image I’ve taken three exposures for this photograph of a smoke-filled sky on sunset captured on the Hobart Eastern Shore. One under exposed image (-1 EV), one neutral exposed image (0 EV) and one over exposed image (+1 EV).

Normally I’ll capture one exposure of a scene and try to avoid capturing multiple exposures. The nearby bush fires created a smoke haze on sunset which made it difficult to get the exposure I was after so I opted to bracket the exposures.

Processing the photo was much quicker and simpler than the previous photo and probably took around 2-3 minutes. Using the 0 EV image as the base image I made some quick adjustments:

• Placed the -1 EV image over the base image, created a layer mask and used a gradient to use around 30% of the sky from the under exposed image.
• Placed the +1 EV image over the base image, created a layer mask and gradually brought back detail from the over exposed (+1 EV) image
• Created a curves layer and made minor adjustments to each colour channel
• Dodge and burning around the scene. This was mostly burning around the sky and a mixture of dodge and burning around the foreground elements
• Image sharpened

If all this talk of layer masks and exposure blending is confusing then don’t stress! I’ve developed an article that walks you through manually blending exposures.

Another final image with the 3 auto exposure images and final image

Hopefully this article has been useful for you. If you have any questions on anything mentioned in this article please feel free to get in touch and I’d be happy to help.

- Alex

Split toning has become quite popular thanks to Adobe Lightroom making it easy for photographers to experiment and add duo-tone  sepia and film effects to their photographs. But split toning isn’t anything new and actually dates back to the late 1800′s. The technique was used by photographers including Ansel Adams to add a colour to either the highlights or shadows to a black and white photograph (as they were at the time). Ansel would occasionally add a very subtle purple to the shadows of his stunning photographs.

Since the days of Ansel Adams using split toning  the technique has evolved and we now use it slightly different to in the past. That’s not to say it can’t still be used like it traditionally was but as photography has evolved as have the way techniques are used. Photographers are now using split toning on the shadows and highlights of their images to recreate film effects like cross processing or adding a duo-tone like effect to their image. It’s a feature of Lightroom that I love to tinker with when editing my photographs and I’d been meaning to write a blog post about it for sometime now after making a YouTube tutorial on split toning last year.

What is split toning and how does it work?

Basically split toning involves adding a colour to either the shadows or highlights part of an image. One favourite of mine is adding a yellow to the highlights to give the image a warm feel. While other times I like to add a blue to the shadows to give the image a cold feel.  If you’re going for a warm or cold look to your image this can sometimes be achieved by adjusting the temperature of the image. Personally, I prefer the control which split toning provides but you can also adjust the temperature for a similar effect

For photographers using Lightroom the split toning feature can be accessed by opening the Develop tab and located fifth menu down from the right.  Once open you will be presented with two different options: Highlights and Shadows. Start by selecting the little box that appears next to Highlights and select the blue box (see below). Now do the same for the Shadows but this time select the yellow looking box.

Selecting a colour to split tone the highlights

From this point I start to gradually change the hues of both the Highlights and Shadows, adjust the saturation of both and slightly play with the balance until at a level I’m happy with. There’s no perfect formula that will work all the time for images so I find the best thing to do is to play until you get the results you desire. If this isn’t making much sense then give my video split toning tutorial I uploaded to YouTube last year a look which explains the process better.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s start to look at some images and the split toning settings that were used to give you an idea of how I’ve used split toning in the past -

St Kilda Pier with natural colours

St Kilda Pier with split toning applied

Split toning settings for the above St Kilda Pier photograph

A wet miserable day with natural colours

A wet miserable day with split toning applied

Split toning for the above photograph ‘A wet miserable day’

Car park entrance with natural colours

Car park entrance with split toning applied

Split toning settings for the above car park entrance photograph

Self portrait with natural colours

Self portrait with split toning applied

Split toning settings for the above self portrait

Adding Split Toning to Black and White Photographs

Another reason I love split toning is the subtle tones you can add to a black and white image. My favourite is adding either a very subtle blue into the highlights to almost give a duo tone feel to the image. For this image I processed as normal and then dropped the saturation completely to make the image black and white then opened the split toning and added a slight blue to the highlights. It’s a neat little trick and something I’ve got into a habit of adding when going for a black and white feel to my images but adding something a little different on top.

Girl smoking in natural colours

Girl smoking with split toning and decreased saturation applied

Split toning settings for the above photograph of a girl smoking

Split Toning Lightroom Presets

Or if you’re feeling slightly lazy and would rather all of this to happen at the click of the button then my Lightroom presets might suit you best.  The presets (not to be confused with an Australian band…) are heavily split toning based and at this stage offer a duotone/cold effect and a coffee/warm effect for your images. Below gives you an idea of what the two presets offer.

Feel free to click either image to download the preset.

I hope this tutorial on split toning has been useful for you. If it has I’d appreciate you share the love by using one of the share buttons to the side menu on the right.

Feel free to drop an email if you have any questions. Always happy to help

- Alex

Also I don’t normally post photos of my food here (embarrassingly a bit of that ends up on Instagram) but I couldn’t resist a photo or two from the delightful Chin Chin. If you’re ever in Melbourne be sure to pop in for a visit. WIth such a large menu I’ve gone back a few times and haven’t been disappointed. Oh so good.

Curious to hear what people think especially of the first image with some processing that is slightly different to how I process my images.

A little while ago I was asked by Digital Photography Magazine to write up a small article on how photographers can improve their photography with some photography composition tips. It was a little challenging sitting down coming up with the tips as most of these composition tips are things you begin to naturally incorporate into your photography workflow without realising.

In the end I provided Digital Photography Magazine with 6 different styles of composition that I try to rely on upon arriving at a scene and feeling slightly unsure what I’ll be photographing. Keeping an eye out for reflections, leading lines, colour in the sky, simple compositions or even compositions that would benefit from being placed in the middle of a frame, gives me some variety in how I might photograph the scene on the day.  They’re not rocket science but are a common theme across all my photographs which have got me to where I am today.

Be sure to catch the tips in the next edition of Digital Photography Magazine.

Thanks,

- Alex

Using twilight to your advantage

Twilight – Sometimes having a good composition isn’t enough.  This is why I like to find a good composition and return to the scene on sunset. The twilight colours add an extra element to the photograph making your composition stand out and look more appealing than if photographed during the day against a grey sky.

Keep an eye out for lead in lines

Lead in lines – Using lines in a scene is a great way to lead the viewer’s eye into the scene.  I’ve used the technique with this photograph captured at Mortimer Bay, Tasmania by using the jetty ruins to lead the viewer into the frame.  When composing try look for natural lines in the scene and frame the shot so they start of the side of the frame and gradually work their way in. This will gradually lead your viewer’s eye into the scene and make a more appealing photograph.

Natural reflections create a great composition

Reflections – Not all locations I come across have something that instantly jumps out at me like an interesting rock formation or beautiful mountain backdrops. Instead I try to keep my eyes open for less obvious things like reflections which when used well can add an interesting element to your photograph. Try get down low so you can get the best angle for the composition.

Sometimes simple is best

Focal point (tree) – Simple is best. When looking for compositions try not to over complicate things by trying to include too many things in your photograph. Sometimes having too many objects in your photograph can make your photograph appear too cluttered. Instead try to keep things simple by looking for 1 to 3 key objects. This will give your viewer a focal point to quickly draw their eyes on.

Composition in the middle

Composition in middle  –  Some photographers rule against placing a composition in the middle of the frame but rules are supposed to be broken right? I like to compose some shots with a middle object to give a sense of the subject being isolated and surrounded by emptiness. In this self-portrait I wanted to give the sense of that emptiness by composing myself in the middle of the frame.

Dramatic skies can add the perfect final touch to an image

Dramatic sky - Miserable overcast days aren’t necessarily a bad thing for landscape photographers. On occasion they can result in beautiful and dramatic sunsets as the clouds begin to disperse. Don’t be put off by miserable conditions as anything is possible especially if the rain is forecast to clear the next day. These conditions create the best and most dramatic sunsets.

On Wednesday I caught up with photographer Jon Sander for some snaps down St Kilda way. For most of the day the weather looked awful with gloomy overcast and no glimpse of any blue sky. Melbourne being Melbourne the weather cleared up just on sunset which created perfect conditions to photograph St Kilda Pier in.

It was the first time I’d made my way to St Kilda Pier since moving to Melbourne last year. Having seen many photos I was keen to get down there and get some photos of  my own. Upon arriving I couldn’t get over how many people (mostly tourists) were down at the pier. Without realising the St Kilda Pier is also popular for its penguins (located behind the building in the above photo). This made my plan of getting a nice photo of the pier without anyone in the photo slightly difficult.

Fortunately long exposures aren’t just for blurring of water and clouds for interesting effects but is also useful for blurring out passing by pedestrians. Assuming the people passing by won’t stop for much longer than a few seconds, you should be able to capture the scene as if it was empty.

Of course this isn’t always as easy as it sounds and I did have one or two frames where people stood in front of the frame for a little too long and appeared in the frame but finally I got one which was empty. It’s a neat little trick that works great for crowded place just like this. If you have somewhere near you that is constantly busy and hard to get a photo when it’s empty then give this trick a try.

After the sunset disappeared we started to make our way home with a quick stop at an overpass not far from the pier for some long exposures of the passing traffic and the odd self portrait. It was a fun evening and good to get some more shots in around Melbourne.

- Alex

A couple of photos from a recent trip to Cape Schanck with Ben Jensz. We originally planned to take some photos around the Portsea area but on arriving the weather and location wasn’t as we hoped so we made a last minute dash to Cape Schanck. On arrival we were greeted with rain and cold winds but by the time we made our way down to waters edge the rain had disappeared and we were free to photo away.

I wanted to mix it up that afternoon with a short burst exposure (the first being a 0.3″ second exposure and the second being 5 minutes) to show you how much effect shutter speed can have on a photo. The long shutter speed from the long exposure has blurred the water out to a fog like effect whilst the quick shutter speed has captured the aggression of the waves crashing against the rocks. I’m still undecided on which style of long exposure I prefer. Short burst long exposures or actual long exposures. What do you prefer?

Recently I put together a short YouTube clip on how I made this double exposure portrait. It’s a neat little trick and I thought you guys would be interested on how it was done.

Be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to help.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With our cameras in hand we decided to head out towards Docklands to capture the sunset. Luckily the weather leading up to the evening had been nice and clear so I had a feeling we would get lucky with a nice sunset and fortunately it didn’t disappoint.

This is some of my favourite shots from the evening.  You go okay Melbourne

We’re falling to an all new low when I start posting memes but I couldn’t resist this one. Since moving to Melbourne last year, I sometimes like to use the 1- stop filter for some cityscape shots. Whenever I have the long exposure filter attached I always seem to attract at least one person that asks whether I can take their photo or why I’m standing and not actually taking any photos which results in an awkward explanation of how the 10 stop filter works. Does this happen to you? What do you say?

One from yesterday at Trentham Falls, Victoria. This was the first time I’d ventured out since dropping my camera in a waterfall around this area a few months previously. Fortunately this time my camera made it home safe and sound without taking a swim. I’ve been meaning to get out to Trentham Falls for a while now as it apparently boasts the highest water drop for any waterfall in central Victoria. I much prefer waterfalls like this where a large mass of water drops rather than cascades over rocks as it makes its way down.

The weather was perfect for waterfall photography with dull overcast skies and drizzling rain for much of the morning. The constant drizzle and spray from the waterfall meant my circular polariser was constantly being covered in spray after a few seconds. Luckily one out of the five shots from this angle came out and I was able to share.

Here’s hoping for some more trips now that I’m back in action with a working camera.

The last photo my camera took before taking a swim. Yep you read right. Not long after this photo I began to compose for another photo and thought I had the tripod firmly planted until 10 seconds later it tipped and fell in the water. I posted earlier in the week in greater detail on the ‘incident’ in case you’re curious.

Last Sunday I took a trip out to Turpin Falls with Ben Jensz. We hoped to shoot around 2-3 waterfalls in the Daylsford area (well he eventually did anyway). I’m jealous as we took a trip to a ripper waterfall later in the morning called Trentham Falls, one that I will definitely be revisiting at a later date. But fortunately before my camera died (and my memory card survived!) this waterfall photograph was taken at Turpin Falls. The photo is a 2 minute long exposure at f.13. Unfortunately there was patchy light throughout the day which I normally try to avoid when taking waterfall photographs but luckily I got a lucky few minutes where the cloud diffused the sun creating a nice soft light. The cloudy and patchy sunlight that day wasn’t necessarily bad as it created nice streaky clouds above the waterfall which you wouldn’t normally get if shooting on an overcast day.

But luckily today my replacement Canon 5D Mark II arrived. I was a happy boy. Now to get shooting!

Ouch!

Rather than sit around and dwell on it, I’ve got a new 5D II on the way. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t upgrade and go a new Canon 5D Mark II but the extra $1,500-$2,000 to go the Canon 5D Mark III over the Canon 5D Mark II was too hard to justify especially when the expense is unexpected.

Either way I’ve had a good run with the camera and wanted to share some of my favourite photos from while I had the camera. I’m eagerly awaiting my next one to arrive now.

What to do when your drop your camera in water

Just before we finish I’d like to share some of the tips I’ve come across that others suggested on Facebook,  Reddit and other websites to help. I really appreciate the suggestions to which I tried some (but didn’t quite try the suggestion of dropping it in water again like one Redditor suggested).

There’s many suggestions on how you can deal with a camera that has just been dropped in water but I think the most important thing is DON’T TURN YOUR CAMERA BACK ON. This is where I went wrong (even after leaving it 20 minutes) and it could have made things much worse. Here’s some suggestions for someone that might have just dropped their camera in water:

1. Get the camera battery out of there straight away. Leaving it in there and turning it back on can apparently speed up the oxidation problem and also cause the camera to short circuit
2. Find a tub large enough to fit the camera that can be sealed
3. Fill the tub with rice as this will absorb moisture from the camera
4. Place the camera in the tub with the rice for a period of 2-3 days
5. Only at this stage after 2-3 days that I would consider turning the camera back on
6. Pray that it works

Be careful when taking waterfall and seascape photographs guys. It’s easy to slip up which can be an expensive mistake.

- Alex

 IKEA Releases Awful Cardboard Camera Known as KNÄPPA

So it appears IKEA has gone ahead and released a cardboard camera known as KNÄPPA. An interesting development that prides itself on its simplistic design of one piece of cardboard, a camera sensor, USB connection and a circuit board.

Some are getting a little too excited and already calling it a game changer/revolutionary but whatever. How is this any better than a mobile phone camera? It’s not. Instagram is a game changer. This is nothing more than a crappy little cardboard camera that is 5 years too late and the hype this is receiving on some websites is ridiculous. Maybe I’m just bitter that it won’t be good for long exposure photography

72 Hours in Shanghai

72 Hours in Shanghai is a stunning documentary/timelapse by Carlos Barria, a talented Reuters photographer situated in Shanghai (oh the envy!). He recently shared the timelapse over at Reuters and also included some interesting behind the scenes information and photos. An interesting read and inspiring at the same time.

 The Trashcam Project

The trashcam project was founded by Christoph Blaschke, Mirko Derpmann, Scholz & Friends Berlin and the Hamburg sanitation department to transform 1.100 litre trash cans into pinhole cameras. Some of the results they’ve captured are intriguing and well worth a look.

Camera – A Short Film

Kite Photography by Martin Pot

Martin Pot recently shared an interesting series of pictures captured with his Gopro camera and a kite (setup picture is included in his post). The results are beautiful and slightly similar to a project I’d love to take on board (but lack the funds) which is purchasing a decent RC helicopter and fixing my 5D Mark II to it. I’ve seen it done with amazing results but the $ involved slightly dampened those plans…

Also Google mentioned this week they will be adding user created kite/balloon photography to Google Maps. Neat hey?

Digital Camera Sensors Explained with… Beer?!

Let’s be honest that camera sensors are confusing. For those of us that have a very basic understanding, Joachim Linkemann has put together a rather interesting pdf document that explains digital camera sensors in a way in which we can all understand by illustrating his points through… beer! What a great idea.

 Ink Riders

Love this series of lego men riding ink waves by Alberto Seveso. Be sure to see the rest of his gallery too. Amazing stuff.

Microsoft Releases App to Create Your Own Cinemagraphs

Want to create your own cinemagraphs easily? Now you can with Microsoft’s newest app Cliplets. It seems pretty useful but for something even more simple I’m really liking the cinemagram app for iPhone. I’m signed up under ‘alexwise’ and have been putting up some pretty average attempts. It’s fun though.

Pentax Fanboys

Not overly sure what to say about this one… Pentax users taking fanboy to a new level? Pretty cool though.

Simulate Studio Lighting with This Useful App

Helpful little web based app that lets you play with different studio light setups to see the effect it has.

$60m of Smuggled Camera Gear Found

Authorities in China recently uncovered a rather lucrative camera smuggling ring with some $60m of camera gear stored. Drool. Apparently camera gear is much cheaper in Hong Kong which created a rather nice market for bringing goods back to mainland China for resale and avoiding taxes. Nice.

Two photos captured in Port Melbourne on a warm but breezy summers evening with photographer Ben Jensz. It’s always fun shooting with Ben as although we’re both interested in the same styles of photography, we always manage to walk away with different shots which is also partly due to him shooting with the beautiful Fuji G617. His landscape photography is stunning and well worth a look.

I’m torn between the two with one taken during magic hour light and another converted to black and white not long after as the sun had hidden below the horizon. It’s interesting how much difference 5-10 minute can make to the scene. I’d been hoping to photograph this location since spotting it when I first arrived into Melbourne on the Spirit of Tasmania. My initial plans were to capture it on blue hour but unfortunately plans quickly changed when the tungsten floodlights lit up the front pylons. Bummer.

Luckily tonight was the night but it wasn’t intended to be so from the start. I was sitting at home watching tv and noticed it was a clear sunset and thought there might be a game on so made a quick last minute dash to my camera gear and started walking towards the city. Unfortunately I missed the beautiful red sunset but made it just in time for ‘blue hour’.This occurs after sunset and as you might guess, leaves a beautiful blue in the sky. This is my favourite time to take photos of ‘cityscapes’ as the soft blue provides a nice backdrop for the lit buildings. I took some more photos after the ‘blue hour’ was over but the sky was now black and dull and it was now time to pack up the gear and walk home in a sea of Storm and Rabbitoh fans.

I still wouldn’t have a clue who the Storm or Rabbitohs are but one team was clearly better than the other and I was spoiled with a constant sky of fireworks.

Photograph details – 20 second exposure at f.13 as captured with a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40 and tripod. No filters were used for this photograph. In case you’re interested I’ve also included a Adobe Lightroom Before and After which shows the image straight ouf of the camera next to the finished processed photo as you see above. Sorry about the size (1.71 mb).

In case you’re feeling lazy and just curious how the effect looks on an image, scroll down to the bottom of the post where I’ve included two before and after gif clips.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Apologies that my blog theme isn’t the prettiest thing when it comes to posting tutorials but bare with me.

Photoshop Tutorial – How to Find the Black and White Points of a Photograph

1. We first begin with an image which will be used to find the black and white points.
   
2. To find the black and white points we must first create a threshold layer. You can do this by selecting the Create a fill or adjustment layer button and then selecting Threshold…
   
3. Upon selecting the threshold option we’re now presented with an odd looking overlay to our image. Don’t worry about this and continue on.
   
4. Pull the slider within the Threshold layer options to the far left so we can identify the white point of the image.
   
5. Gradually bring the slider back towards the right until black parts start appearing within the image. These are your highlights/white points.
   
6. To save the white point we’ve now identified, you need to use the Colour Sampler Tool. Open this by selecting the following
   
7. With the Colour Sampler Tool selected you can now hover over the white point of the image that you have identified and select it. This will save the point for future reference
   
8. Now to find the black point we do the opposite to the above by instead of dragging the slider to the left, we drag it to the right and gradually bring it back to the left like so
   
   
9. Gradually bring the slider back to the left until white spots begin to appear. This is your black point. Once again use the Colour Sampler Tool to save your black point
   
10. Now that you have found your black and white points to the image, you can now begin to define them within curves. This is where things start to get fun. Before we move onto this stage though, this is how my image looks with the black and white points selected. As you can see the black point is around the sea weed and the white point is around the waves. Makes sense right?
    
11. To create a curves layer select the Create a fill or adjustment layer button and then select Curves
    
12. Now select the black colour sampler tool and select the black point which you defined previously in the tutorial like so
    
    
13. Similar to the previous step, we now define the white point of an image.  Begin by selecting the white colour sample tool and sampling the white point as previously defined
    
    
    And that’s all there is to it. You’ve now identified the black and white points of the image and defined them within curves. In case you’re curious this is how the image in the tutorial ended up looking after the effect was applied. I’ve also included the image used as part of the YouTube tutorial.
    

Thanks for reading this tutorial. If you have any questions or feedback I’d love to hear so feel free to drop a comment or use the contact form to drop a line.

Also in case you’re interested I’ve uploaded other Lightroom and Photoshop tutorials on YouTube that touch on split toning in Lightroom, using the colour range tool for selective adjustments and other bits. It’s slowly a work in progress that I hope to upload more in the near future.

PS – Apologies about the .gif animations. After 2 minutes of writing these last few lines I’ve noticed how nauseating they are switching back and forth.

- Alex

Recently I’ve started up a little side project with a dear friend. We’ve called it Art of Baking, a blog that documents our baking adventure as we make a mess in the kitchen whipping up cakes, muffins, slices and other delights.

I’ve always been a keen baker and it’s an area of photography that i’ve found challenging. By partnering up with Rani it allows me to focus more on the photography and get advice from someone else on how best to style the food (this especially I’ve found challenging). I plan to write a couple of small tutorials over the coming months on how we’ve shot some of our food photography, made backdrops and stylised our photos.

Be sure to check Art of Baking or even become a fan of the Art of Baking Facebook page because it’s all the rage these days.

Carl Ashley is a photographer I’ve enjoyed following for a while now ever since meeting him a few years back when visiting Hobart. We made a trip up to Mt. Wellington to capture the sunset and star trails. It was freezing that night (around -2 c) but we still had a lot of fun. Carl has recently just returned home from a Europe trip and has been kind enough to give some travel photography tips from his recent travel experience.

Travel Photography Guide

Like me, you’ve probably been asked by friends or family, at least once, on what sort of camera you’d recommend for a holiday. It seems that it is one of those questions that we photographers get asked.

In May 2007 I had the privilege of visiting Canada and London, and in 2011 I was lucky enough to spend five weeks touring around Europe, both times I thought I’d use my digital SLR more frequently than I did, and that got me thinking about my gear and my approach to photography.

When going over the Europe trip plans with my friends, we had a number of places we wanted to visit, high on that list was Norway, Tromso in particular – we had both seen the documentary ‘Land of the Northern Lights’ by Joanna Lumley, and were quite keen to capture the Aurora Borealis. Part of preparing for this was research into the best times of year to see them, whether we would actually have a good chance to see them (it turns out that we were going to be in Norway just around the time the sun was coming out of solar minimum), and of course, what sort of camera equipment we would need, as well as techniques to capture them in the best possible light.

Being an avid landscape photographer, I knew that a tripod was an absolute essential, as would a wide angle lens and remote shutter release, the basic foundation for any respectful landscape camera kit besides the camera itself. I had these three basic items, a Canon 17-40mm f4.0L series lens, a Manfrotto 055 Pro tripod, and a Canon shutter release cable, I also had a Canon 5D MK II body.

After deciding where we were going, I then sat down and thought hard about my experiences with the trip to Canada and London. I had decided, for that particular trip, to take all of my gear which consisted of a Canon 20D body, a 17-85mm lens, my 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens, a 50mm lens, all my neutral density & graduated neutral density filters, and to top it all off, a Manfrotto tripod. I mention all this not to gear brag, but as a very important point; I had too much gear with me.

It turns out that walking around town all day as a tourist with all that camera gear is a lot different to driving to a location and walking a short distance, then driving back home.
That revelation seems kind of obvious when you sit and think about it, but when you’re getting ready for a vacation to foreign shores, with stunning landscapes at your beck and call, it’s actually a little harder to see that excess camera gear could be a problem.

I learned a valuable lesson in that trip to Canada, always understand where you’re going, why you’re going and how you’re going.

Travel Photography Checklist

1. Where you’re going
   Taking photographs in North Korea, as a tourist, is a little more complex than taking photos in America or Australia. For example, in this Wired article about Sam Gellman, Gellman indicates that his guides were often nervous about him taking photos.
2. Why you’re going
   This is, in my opinion, the most important piece to the gear puzzle. Why am I going? Am I going to be a tourist and see all the sights, or am I going specifically to take photos of a certain type? Answering this one will mean the difference in taking a point and shoot, or the whole kit ‘n caboodle.
3. How you’re going
   It’s pretty easy carrying all your camera gear when you just drop it in the boot of a car and drive, but when you’re hiking into a location and it takes three days walking to arrive, every gram matters.

In planning my gear for Europe, I decided on the following gear:

• Canon 5D MKII body
• Canon 24-70mm f2.8L lens (purchased a few months after initial planning for the trip)
• Manfrotto 190 tripod (borrowed from my father to replace the heavy 055 model I own)
• 77mm B+W 10 stop ND filter
• Cokin Z-Pro GND filter kit and holder
• Canon remote shutter release
• Spirit bubble
• 4 CF cards, 2x 16GB and 2x 8GB
• Three batteries (two spares, as Li Ion batteries go flat very quickly in the cold)
• Lowepro sling bag
• Camera battery charger with European and UK adaptor plugs

All this gear was going to have to packed away in my ninety litre backpack and carried with me as we made our way through Europe visiting Norway, Poland, Czech Republic, German, Austria and England. By the time I had all my clothes and camera gear packed away, my backpack and daypack weighed 19Kg and 8Kg respectively.

Ultimately I only ended up using my SLR gear three times, two nights hunting aurora in Norway, and one day walking through Auschwitz in Poland. I ended up purchasing a Sony point and shoot at the airport in Oslo because I had too much camera gear to carry around with me for the majority of the trip.

A part of me regrets taking all the gear I ended up with, but the other part of me doesn’t, because without it I wouldn’t have been able to get a photo like this or this, as well as a few other photos I’m yet to post.
Looking back at the past holidays I’ve had, the lesson I’ve come away with is that it isn’t about the gear you have, it’s about the type of trip you’re going on.

I’m planning to go back to Norway, I’d like to spend several weeks in Tromso during winter to hunt aurora again, only this time I’ll have the right gear with me.

- Carl

To view more of Carl’s work and follow future guides and photography from him, be sure to check out his newly updated blog where there’s some great stuff being posted. Thanks for your time Carl.

But now down to business…

Taken some time ago when I decided to walk home from work and take some photos as I made my way home. I was lucky that it was a nice clear evening with some lovely colour in the sky. This one was taken a long the Yarra River looking back towards the Flinders St Station end of the City.

Also for something different a re-edit with a duotone preset to give a cold feel to the image. I posted this Adobe Lightroom preset some time ago and it can be downloaded for free via my blog. Hopefully in the coming weeks I hope to upload some more presets so stay tuned.

And finally a long exposure looking back towards the city as cars enter Exhibition Street. I played around with split toning quite heavily in this one, warming it quite a bit and de-saturating the blues. I’m hoping to play around with some timelapse of the overpass over winter when the sunset times are close to when I finish work. Must resist purchasing a dynamic perception moving timelapse dolly. Must resist…

- Alex

I feel slightly uncomfortable picking a favourite due to the nature of the images but a stand out for me will always be the photograph captured from 1994 by James Nachtwey.  I first came across James Nachtwey’s work much before I picked up a camera in around 2004 through the documentary War Photographer. A must watch for any photographer as it documents the dangerous job that is being a photographer during war times.

Head over to Buzzfeed to view the rest of the images in this powerful collection.

SEO Tips for Photographers

This is my step by step guide for developing content, identifying competitive keywords and marketing the article via social networks. The guide has been developed for long-term use and isn’t for those expecting quick short-term gains. It’s by no means the only way to market your content but if you have any suggestions on how you would do things differently, I’d love to hear.

Your Base Platform

This article is focussed on developing content and how to best promote it but I still feel it’s important to quickly touch on your base platform. I’m not going to spend too much time discussing the ins and outs of various blogging platforms and which is better. I personally like WordPress as it’s super easy to use, can be optimised well for SEO, good availability of plugins and most importantly, it can be made to look good. If you’re after a nice looking WordPress photography theme and happy to pay $30-45~, I’d suggest Theme Forest (I’m using a theme off there for my blog). There’s a huge collection and bound to be something that appeals to everyone. Below is a couple of examples of what’s available.

WordPress and most themes now come well optimised for SEO. I’d suggest going one step further and using the All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps plugins just to mention a couple. Google XML Sitemaps is a useful tool that compiles your sitemaps and notifies major search engines when updated. Some argue that there is less need for this plugin now that search engines have advanced but I’d still recommend it.

All in One SEO is also a useful plugin that allows you to better optimise your blog for SEO. One particular feature I like about All in One SEO is the ability to define your meta descriptions when creating a new post. For those that aren’t familiar, your meta description is the description that appears when you search for a website. Just like below

This is your sales pitch that entices people to click and view your content. Without having a pre-defined meta description this results in Google (in this case) pulling the first few words from the article and using it as your meta description. Instead I recommend using the meta description component of All in One SEO to your advantage and developing something that explains the purpose of your article in a way which entices the user into wanting to read more.

As you’re only working with a maximum of 160 characters for the description, a few points for developing a meta description that will catch the attention of viewers:

• What is the article/photo about?  Pick elements that you feel are the most interesting to the viewer.
• Use terms that create hype/interest for the user. For example “A beautiful photograph taken at X on a stunning red sunset by Alex Wise” sounds a lot more appealing than “Photograph taken at X by Alex Wise”.
• Subtly drop in the keyword you’re targeting if possible.

Both these plugins won’t bring in traffic on their own but good SEO is about combining lots of small elements and doing them well to be successful.  This brings us onto our next point, developing good content and why it’s important.

Content is King

Google and other search engines are constantly improving their search algorithm to improve the quality of results that is provided to the end-user. Over the last few years, it would be possible to create lots of pages with poorly written content and a variety of poor quality backlinks pointing to the article for a high-ranking on Google. With the new changes under the Google Panda revision, this resulted in many pages setup for this purpose feeling the ‘panda effect’ and demoted. Many were left scared by the Panda update but the fact remains, if you create and promote good quality content, you shouldn’t have much to worry about (touch wood…) So for you guys posting content directly copied from Wikipedia, it’s time to mix things up and actually develop your own unique and quality content. More on this below.

You’re probably reading this and in a similar situation to me, a small photography related business or hobby blog that gets a small stream of traffic. In a perfect world you’d love to be the top ranking for the popular photography related keywords like photography, landscape photography, wedding photography, all the keywords that the big boys in the photography world currently sit on. Competing with these big keywords is obtainable but you will have much better success with less popular keywords that still get a relatively good amount of traffic. This is where long tail keywords are your new best friend.

What are Long Tail Keywords?

Most people hope to compete with the popular keywords like wedding photographer, landscape photographer, etc. These aren’t unobtainable but due to being so competitive, you might be lucky to reach page 5 of the Google ranking and thus only receiving a tiny percent of the inbound traffic. I prefer to compete with the less popular keywords that are more specific search phrases of a popular term.

As part of the Google Adwords component of Google, publishers have available the Keyword Tool which provides figures based on how often a specific keyword is searched globally and locally per month.  This is what I used for the below diagram that displays the Google search stats for the ‘landscape photography’ keyword. The data provided is quite extensive and long and you could go into considerably more detail to find even lesser searched terms that are even less competitive. I’ve tried to only use examples that are relevant to me as it’s what I’m familiar with but for any wedding photographers reading I’d consider testing the monthly searches for variations of wedding photography in your area. For example:

• Wedding photography Victoria
• Wedding photography Melbourne
• Wedding photography South Yarra

Targeting some variation to the more well-used keywords (in this case ‘wedding photography Melbourne’) will make you more competitive and provide a different source of traffic that your competitors might be targeting.

For example, the term ‘landscape photography’ receives 165,000 searches per month. While more specific and lesser searched keywords include ‘tips for landscape photography’ and ‘beautiful landscape photography’ which receive 3,600 and 2,900 respectively. Writing meaningful content that targets these keywords within your posts will allow you to be competitive and receive a piece of that pie.

Why would you want to rank for keywords that only get a small amount of traffic per month? If you carefully target a lot of your articles for small ranking keywords you should receive a nice steady stream of traffic without being overly concerned that you will get knocked off by someone else. If competing for a popular keyword, it’s almost a constant battle to stay there especially when others are pushing thousands of $ into SEO campaigns.

Identifying long tail keywords is a good strategy but it’s also vital that you understand what your competitors are doing. Before you begin writing your content, double-check who is ranking in the top 10 for the keyword you’re targeting. There’s many paid tools out there but I find Spyfu quite good and it’s free. Using this tool you can quickly gauge the status of a competing website to see how big they are in terms of backlinks, page count and other bits. It’s important to check the status of how much backlinks and pages a site has as this is a contributing factor to what provides them with a high-ranking on Google.  While also manually looking at the website can also be quite beneficial. For example, if National Geographic occupy the first place for ‘tips for landscape photography’, I’d probably consider moving onto something else.  The reason being is that National Geographic probably receives a lot of inbound links from other websites which further boosts their search engine ranking thus making it quite difficult to compete with if you’re only a small and emerging website with a tiny amount of backlinks.

Optimising Your Photograph Postings for SEO

One of the biggest challenges for photographers is that we often post images with limited text to sit alongside the image. Whether it be because we’re lazy or just feel that our images don’t deserve any explanation which is fine but it can severely limit what Google has to work with. Whilst also limiting the likelihood people will link to your page. Instead, create good content and people will come.

Rather then just posting a photo with one sentence, try to incorporate some text explaining how you captured the image, any tips you have with capturing or processing the image and other bits. Search engine bots will love you for it and your readers will even more. But the most important thing I can suggest here is to only develop meaningful content. Do not and I much reiterate this as so many people do it, do not steal content from Wikipedia or other articles to boost your photos content. I find it quite amusing that people do this without realising that Google sees that you’re stealing content from a high authority website such as Wikipedia and instantly demotes your authority because you’re stealing from a high authority content. Plus do your viewers really care about the intimate details of a photographs location? I doubt it. If they’re curious they can google it themself. Instead why not create a short blurb about the location yourself for some additional content. As you write, try to include some keywords that you’re targeting as discussed above. It’s important to note that it is possibly to over optimise an article for a keyword thus making the exercise pointless. Instead try to keep your language natural and only include keywords when necessary.

Benefiting from Google Images

Google Images can bring in a steady stream of traffic when your images are named and titled with the relevant tags people are searching for. Unfortunately this type of traffic isn’t looked as favourably by all with some arguing that Google Images is nothing more than a good way for your images to be stolen. I’m in two minds about Google Images and have some good experiences where people have discovered my photography through searching for ‘waterfall photographs’ and clicked through to view more of my photography.

To optimise your images for Google and other image search engines it’s important to ensure the filename, title and alternative text are matched to the keywords you’re targeting. For example, I wish to be competitive for the keyword ‘Park Beach, Tasmania’ so when tourists or locals search the area, they come across my images with the hope that this will result in enquiries and print sales. When uploading an image to WordPress or any other platform it’s vital that you name your images, titles and alternative text accordingly to the keywords you’re targeting. In this instance of a new post captured at Park Beach Tasmania, I made sure the image name, title and alternative text were updated to reflect this.

If you’re not using wordpress (whyyy?!) and putting things together yourself, the image html should look something like this -

 <IMG SRC=”URL of image” ALT=”Alternative text” TITLE=”Image title”>

But you’re probably on top of this and pulling in the traffic like there’s no tomorrow… Right?

Maximising Your Use of Social Media

It’s clear that Twitter, Facebook and Google +1 are here to stay and with a much larger impact on search engine rankings than originally thought. Initially the effect which social media could have on search engine rankings was vague and many were skeptical of the benefits of social media beyond attracting a quick burst of poor quality traffic. Recently it has become apparent that Social Media is a much larger contributing factor towards your search engine ranking than originally thought. Both Google and Bing have made some comment on the effect which social media has on your search engine ranking by saying

The social authority of the user in terms of their follower count, quality of followers and other details is calculated and thus those with high quality follower counts gain considerable weight. This also includes links shared across Facebook which are marked as ‘Everyone’ which are treated similar to a Twitter retweet and also hold considerable weight.  How do you calculate the authority of someone on Facebook when the metrics for doing so are completely different to Twitter? They don’t.   But by  links being shared across both on Facebook and Twitter can provide considerable leverage for the link and increase its legitimacy.

Interesting. The legitimacy and authority of the person or person(s) posting the content brings us onto our next point. How do you build a fan page or Twitter account with decent authority?

Building Social Media Profiles with Good Authority

Be yourself and giving something back.  It sounds simple but I see too many people start a Facebook fanpage or Twitter account and only ever promote themself with limited interaction or they start out strong and slowly lose interest. If you’re going to take up Facebook, Twitter, Google +1 or the next best thing, stick with it. Sure the first few weeks/months might be slow and feel as if you’re talking to a wall but give it time and try to network with similar minded users. Over time your followers will increase with people stumbling across your work and following you via your social networks.  It’s also interesting to note that Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages rank well in search engine rankings which provides more incentive to ensure your page is a good reflection of you and  entice people enough to hit that ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ button.

One of the most difficult things is deciding on what content to actually post to your followers beyond your own photography. This might seem obvious but people seem still manage to do it, avoid alienating your followers with stupid open ended questions like What are you doing this weekend? What is your favourite time to shoot? It reminds me of something that would be suggested in a book on how to fail at social media. Instead treat your followers like normal people and try to ask yourself what you would expect to see from a photographer who inspired you. It wouldn’t be silly posts asking you what you’re doing this weekend. What do you get out of that? Nothing. You’d prefer to learn about their process of taking a photograph. There’s no need to over do it, just occasionally try to give back with insightful tips, before and after photos of a photograph you’ve recently edited, photographers that inspire you and whatever you feel would be valuable to your audience.

Monitoring What is Being Said About You on Social Media Networks

Managing your social media presence is vital by keeping track of who is talking about you, what is being promoted and if there is any negativity. Fortunately there’s a few tools available that are free and make this a lot more easier to manage. A couple of favourites of mine include Topsy and Google Alerts.

At the moment I have Google Alerts setup for my website and name which means I’m instantly notified when someone creates a blog article and posts my photos including my name. I like to keep track of these things and also thanks the article author for linking to my work. While I’ve also been using Topsy recently to keep tabs of who is tweeting my links.

Below gives some insight to how I have both setup and monitor any mentions:

Both tools are also useful for tracking and link building in keywords you’re competing in (i.e. landscape photography tips). Upon this keyword being mentioned on a blog, Google will instantly notify you of the blog posting. Some users suggest commenting on the blog is a good tactic for link building (even if WordPress blogs default to no follow thus having very limited SEO impact) but the opportunity to network with similar minded people is also of value.

Building Your Twitter Network

One handy way of building your network (and slightly cheating) is by using Follower Wonk or similar websites that allow you to search for popular users based on a specific keyword/interest. I haven’t used it much myself to network with other users but see it as a great opportunity to identify the big players in a particular area and approach them to share your work/latest articles.

Case Study: The Tweet Effect

Recently I wrote an article on photographing waterfalls, I spent considerable time putting together photographs that explained and compared shutter speeds while also going into detail on how to best photograph waterfalls. It was a long weekend project and once I hit Publish I hoped it would at least hit the first page of Google for users searching waterfall photography. I waited a few weeks to see the impact and nothing. It was stuck on page 3 and instead, my article (admittedly, a very crappy one) I wrote in 2007 was occupying the first page.  This was surprising as I’d hoped the age of my new posting would supersede the previous post however due to links accumulated to that post over the years, it was going nowhere.

As an experiment I wanted to see the impact which promoting it quite heavily on websites such as Twitter could have for its ranking and admittedly, I was skeptical that it would have any benefit. The process started by tweeting the post myself to my loyal followers. This received a small amount of retweets but nothing major. A little agitated I contacted some larger photography websites such as DIY Photography (Udi is a great guy btw!) to ask whether they could share a retweet on my new article. Some declined but others were more than happy to help. The result? 505 tweets to this day.  But more importantly, how did it affect my rankings for this article?

As you can see I’m now occupying the second position for my article closely behind digital-photography-school. The campaign was a success and highlighted the power which Twitter and other social networks can have as a contributing factor to increasing your search engine rankings. If you’re further interested in the effect which Twitter can have on search engine rankings, there’s an interesting series of case studies over at seomoz that looks into the topic in further detail.

Wait what?!

I’d like to think this photography SEO article has hopefully got you thinking on how you can improve your website. Please be aware that it is a slow process but if you put the hard work on over time, you will be rewarded for your hard work. But just to reiterate what was discussed:

• Start by using a good base platform such as WordPress that comes optimised for SEO and has nice themes available.
• Identify content that you can actually compete in by using the Google Keyword tool to identify long tail keywords.
• Develop blog postings with content that target the keywords that you’ve identified as part of your long tail keyword research. Remmeber, it’s possible to over optimise your posts so be careful not to over do the keyword dropping.
• Make sure you name and describe your alternative text so it is relevant to the keywords your targetting to attract Google Images traffic.
• Put the time in to manage your social media profiles. Don’t be that guy that just promotes himself and never interacts with his followers. You’ll quickly lose interest as will your followers. Instead try to make an effort to follow and interact with new people via tools such as Follower Wonk to develop networks.
• Setup Google Alerts and monitor your social media presence via Topsy and Social Mention to capture what people are saying about you and to sometimes thank them personally for retweeting your articles.

Handy and Free SEO Resources

And finally here’s a collection of my favourite free SEO resources which you should find useful.

• Ahrefs - Check the backlink status of websites.
• All in One SEO Pack – This has been around for ages and is a must plugin for anyone looking to optimise their WordPress blog for SEO.
• Bing Webmaster – Similar to Google Webmaster, this tool allows you to track any problems Bing is encountering crawling your website and other useful
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – As discussed earlier in the post, use this as a guide to estimate monthly global and local search variations for keywords.
• Google Alerts – Useful for tracking when your name/brand is mentioned with instant updates available.
• Google Webmaster – Manage any issues which Google is encountering crawling your site, see popular terms,  +1 metrics and more.
• Google XML Sitemaps - Another great WordPress plugin that manages your sitemaps and notifies the larger search engines when there has been any updates.
• Follower Wonk – Tool to find popular users on Twitter for specific interests/keywords.
• Keyword Spy - Discover what keywords your competitors are targeting.
• SEMRush – Useful tool for estimating traffic.
• Seomoz – The bible for all things SEO. Rand Fishkin is the SEO God apparently.
• Smart Passive Income – One of the better SEO related blogs going about. Pat shares some great tips from his individual experiences.
• Social Mention - Search for what is being discussed about a particular keyword. A good tool to use if you want to see who is talking about your photography or tonetwork with similar minded people.
• Spyfu – Spy on your competitors.
• Theme Forest – WordPress photography themes. I lied. These aren’t free but are well worth their money.
• Topsy – Very similar to Social Mention.

Thanks

Thanks for reading this article. Apologies if it was quite long and might have been vague in parts but if you have any feedback or questions, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

- Alex

PS. Guest Posting

I’m looking for guest posters to share photography tips on my blog. If you have a fun and interesting article idea, be sure to get in touch via the contact page.