Review Digital Camera World 04-22-2013

Digital Camera World

Photography Lighting: simple ways of improving the light Apr 21st 2013, 23:01 In our latest Shoot Like A Pro series post on photography lighting in all its forms, we take a look at some of the easy ways you can improve the light available to you. Controlling the light for large subjects such as landscapes is impossible, but for smaller subjects such as portraits, close-ups or details in the landscape you don't always have to make do with the lighting conditions exactly as they are. There are plenty of different ways that you can alter the light, especially when you find yourself having to shoot in harsh, direct lighting conditions. As we have already explained, to get softer light you need to make the light source appear larger to the subject. Moving the light closer to the subject will help to produce softer light, but this isn't always convenient, or even possible. Without a diffuser If you are shooting a small subject in sunlight, then you need to use a diffuser between the light and the subject, to make the light source appear much larger. This doesn't have to be an expensive piece of kit, it can simply be a piece of semi-transparent white paper or cloth, or you could go for one of the folding diffusers such as those from Lastolite. With a diffuser PAGE 1: Taking control of the light PAGE 2: Use a reflector to fill in the shadows PAGE 3: Using fill-in flash READ MORE 10 rules of photo composition (and why they work) 99 common photography problems (and how to solve them) The landscape’s greatest challenges: free photography cheat sheet Photo Anatomy: black and white wildlife photography with instant impact Apr 21st 2013, 13:00 In our new Sunday series on Digital Camera World, we select pictures by famous photographers and explain point by point what makes them work. In our latest instalment award-winning wildlife photographer Richard Peters reveals the techniques behind this striking black and white image of an owl. 01 Background "A dark background helps your subject pop," explains Richard. "I was shooting into the shade of distant trees, so it was already a dark green. Converting to mono turned it black." 02 Preparation Richard knew that a family of owls lived on an area of Sussex farmland. He photographed one of them from a one-man pop-up hide as it perched on old farm machinery. 03 Mono conversion "Mono is great for making texture and detail stand out," says Richard. "The rusty detail of the machinery and the dark background suited a black-and-white conversion." 04 Getting close Richard photographed the owl from distance using a Nikon D4 fitted with a 600mm VR lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. It was mounted on a Gitzo carbon fibre tripod with a Wimberley Mark II head. 05 Positioning "For this shot," says Richard, "it was important to position myself in such a way that I had a clean background, but also had good light on the subject." We Say "Photographing birds in the wild can be tricky, but getting in position and staying there, allowing them to become comfortable, works far better than constantly moving around and following them. More co-operative birds are usually found in places where they are more used to human presence." Chris Rutter, technique editor READ MORE Famous Photographers: 100 things we wish we knew starting out How to see photos like famous photographers every time you shoot 30 celebrity photographers who are actually celebrities Wildlife photography made easy: simple techniques for pro-quality pictures

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