Shoot Like It's Your Job
What the pros do seems like magic. In a lot of ways it is. The vision and artistic ability of Outside contributing photographers like Kurt Markus and Dan Winters is beyond explanation. But the pros also rely on tricks—illusory techniques and lighting that give their photos an iconic look. Those we can teach. To do it, we've teamed up with acerbic former Outside photo editor Rob Haggart, who now blogs at aphotoeditor.com, and David Hobby, who runs the popular lighting Web site strobist.blogspot.com. Haggart describes each look, and Hobby tells you how to execute it. Study up, then e-mail your work to sothereiwas@outsidemag.com. We'll run the best in the issue if you're good enough.
| Quick Tips |
Ditch the Polarizing Filter
We know—the guy at the camera store said it's what you need to see into the water. But in the process, it'll oversaturate everything else. Trust us: Ditch the filter.
Use a Handheld Light Meter
No matter how much you paid for your camera, the light meter inside it will be fooled by the color of the objects it's metering. Point your camera at a snowy mountain and it's going to register brighter than if you point it at a black wall, though the ambient light might be the same in both instances. A handheld meter, which measures the light falling on the meter, rather than the light reflecting off the subject, will give you the perfect exposure every time. Minolta's Flash Meter V isn't made anymore, but it's still the best. $300 (used); keh.com |
1. Wild Things
Hero: Frans Lanting
Rob Haggart: People think that to be a great wildlife photographer, you find an animal and chase it down. That's backwards. First, you find your scene; then you wait for an animal to walk through it. The best test to see whether you'd be a good wildlife photographer is to sit in your backyard for eight days without moving. It's like going down to the freeway and waiting for a car accident.
David Hobby: A small flash dialed up to maximum power is bright enough to freeze wildlife in late afternoon. It can also help you see things you wouldn't ordinarily. One example is creating reflections in distant eyes. To achieve this effect, just shoot late in the day with your flash on manual override to its highest power.
2. Vivid Landscapes
Hero: Andy Anderson
Haggart: No, Iceland doesn't look like that. It's gray and drab. Anderson gets water this blue and grass this green by controlling saturation and contrast in postproduction. I might get shot for saying this, but here goes: No digital photographs (and very few shot on film) come out of the camera ready to publish. Nearly everything needs color correction.
Hobby: In Photoshop, from the IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS menu, select contrast. Increase it by about 15 percent. Then select saturation from the same menu and decrease it by about the same amount. Most pros who use digital postproduction eventually work out their own tightly guarded recipe that's much more complicated, but this should get you started. Once you come up with your own process, your photos will start to have a similar look that ties them all together into a body of work.
Equipment: Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3, $32; amazon.com
3. Crazy Eyes
Hero: Martin Schoeller
Haggart: The reflection of a light source in a subject's eyes is an easy way to tell how the photo was shot. Schoeller's "cat-eye" technique is probably the most striking use of it—mostly because everyone ends up looking like a cyborg.
Hobby: The secret is extra-long strip lights whose reflection will wrap around the subject's pupils. Schoeller uses a much more complicated setup, but you can approximate the look with a quick trip to Home Depot. Buy a pair of four-foot-long fluorescent tube lights and mount them vertically, side by side about a foot apart, in a large box that's been painted white on the inside. Cut a lens-size hole between the lights. Set your camera to auto white balance—to counter the green tinge from the fluorescents—and shoot through the hole, with the lights facing your subject.
Equipment: Lights, paint, and box, about $40
4. Gritty B&W
Hero: Antonin Kratochvil
Haggart: Contrast adds gravity and tension to the situation. If you want to make your tubing trip down the Boise River look like Apocalypse Now, gritty black-and-white is the way to go.
Hobby: Established pros like Kratochvil still use film and spend lots of time in the darkroom. A much simpler way to get the effect is to shoot a color digital file and convert it in Photoshop using the channel mixer (or black and white adjustments if you've got the latest version, CS3). Open the file and select LAYER>NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER. Under TYPE, choose CHANNEL MIXER. When the channel mixer comes up, click the MONOCHROME box, at the bottom, to make the photo black and white, and then try increasing the percentage of red. You should end up with dark skies and silvery skin tones. If the photo starts to look overexposed, decrease the LIGHT-CONSTANT percentage.
Equipment: Photoshop CS3, $649; adobe.com
5. Party Pix!
Hero: Chris McPherson
Haggart: A ring flash is the classic party lighting. Shoot your girlfriend doing aprés-ski at the Mangy Moose and—pow!—suddenly she looks like Paris Hilton at Bungalow 8. The flash creates a halo around the subject but completely lights the face. It makes people look fabulous.
Hobby: Once mounted on your camera or on a flash arm, a ring flash shoots just like a built-in flash. There are two great bargains I'd recommend: The ABR 800 is a $400 pro-quality ring flash (alienbees.com). Then there's the Ray Flash Ring Flash Adaptor ($300; expoimaging .net). This one's really cool: You place it around your camera's lens and it modifies your on-camera flash into a ring, using fiber optics.
