Give Your Sunsets a Great Foreground

It's easy to look at a pretty sunset or sunrise and think that nature will do all of the work for you when it comes to photographing it. With all that color and drama, what's not to like? But you can improve any sunset/sunrise by simply finding a good foreground to place in front of it. Because you want the colors and cloud patterns (or sky reflections, if you're near the water) to dominate the shot, you want your foreground subject to be simple, yet interesting. Also, because it's likely that your foreground will end up entirely in silhouette, you also want a subject that's bold enough to be reduced to lines and shapes and still add interest to the photograph.

I took this shot of the rigging in a commercial fishing boat in Galilee, Rhode Island and I really like the way the complex web of stays and ropes creates such interesting patterns. It took me a while to find the shot though--even though I had been scouting around the harbor an hour or so before sunset. I was really hoping to get a shot of a boat pulling into or out of the harbor, but all the boats were tied up for the night. After walking around the marina in a slight state of panic for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably only about 10 minutes), afraid that I might miss this great sunset and not get a good shot, I looked up into the rigging of this boat and knew it would make a great shot. I planted my tripod on the dock and fired off a few dozen shots as the sky grew more intense and then started to fade, shifting my position slightly after each few frames.

Scouting ahead of time is the real key to finding a good sunset foreground. I've always found it's better to sacrifice an hour of late-afternoon shooting to do more scouting if I think there's going to be a great sunset, because I know that the combination of an interesting foreground and a great sunset make really pretty photos. Better yet, scout earlier in the day, at midday perhaps, and just be sure you get back to your sunset location in time to catch the sky show.

Stop & Look at Scenic Overlooks

I'd be the first to admit that I've never taken a very good picture from a scenic overlook and the reason is fairly simple: while overlooks provide a good wide view of the landscape around you, they're too broad and unfocused to become worthwhile landscape photos. But that doesn't mean that I don't stop and look at the view when I come across an overlook. In fact, I go out of my way to find them on maps or to ask locals where the best scenic views are found. Whatever they lack in terms of more intimate subject matter, these wide vistas are great at giving you the lay of the land and showing you just where you are traveling.

I shot this photo on my first road trip between Phoenix and Flagstaff and just seeing this view and the winding dirt road leading off into the mountains gave me a great sense of the scale of the landscape and a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. The shot was taken just a few steps from an interstate highway, but it's not the kind of view you get to study at 60 mph (unless you want to end up a part of the view). There were also some nice historical and natural-history markers in the pull-off parking lot and some very detailed state maps on display, so all-in-all, a great place to get better acquainted with where I was and what Arizona looked like.

You may or may not get a good photo from an overlook, but they're certainly worth visiting. In fact, anything that gets you off the interstate for a few minutes is a great thing, photographically and otherwise.

The Many (Almost Magical) Uses of a Polarizing Filter

If someone told you that they could sell you a single lens filter that could darken blue skies, saturate colors, remove surface reflections (including window reflections), intensify rainbows and reduce haze--would you buy it? You bet you would. And a polarizing filter can do all of those things and, at times, they seem like an almost magical accessory.

Polarizing filters are one of the most versatile and important photo accessories that you can own and, even though I use one less with digital cameras than I did with film cameras (I'll explain why in a minute), I still use one regularly. Polarizing filters work (there's a lot of physics going on here and you can find lots of info online if you're curious) by blocking certain wavelengths of light from entering the lens and allowing others. They are sold in a rotating mount that screws to the front of your DSLR lenses and as you rotate the filter, it blocks different wavelengths. Among the things that a polarizing filter does superbly well:

• Darken blue skies. Be blocking extraneous scattered light reflections in the atmosphere, you can rotate the filter to darken blue skies. I use them less for this than I used to because I can create the same sky-darkening in editing and have somewhat more control. I also feel that polarizing filters tend to over-darken skies with digital cameras if you're not careful about exposure and the exact rotation position. Sky darkening works best when the sun is to your right or your left (of shooting position) and not at all when the sun is behind or in front of you. You can see the effect in the viewfinder as you turn the filter and as you alter your position to the light.
  
• Saturate colors. Again, because you're blocking superfluous surface reflections, when you turn a filter the colors of things like leaves and grass or people's clothing becomes more (or less) saturated. This is the main thing that I used to use polarizing filters for, but again, I can saturate colors more selectively in editing. Still, I will sometimes use a polarizing filter with landscapes where I want to control the color saturation at the time I'm shooting.
  
• Eliminate reflections. This is something you can't do very easily in editing! You can remove reflections from any nonmetallic surfaces just by rotating the filter. If you're shooting a store-window display, for example, you can penetrate the reflections to reveal what's behind the glass. This can be a real life saver in a lot of situations, especially when you're traveling and might shoot a lot of store windows or displays.
• Reduce atmospheric haze. Polarizing filters are much more efficient at reducing haze (not fog) than so-called "UV" (ultra-violet) filters and they're essential in landscape photography for that reason.
  
• Intensify rainbows. No joke! By reducing the atmospheric haze and by blocking certain wavelengths of light you can strengthen the colors of a rainbow substantially. And because you can see the effect in the viewfinder, you can decide how much intensity you want (yeah, like anyone would dial up less than maximum color with a rainbow).
  

Polarizing filters are not inexpensive and you will probably spend between $40-100 on a good one. If you're using auto-focus lenses, be sure to buy a "circular" filter, but check your lens or camera manual to be sure of the type you need.

Beware the Six-Legged Horse

If you look closely as this photo, you'll notice that the horse appears to have four front legs. This is a beautiful (and huge) draft horse, so I'm not sure if that would make him stronger or not, but it sure makes it look a bit like a circus freak. The problem, of course, is that the other half of this team is standing right behind the front horse and all that you're really seeing from the second horse are its front legs.

Unfortunately at that moment the horses had just finished working and were eating furiously, so I wasn't going to ask the owner to pose them better for me. I only shot the photo because it was such a beautiful and big horse, I wanted a snapshot of it. The point is, though, you really have to keep an eye on backgrounds. Had this been an important shot I would have waited or worked harder to find another angle. But it was just a snapshot at a country fair, so I let it slide. But do beware (and be aware) of backgrounds when you're shooting--especially people and animals--or people may think you're shooting pictures at the sideshow.

Informal Group Portraits: Get Them to Smile!

Not everyone likes to get their picture taken (me emphatically included), but the trick to shooting happy portraits is to make your subjects look like they're having a grand time. And the secret to that is getting them to smile--and not just a 99-cent fake smile for the camera, but a genuine happy smile. The best way I've found for doing that is to have someone else doing the dirty work for you--preferably someone that your subjects like and have fun being around. In this case is was the father/grandfather who was kidding with the three women just a few feet off camera. By having someone else interacting with them, as opposed to you saying, "OK, smile" it gives you a chance to watch for nice moments and keep your face pressed up against the viewfinder (or looking at the LCD) and paying attention to camera controls. Also, it helps if you're shooting from a slight side angle because then your subjects are interacting naturally with someone off camera and looking directly at them rather than into the lens. By the way, all outdoor portraits work best when they're shot in open shade with just a touch of flash to open up the face. If you set the white balance to "cloudy weather" it will warm the flash up nicely too.

Create a Blue Flamingo

Imagine--a blue flamingo! Everyone loves fantasy, I think, and nothing conjures more romance or imagination than the idea of a totally new species of animal. Unfortunately, this bird is pure fantasy and I created it (from a shot of a pink flamingo, of course) in Photoshop. The first time I put a version of this shot on Flickr, however, two interesting things happened: For one, it got the highest number of views of any image I had on the site. But also, the photo got ripped off faster than you can possibly believe--I found it on blogs, websites, ezines and even on the cover of an online menu for a restaurant. (I didn't have to sue anyone, by the way, but I did go after every single abuse.)

Creating this wonderful bird was a lot easier than you might think and it was all done with the hue/saturation tool in Photoshop (Elements has the same tool). Here's how to do it:

• First, choose a subject with a bold overall color. The flamingo worked well because it was just various shades of pink (even the legs are pink) and white.
• At the top of the hue/saturation window, look for the pull down menu that says "Master." Under that you'll find a list of all the colors. Choose the color that matches your subject (in this case, I selected red). If you were doing this with a lemon, for example, you would choose yellow.
  
• At the bottom of the hue/saturation window you'll notice there is an eyedropper tool with three boxes: the eyedroper, the eyedropper with a "+" symbol and the eyedropper with a "-" symbol.
  
• Select just the eyedropper and click anywhere in your subject. That tells the tool what color you want to change. Now select the eyedropper+ box and then click as many times as you like to pick up more shades of your chosen color (I probably made about 12 different clicks within the flamingo to pick up various shades of red and pink).
• Now adjust the hue slider and watch what happens. The color of your main subject (a flamingo, a lemon, etc.) will begin to shift colors radically. Interestingly, because you chose a specific color from the drop down menu, only that color will shift. The remaining portions of your photo will remain the same. So if you were doing a lemon on a blue background and had selected yellow and sampled just yellow areas, only the yellow would change hue. The blue background would remain exactly as it was.

After I changed the flamingo from pink to blue, I did some touching up (darkening selected areas of the background, healing some tiny flaws in the water, etc.) and then did an overall curves adjustment. You'll notice there is still a tinge of pink in the flamingo and I could have gotten rid of that by going more extreme with the hue shift, but I kind of liked the pinkish color coming through a bit. This is a really simple Photoshop trick and in the next tip I'll show you another application of it--turning a sunset into a moonset. Stay tuned!

Take Spot-On Light Readings with a Spot Meter

Spot metering is the ultimate refinement in metering small, selective areas, because it reads only one tiny area of the viewfinder, typically only a few centimeters in diameter. In my Nikon D90's viewfinder, for example, the spot metering is done in an area that's just .14 inches (3.5cm) across which represents just 2% of the overall frame. The purpose of this mode is to let you take metering readings from very exacting and specific areas of the frame.

These days I use the spot meter less and less because, I have to admit, the matrix metering (see the previous tips) is amazingly accurate. Before the days of such dependable matrix metering, I did use spot meters much more frequently. Still, there are circumstances when a spot meter is the best (and sometimes the only) way to get an accurate reading. While photographing this white ibis in Florida, for example, the bird was completely surrounded by very dark--almost black--water. A matrix reading of this scene would have given me medium gray water and probably a very overexposed (washed out) bird.

I probably could have used the center-weighted meter for this shot because the bird is relatively large in the frame, but I chose the spot meter so that I could be sure the reading was only coming from the bird. Because the bird was white, however, I did have to add +1.3 stops of exposure compensation to keep it white. (I based the amount of compensation on experience and looking at the histogram, by the way.) Had it been a medium-toned subject (a great blue heron, for example, which is gray), I could have just gone with the straight spot reading. Still, knowing exactly what I was metering helped me determine the correct amount of compensation.

You probably won't use the spot metering mode very often, but when you are confronted with a very small yet important subject area against a very bright or very dark background--a small flower blossom against a black shadowed area, for example--it can be a real life saver. Read your manual (or a Magic Lantern Guide if one is available) for more info on using specialty metering modes. I learned from reading Simon Stafford's excellent D90 Magic Lantern Guide, for instance, that the spot meter is tied to the active AF (autofocus) points in the Dynamic-area AF mode, so the spot metering area will follow the active AF area--something very important to know if you're using Dynamic-area AF and spot metering combined.