AboutPat G Expertise I can answer questions about the artistic aspects of photography, and tricks for shooting landscape, scenic, macro, and animal photography. I am familiar with Pentax SLR cameras, both film and digital. I have also done work in urban photography and creative photography, and I am familiar with creative uses of filters and lenses. I am familiar with composition and color theory, and know how to make use of light. I can answer questions about things like lightning photography and moon photography. I spend time studying the techniques of the well known photographers. I work exclusively in color. Although I travel anywhere and everywhere in pursuit of landscape and scenic photography, my main area of expertise is the American southwest, and I am familiar with many scenic areas. I also have familiarity with the plants of the Sonoran Desert, having studied not only their appearance but also their uses, including ethnobotany. See my educational credentials for other art that I do.
Experience I have spent the last ten years as a semi-professional photographer, selling my work on the internet, and having won international honors. The gallery of my most recent work, where I usually post frequently is http://patgoltz.deviantart.com/ I will take questions about how I did various photographs.
Education/Credentials The first prize I won for my art was when I was in third grade. I have a bachelor's degree in art from Ohio Dominican University, where I learned mainly ceramics and glaze calculation. I have also done various kinds of fiber arts. In addition, I do digital landscapes, abstracts, and fractal art.
Question what are some tips for taking photographs - i really enjoy it and want to get better. i have learnt never shoot a picture while facing the sun.
your suggestions for improved photography taking would be most appreciated.
Answer Hi, Don,
I'm making this public because other people can benefit from it. These rules and tips are in no particular order.
It is true, however, that in most cases, you don't want to shoot right into the sun. It will tend to darken out all the details in your subject. It might mess up your exposure. In particular, when shooting people, especially their faces, you don't want to shoot into the sun. If the sun is too bright, it will make nasty shadows, so try to take pictures of your subjects in shade. A cloudy day also works nicely.
Rules are meant to be broken, but when you are first starting out, observing the rules can make for much better pictures. The most important rule, I imagine, is the Rule of Thirds. It has been discovered that the Golden Mean is very aesthetically pleasing to human beings. The Golden Mean is when you divide a rectangle that is eight units long into two segments of five units and three units. Our bodies are even designed that way, if you look at the proportions of various body parts. The Rule of Thirds comes very close to approximating the Golden Mean, and it's easier to use. When you are taking pictures of something where this will work out, you place the center of interest according to the Rule of Thirds. Divide your picture mentally into both vertical and horizontal thirds. Your center of interest should be either on one of these lines or on the intersection of the line. This one rule alone can make a huge difference. However, it should not necessarily be applied when you are taking a photo of an animal or a flower. But if you take a macro of the flower so that not the entire flower is in the picture, then you can apply this rule. Play around with this.
Some more general rules...
Take LOTS of pictures. That way, you can select the best. If you have a digital camera, you can acquire memory for fairly low cost, and it can be re-used. I may take a trip of three days and come home with thousands of pictures. I will even retake the same shot several times. If it's something moving, or where depth of field is likely to be a problem, I will take even more. And I'll take different compositions.
Learn about aperture. When you "stop the lens down", which means making the opening smaller (with a larger number, i.e. f22 instead of f4), it will give you better depth of field: more things will be in focus at different distances. When you open it up, depth of field will be much smaller, and only the things in the plane where you focus will be in focus. Other things will be out of focus. For some macro shots, you might even want to have very little depth of field, because you don't want a busy, distracting background behind a flower, for instance.
Aperture is a trade-off for shutter speed when you want a sharp scenery picture. If the light is low, you may want a faster shutter speed to avoid blur, but if you open up the aperture so you can get the speed, it will reduce your depth of field. Finding the right combination takes practice, and taking lots of pictures does help.
Learn color theory. A pleasing combination of colors might consist of three colors adjacent to each other in the rainbow, such as yellow-green-blue. If you are doing still lifes, for example, you might choose your objects with this in mind. On the other hand, if you want to take pictures of certain buildings that have been decorated with lively colors (for example, Spanish-speaking people often want to apply lively colors to buildings), then you ignore that rule. Clashing colors can also provide drama in other ways.
Look at other people's photos. Look at lots of them. Choose famous photographers. When you do this study them to see why they are pleasing. You will learn much more that way in a very big hurry.
If you are photographing scenery, you generally want to avoid shooting around the couple of hours either side of noon. Shadows are very important, and they don't happen at that time.
When you are taking macro shots, you may want to use fill flash. A digital camera will have provisions for decreasing the strength of the flash. This is called fill flash. But the advantage of fill flash is that it lets you stop down your lens so that you can get better depth of field. Sometimes if you don't, you will get crummy pictures because either you move the camera (or the animal moves), or too much of your subject is out of focus. How MUCH of your image is in focus is an aesthetic judgment. I'll give you an example of what can be done with fill flash. This little fellow has a round body, and in order to get his entire body in focus, I needed to use fill flash so I could stop down the lens. Take a look: http://patgoltz.deviantart.com/art/Banded-Gecko-95115302 There is a close-up linked in the comments, so you can see the detail I was able to get.
But suppose I wanted to get just his face, and I got up closer. I might want other body parts to be out of focus, so again, I might not do it that way.
Learn how to use filters. I keep one filter ON my lens all the time. I take it off when I don't want it. That's a linear polarizer. It cuts down available light, so it might not work to your advantage in low light situations. But you can bring out the color of a sky or rainbow with this. Some people say to use a circular polarizer with a digital camera, because it will shift as the lens auto-focuses. I don't do this mainly because of the fact that the circular polarizer doesn't have nearly the dramatic effect that the linear polarizer does. Here is an example of a rainbow taken with a linear polarizer: http://patgoltz.deviantart.com/art/Electronic-Rainbow-112524330 When you turn the polarizing filter, you will see the rainbow will fade out completely at a 90 degree angle from the angle I used to take this picture. Filters are used for many different purposes. This is a study that would take much more time to explain than I really have here. But you can learn about these one at a time. Filters can be used for various purposes. I like to use them creatively. Here is an example of how I used two graduated filter (deeply saturated color fading to no color at all, moving up and down lengthwise): http://patgoltz.deviantart.com/art/Twocactus-10499678 I used two filters in this one, both of them in the chocolate-tan range. You can also use a filter that graduates to various shades of red for a sky for dramatic effect. This image: http://patgoltz.deviantart.com/art/Christmas-10499256 makes use of a filter that produces stars. However, you can do the same thing by stopping your lens down all the way, and taking a picture into the light source, with it obscured partly or totally by another object.
Learn to see. Pay attention to what you are looking at. Look for details, perspectives, look for concepts. Do a lot of observing.
That should get you started. You can get books on the subject which are not too expensive, to explore these things further. Good luck, and enjoy!
