Nature's Best Photography Students Blog

You’re camera’s meter controls what exposure you get when using an automatic or semi-automatic shooting mode. When you’re camera meters the scene it attempts to make the scene appear 18% grey. Most cameras have three types of metering center weighted, matrix, and spot. Understanding how different types of metering work will greatly improve your imagery.  

If you use center weighted metering your camera attempts to make the center of the image properly exposed. I rarely use center weighted metering and usually opt for spot metering for more control over what is exposed properly. Matrix metering works well in most situations as long as there isn’t incredibly high contrast. This attempts to finds an average exposure for the entire scene keeping detail in both the darkest and lightest areas in the image. Sadly this is impossible to obtain in some scenes with very high contrast. For example a black bird against bright white snow would be impossible to expose with detail in both unless you added flash to lighten the bird. In scenes were you want one specific area properly exposed use spot metering. The area you select will be properly exposed. For example if you want to get a silhouetted animal spot meter the sky. If you spot meter the silhouetted animal it will be properly exposed but the sky will most likely be blown out. You can also make certain parts of the image over or underexposed by adjusting the exposure compensation.

Learning when to use the right metering can greatly improve your imagery!

– Ryan Watkins (check out more of my posts and photos on ryanwatkinsphotography.com or on flickr)

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When it comes to wildlife photography more often than not we need to use telephoto lenses. These lenses allow us to get tight close-ups of skittish and dangerous wildlife along with giving us the shallow depth of field needed to make our subjects stand out from the background. Telephoto lenses come in a wide variety for focal lengths, speeds, and price ranges. Depending on the type of wildlife you want to shoot you’ll need different focal lengths. Some more personable creatures may allow you to get close enough to use shorter lenses with focal lengths between 70-200mm where as small exotic birds and dangerous predators like bears or lions will need longer lenses in the 500-800mm range.

Focal length isn’t the only thing to consider. Lens speed is crucial to the type of images you can get. The faster the lens the smaller the number after the F in the name. The slower the lens the bigger the number after the F in the name. This number refers to what apertures this lens can use. The wider aperture (smaller F number) the more light is let in through the lens, so you can use a quicker shutter speed. With zoom lenses the widest aperture may change throughout the zoom range. For example my Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Lens can shoot at f/4.5 at 70mm but can only shoot at f/5.6 at 300mm. Generally the faster the lens the better. You’ll be able to get images in lower light and with a shallower depth of field with a 300mm f/2.8 lens than you can with a 300mm f/5.6 lens. Another thing to consider is autofocus speed. Faster lenses tend to have quicker autofocus which is a big advantage when shooting moving subjects like birds.

Prime lenses (lenses with one focal length) are usually faster and better quality lenses than zoom lenses with the same focal lengths. Zooms are usually slower and have slower autofocus. Zooms can be a cheaper and reliable alternative if the cost of high end primes turn you off and you need the focal length.

To get even more reach out of your telephoto lenses you can add tele converters. These fit in-between your camera and lens and allow you to get a longer focal length but cut some light. Tele converters usually come in 1.4x, 1.7x, or 2.0x strengths. For example if you use a 2.0x tele converter on a 300mm f/2.8 lens you’d now have a 600mm f/5.6 lens. Getting faster shorter telephotos with tele converters can allow you to change them into longer, cheaper, and lighter weight versions of other lens.

Image stabilization can be very helpful when shooting handheld. Most stabilized lens claim to allow you to use lenses handheld with shutter speeds three stops longer than with non stabilized lenses. I have been able to get sharp images of elk and moose at 1/125 of second shutter speed at 300mm with my Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Lens handheld.

With long lenses more often than not it’s better to use a tripod. Carbon fiber is best material for tripods (in most situations.) Carbon fiber is lighter and more stable than aluminum or metal. Basalt fiber is a happy medium in terms of quality and price between aluminum and carbon fiber. Wood tripods can withstand vibrations better than carbon fiber (for example if you’re doing a long exposure near a highway and a semi went by) but due to the weight of wood tripods they can be a hassle to carry and move quickly. Going with higher end brands like Gitzo, Manfortto, Feisol, and Berleback will be worth the extra money. I currently have an old Velbon which I have lost some great images from it not being stable enough. I plan on upgrading in the near future. Tripod head choice also makes a big difference. Pan and tilt heads are nice for landscapes but ball heads or gimbaled heads are needed for the fast action of wildlife photography. Really Right Stuff, Kirk, Wimberly, Acra Swiss, Acratech, Manfrotto, and Gitzo are all known for making good tripod heads. Alternative supports like Bushhawks, beanbags, or monopods can also be used to brace long lenses.       

When it comes to price telephoto lenses can be from everywhere from under $200 to over $8000. The faster and longer the lens the lens greater the increase the price. It’s difficult to find a lens over 500mm for less than $1000. It’s hard to find short telephoto zoom lenses with a constant aperture of f/2.8 for under $800. Most camera manufactures make both high end and low end 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Lens. Inexpensive ones in the $100-$300 price range are usually not worth buying. Lenses with the same focal lengths in the $500+ price range usually tend to have much better image quality, quicker autofocus, and usually some type of image stabilization.

I currently use a Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Lens which most amateur and semi-pro photographers would be happy with. It’s very sharp, has quick autofocus, and VR comes in very helpful. I hope to upgrade to a 70-200mm f/2.8 with 2x tele converted in the future.

Hopefully this post has helped you learn about telephoto lenses and which one is right for you!

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One of the biggest recent revolutions in photography lately is HDR photography. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. HDR images are obtained by having specialized software (i.e. Photomatrix, Photoshop CS5, Nik HDR Effects … etc) tone map and merge several exposures of the same scene to get detail in the brightest and darkest areas of the image. This controversial type of imaging and the software used for it has matured and advanced over the last few years. Early HDR shots were mostly over the top surreal images and due to this it created many skeptics and disapprovers. Now we have the option of creating far more realistic images with HDR. Whether you approve of and have embraced HDR imaging or not this post should be able to help you obtain great images in high contrast situations or mimic the subtle and extreme effects sometimes created by HDR.

HDR can be very helpful but it’s not the only way to minimize extreme contrast! When shooting landscapes it’s almost guaranteed that the sky will be brighter than the foreground. In the pre digital days the most effective way of helping balance the exposure was to use a graduated neutral density filter. Many of us use round neutral density filters which are dark pieces of glass which attach to the end of our lens to allow us to use longer exposures. Graduated neutral density filters work in a similar way. They are rectangular filters which are half dark and half clear. You place these in front of your lens with the dark end covering the sky to darken it to the point where you can get an exposure with details in both lights and darks. Graduated NDs come in a variety of strength usually one to three stops and have either soft or hard edges. A soft grad will fade from dark to clear where as a hard grad will go directly from dark to clear with no faded edge. Lee, Singh-Ray, and Cokin all make high end ND grads. These were ideal in the days of large format film and can still be very useful today. But in some situation where it isn’t a straight cut off from foreground to sky this can add unwanted darkening of non-sky elements. These are also pricey and you’ll most likely need more than one because different situation called for different grads.

One of my favorite ways for battling high contrast scenes is old fashion compositing. Compositing is merging two or more photographs together in Photoshop. It can be very simplistic to mimic the effects of a ND grad by shooting two images of the same scene and merging them in post. For example the image of the iconic Mount Rundle at the top of this post is actually a composite of two images shot at different exposures. I set my camera on a tripod and shot an image exposed for the sky (I used spot metering). Next I shot another image where the foreground was properly exposed. I kept the same aperture, focus, and ISO for these shots and just varied the shutter speed. In Photoshop I opened both shots and put them in the same work space. Then I added a layer mask to the top layer. I used the gradient tool and dragged it near the separation of sky and water. This made it so the two images softly faded into one another. This can be difficult to do in shots were foreground elements protrude into the sky (i.e. trees, rock formations, or other things which force detailed masking.) This allowed me to have a properly exposed sky and properly exposed foreground without the use of expensive filters or some of the negative attributes of HDR imaging.

For brightening foreground subjects or shooting moving subjects (wildlife, people … etc) flash can be used to brighten the subject from the dark background. Hot shoe flashes are affordable and are quit powerful. I used my Sunpak PZ42X hot shoe flash (a cheap and highly recommended product) to add detail to this backlit scene during a senior portrait shoot a few weeks ago. I created the star burst by shooting at a very narrow aperture of f/22.

To mimic the effects of surreal and tame HDR imagery without the HDR software you can use the fill light and recovery sliders in Camera RAW. Increasing the fill light specifically gives the shot the HDR look but it also increases noise heavily. Shooting at lower ISOs like 100 and 200 will help minimize noise. The above image was processed using the fill light slider adjusted higher to add more detail to the elk’s fur. Flash won’t have carried far enough and may have startled the animal.

There are many advantages to HDR imaging. It is the quickest and easiest way to get details in both brightest and darkest areas of a photograph. There a few negative sides of using HDR compared to the alternatives above though. You probably need a tripod for best results unlike adjusting the fill and recovery sliders in Camera RAW. There can be added noise in darker areas (less than with a single exposure in RAW, but much more than with compositing two separate exposures.) There can also be halos around very high contrast areas (same with single image in Camera RAW), but this shouldn’t be an issue in manual composites if done correctly. The final verdict? Despite a few idiosyncrasies HDR imaging is definitely worth trying if you’re a landscape photographer. The software is cheaper and more versatile than old fashion ND grads and is far easier than doing most composites. In certain situations manual composting could be easier as in the few photographs show in this post but there are many (if not most) situations where HDR is easier. I personally don’t use HDR imaging yet because there is other photographic equipment which I consider to be more important to obtain before getting HDR software. There have been many situations where I wish I had the advantages of HDR software and it will most likely be a later purchase of mine. There are many situations where the alternatives to HDR just won’t cut it but in some they may even be better. Knowing when to use HDR and when not to and even when to use one of these other techniques is critical in getting our best images!

-        Ryan Watkins (check out more posts and photos at ryanwatkinsphotography.com or on flickr)

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Many parts of Canada and United States have been photographed hundreds of time by many photographers and tourists. Due to this many images of these iconic locations look very similar. To make truly great photographs of these beautiful areas we need to find ways to make out images different from the hundreds of images taken at these locations before. The image featured at the top of this post is of Peyto Lake: one of the most well known places in the Canadian Rockies. This image is from the same vantage point that most photographers shoot from and is quite conventional. The image featured below is also of Peyto Lake, but it’s far different from the regular Peyto Lake image. I focused on where the light was hitting a mountain peak above the lake by shooting with the long end of my telephoto zoom lens.

In beautiful iconic locations like these it’s easy to try at shoot with as much as you can with the frame. By focusing on the details we can result in better more controlled images. For great images it’s better to have clean shots which are free of distractions. The more you add into the frame the more cluttered the image becomes. The below images are very simplistic which makes them more powerful. The strong golden hour light shining on this mountain peak near Field, British Columbia makes it stand out from the blue evening sky. Shooting wider and adding more to the scene would have made this shot less impactful. The road and rest of the mountain would have distracted from intense mountain light.

Another image which would have been missed if I had been focusing only on the mountains is this macro image of a hole in a tree which looks like a heart near Castle Mountain in Banff, Alberta.  

These last two images were shot in the forest outside Clare, Michigan. By again using my telephoto zoom lens I was able to focus on these details in the woods. The soft background created from the wide apertures and close subject to lens ratio make these subjects pop out from the background. The closer you get to the subject and wider aperture you use the softer the background blur – usually referred to as bokeh – you obtain. Both of these shots took some planning as well. First I had to find a nice colorful leaf. I knew I liked the aspen trees but by themselves they were quite boning. I taped the leaf to the aspen tree and it now became a great image. The soft orange color in the background helped accent and emphasize the orange/red color of the leaf. I also had to find a pleasing pine cone for the last image. Next I set it in the trees and moved the leaves in the front of the cone around so I would become a large green blur around the pinecone.     

Next time you’re out shooting instead of automatically getting your wide angle lens out consider what the landscape would look like if you focused on details around you. It could result in some amazing images.

-        Ryan Watkins (to see more of my images and read more blog posts please visit ryanwatkinsphotography.com)

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The Canadian Rockies are a wildlife photographer’s dream come true! Big horn sheep and Columbian ground squirrels have no fear of people and will walk right up to you or your vehicle. It is also common to see elk, black bear, grizzly bear, coyote, deer, and even moose meandering along the side of road. Over the eight days I spend in the majestic Rocky Mountains I had the opportunity to view and photograph a vast array of animals which live amongst towering mountain ranges.

Canmore

After arriving in Calgary and driving up to Canmore, my parents and I decided to drive around and attempt to find places to photograph in better light. We traveled down road 742 south of Canmore which provided great wildlife viewing. This road leads toward Spray Lake and the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. You are almost guaranteed to see several sheep along the way. !e also saw several other animals including a coyote, deer, elk, and several Columbian ground squirrels. If you want to get great big horn sheep images this is one of the best places to find them. There used to people and let you get very close to them. The sheep could even be used as foreground interest in landscape shots. I usually keep my Nikkor AF-S VR 70-300 Lens on my camera the entire time. I also keep the window rolled down so I could easily shoot from inside the car. A car window mount would defiantly be worth having when shooting from the car in the mountains. I used the window itself and our rental cars mirror to help support my camera and lens when the light got lower. You may want to use keep your flash on camera for fill as well.

Banff

Near the Banff Golf course is a great place for viewing wildlife especially elk. A few days later I got some of my favorite elk shots in the rain from the side of the road near the golf course. Also near Banff, road 1A which runs parallel to the Trans-Canadian Highway is another great area for viewing wildlife. I had the opportunity to photograph two elk which were just inside the woods. Light was lower just inside the woods were many animals roam so lenses with VR or IS will be a big help when trying to get images of these. Tripods or monopods will be ideal in situations like this. You can get fairly close to the animals so my 70-300 was plenty long enough in most cases. Using the longer focal lengths not only gets you closer to the animal but the compression and shallower depth of field also helps cut out distractions – i.e. leaves, brushes, branches – in front and behind the animal. When we returned to Canmore after being in Lake Louise and Jasper, we came back to Castle Mountain outside of Banff. I was lucky enough to see another elk very close to the road. I was across the road from it and was able to get several nice close up shots.

Kananaskis Country

Out last day in Canmore we decided to head south to the Kananaskis Country. While driving along Highway 40 near Highwood pass we saw a grizzly bear and a moose! I used the rental car mirror to help support my lens when shooting the grizzly. I tried to stay close to the car when photographing the grizzly. When you encounter more dangerous wildlife like this it’s obviously better to veer on the safe side even if it means not getting quite as good of an image. I was able to shoot the moose from inside the car. I braced by arms on the car window and was able to handhold my long lens and still get some very sharp images.

Jasper

While driving in-between Jasper and Lake Louis I was able to some more nice elk images and also saw a three black bear. One was close enough to shoot from the side of the road quite easily. Because of their dark color it can mess with your camera’s metering. Using manual exposure or locking in the correct exposure in aperture priority can help ensure properly exposed images. You want to try and bring out as much detail as possible in the bears fur but still prevent the surrounding to be blow out. I also saw several elk while getting landscape shots in Patricia Lake just outside Jasper.

The Lesser Photographed Wildlife

Large animals like bear, moose, and elk may be what draw wildlife photographers to the Rockies but there are several small common animals which can be great subjects for cute images. Columbian ground squirrels can be scene almost everywhere in this area. Squirrels in wild areas like Spray Lake and Castle Mountain tend to be more skittish but if your patient you can sneak up on these little fellows can get great images of them. Squirrels which live near human infested areas tend to be more personably and incredibly easy to photograph. The Banff Gondola takes you to an area where there are several squirrels which run right underneath your feet and can be photographed incredibly easy.

 I also saw several rabbits while in Alberta. I photographed one rabbit in-front of Castle Mountain. Flash will startle these guys so using a tripod or VR with steady hands is a must in lower light conditions. I had to shoot handheld without flash. VR and bracing my arms on the fence made it so I could handhold this shot at 1/40 of a second at 300mm. I shot about 20 images and this was only sharp one. I would never recommend shooting at this focal length and shutter speed combination without a really sturdy tripod. It was pure luck that this image was in focus.

As stated in my last post, the Canadian Rockies is my favorite place for nature photography and I can’t wait to visit this area again. Some of the best spots I’ve found for wildlife in the Canadian Rockies were road A1 outside Banff, the Banff Gold Course, and road 742 south of Canmore.

- Ryan Watkins (to see more of my photos and read more how to articles check out my website/blog ryanwatkinsphotography.com or contact me on flickr!)

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