The First article I read in the Popular Photography Magazine called True Blue.
The article is about a man named David becker and his interest in eyes and photography. He loves taking pictures of eyes and he was using a homemade macro ring flash instead of spending thousands of dollars on a ring flash. He got into into eyes because he says that most people don't see how detailed they are and he wanted to show that. The eye has significant color and shape and even though you get close to a person's eyes it's hard to examine it.
Becker suggests that the key to photograph eyes is very good lighting using a macro lens. It's hard to not get shadow over the ye since the lens barrel is at such close range. So this is why it's good to use a macro ring flash. And Becker has a god suggestion how to make your own. This is how he did it:
He found a used an angel food cake pan with a hole big enough to fit his lens, he cut a hole on the side of the pan to fit his flash. He covered the inside of the pan with tin foil so it would be more reflective and then he finally taped wax paper over front for diffusion.
Becker have some suggestions if you want to do this yourself. He said it's good to take pictures of eyes who have clear, unveined eye whites and blue irises. He says they show more detail. I thought this article was really cool because it shows that you can, if you want, make some of your own gear and you don't have to spend tons of money. It shows another side of photography and I would like to try it!
Animal Scenics
The second article talks about wild life photography and how you can take good wildlife pictures without heavy, fast telephoto lenses that cost a lot of money. It suggests what to think of fr good pictures. Since wildlife pictures are usually tight portraits the article says that if you don't have long enough lenses you can still take good wildlife pictures. You can work with the scenes as it is, where you have the landscape and the animal for example in it's natural environment. You don't have to shoot and crop later.
While shooting wildlife one important thing is to tell people that see the picture something about the wildlife in it. If you include enough surroundings in the picture it shows more about the animal, what season it is, what nature the animal like and so on. A good suggestion of this was the picture in the beginning of the article, of the Horseshoe Crabs that get on shore to molt and reproduce, you can see the environment around it and it looks really cool. How much of the landscape should be included depends on the character of the scene and how it relates to the wildlife featured in the photo.
It says that the second important key to good landscape picture is the composition. The animal doesn't always have to be the subject in a picture so it's suggested that a good wildlife picture is that the animal is a compositional element that must relate in a pleasing way to other things in the scene. Some suggestions of what forms a pleasing composition could be a cloud, a curving tree branch. Something that can be associated with wildlife subjects. Another important thing that is good to think of is to try to place the animal off-center and use the rule of thirds. The subject might also be good to pu tin the background, foreground or middle ground. I liked this article since it's wildlife photography I'm doing mainly right now.
