Final Photographs For Fall 2010

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority. ISO 200
F-stop: 4.2, Exposure time: 1/320. Focal length: 62

This Photo was taken in Yellowstone National Park in the beginning of October.

I enhanced the colors by turning my hue/saturation up. I also used another layer and made the sky a little more blue to make it pop.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 5.6,  Exposure time: 1/320, Focal length: 70. ISO 200

This picture is also taken in Yellowstone National park. Tried to get the reflection and how the water looked like i disappeared. 

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 8. Exposure time: 1/640 and Focal length: 150. ISO 200

A Macro shot taken in Yellowstone National park. I liked the colors and try to get a diagonal line through the picture.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Shutter Priority.
F-stop: 5, Exposure time1/4000 and Focal Length: 98. ISO 200

Photo is taken in Yellowstone National Park of the water. I like how the sun's reflecting off the water.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 8, Exposure-time: 1/500, Focal length: 68. ISO 200

I took this in Yellowstone National park as well.  This Picture is somehow appealing to me although it's a little boring. 

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 8, Exposure time: 1/500, Focal Length: 60. ISO 200

Yellowstone National park.  This Picture turned out to be an alright picture even though I thought that it was nothing when I took it.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 9, Exposure time: 1/30. Focal length: 200. ISO 400

This was also taken in Yellowstone National Park. I had to be fast so I never had time to adjust my settings on this one.I really like how the bear is looking straight at me. The picture was a little too dark so I had to brighten it and I also lightened up his face to see it more clearly.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 11, Exposure time: 1/20, Focal length: 102. ISO 200

Another picture from Yellowstone that I really like. Mostly because of the colors. 

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 7.1, Exposure time: 1/320, Focal length: 75. ISO 200

Yellowstone National Park. This picture is pretty similar to the first one but I couldn't decide which one i liked better so i just picked them both!

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority. ISO 200
F-stop: 14, Exposure time: 1/100, Focal Length: 55;

Yellowstone National park once again.  This picture was also not very interesting but after editing it, boosting contrast and saturation it turned out to be an okay picture so I chose to keep it in my final pictures.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 4, Exposure time: 1/250, Focal Length: 55. ISO 200

In Yellowstone national Park. I like how this picture feels like you're hidden in the woods, looking out at the pretty view of the mountains.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority. ISO 400
F-stop: 4.8, Exposure time: 1/50. Focal length: 105.

Yellowstone National Park, sunset .I'm not too happy with this picture, it turned out really dark so I had to brighten it as much as I could almost, but I like that it looks almost mystical.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 5.3, Exposure time: 1/30, Focal Length: 145. ISO 200

In Yellowstone National park.  I almost didn't edit this picture it all. I just enhanced the saturation overall to about 10.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 6.3, Exposure time: 1/250, Focal length: 200. ISO 200

In Yellowstone National park, watching the bison. These two bison were a little closer to9 me and I liked how they stayed together.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 4.5, Exposure time: 1/400, Focal Length: 62. ISO 200

Yellowstone National Park. This tree was interesting and just standing there alone. I really like the fog around it. I enhanced the yellows and greens to get some more color in this pretty gray image.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.

F-stop: 6.3, Exposure time: 1/320, Focal length: 200. ISO 200

In Yellowstone, watching a wolf take a little nap before attacking an injured bison. Pretty interesting and the wolf was really pretty.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Shutter Priority.

F[stop: 8, Exposure time: 1/320, Focal length: 200. ISO 200

One of my favourite animal pictures just becasue the coyote was looking up, which allowes a good view of his face. I had to brighten up his face a little to be able to see it well.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Shutter Priority.
F-stop: 4.5, Exposure time: 1/1,250, Focal length: 86. ISO 400

Picture is taken in Riverfront park in Billings when I was watching the cross-country race in mid october. I was in shutter priority since I was shooting runners, but this picture I was just trying the settings and the picture was really dark. So I brightened it up and I actually like how it came out.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 5.3, Exposure time: 1/500, Focal length: 160. ISO 200

A picture taken on flowers outside someone's house, I picked it because I really like the bright yellow color.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 4.5, Exposure time: 1?60, Focal length: 55. ISO 200

This picture is from the assignment of taking pictures of leaves in class. 

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 11, Exposure time: 1/500, Focal length 55. ISO 200

This picture I took in Banff, Canada and it took me a while to capture the ski lift exactly where I wanted it. I enhanced the blue colors to make the sky pop. I really like the fog at the bottom.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 13, Exposure time: 1/60, Focal length: 55. ISO 200

This picture is also taken in banff, Canada. I saw the side light and I really like the color of the light when the sun is about to set. I amde the trees pop a little bit and I also enhanced the blues in the sky and on the mountain.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 14, Exposure time: 1/200, Focal length: 165. ISO 200

This picture is taken in Lake Louise, I decided to have this one in my final 30, because I wanted something with a person in the picture and I think this picture is cool. I changed it to blacka nd white and then I cut out the sunglasses in it's original color.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 18, Exposure time: 1/640, Focal length: 102. ISO 200

This picture is also taken in Lake Louise, Canada. The Rocky Mountains are just so beautiful. I cropped this picture at the bottom because there were a lot of trees that were distracting at the bottom.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 14, Exposure time 1/160, Focal length 102. ISO 200

I took this picture right outside my house the other night when there was a beautiful sunset. I had to cropped a little bit at the bottom and I enhance the saturation and it turned out alright.

Nikon D40. Lens: 18-55mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 5.6, Exposure time: 1/8, Focal length: 55. ISO 400

This picture was taken outside my house. I wanted a good macro picture so I tried for a long time to make this work. In photoshop I made the red pop more and I brightened it.

Nikon D40. Lens: 18-55mm. Aperture Priority.
F-stop: 5.3, Exposure time: 1/250, Focal length: 46. ISO 400

This picture I tried to capture the last part of the sunset, to get the blues and the yellows. The sky turned out almost black so I had to brighten it up, other than that I enhanced the saturation a little bit.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.

F-stop: 18, Exposure time: 1/200, Focal length: 75. ISO 400

I took this picture at my coach's house where the sunset at night is just amazing. I got a lot of good pictures of the sky and this is my favorite one. The colors are incredible.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.

F-stop: 6.3, Exposure time 1/40, Focal length: 55. ISO 400

Also at my coach's house. The sky in a totally different setting than the other picture.

Nikon D40. Aperture Priority.

F-stop: 22, Exposure time: 1/30, Focal length: 12

This image was taken in Yellowstone National Park. I used someone else's lens, and I can't remember what type it was, but it gave me a wider angle than my 200mm lens so I could capture the whole scene and not just the mountain.

Canon IXUS 8015

F-stop: 3.5, Exposure time: 1/125, Focal length: 9

This picture I took in Sandpoint, Idaho in September. It was taken with my little point and shoot which is a Canon IXUS. A really good camera, I'm surprised how nice this picture came out.

Nikon D40. Shutter Priority.

F-stop: 7.1, Exposure time 1/400. Focal length 700.

In this picture I used Dave's 700mm lens I believe, becaue my 200mm was not enough for this picture. I like how clear the eagle is and how pretty it is. I boosted the contrast and brightened up this picture a little.

Nikon D40. Lens: 55-200mm. Aperture Priority.

F-stop: 25, Exposure time: 1/80, Focal length: 200. ISO HIGH

This was a really hard picture to take. I don't have a tripod so I was leaning on the railing outside of Jorgenen hall. I tried many times and finally I got a picture where the moon didn't end up as a big white, bright spot.

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography:

Part six: Digital Processing


When going out shooting it's important to bring memory cards to store the pictures on. The book recommends 1-2 GB memory cards so that if you somehow loose the data you've used more than one memory card for shooting. Pretty self-explained is that you should upload the pictures on a bigger hard drive or other device at the end of the day to make sure you have a back-up.

After taking all your pictures it's time for editing them. The image can now be processed from RAW format to standard TIFF, PSD, or JPEG formats that can be adjusted with image processing software and can be read by other computers. The best image editing software is according to the book Adobe Photoshop. It allows you to tune color balance and saturation, brightness and contrast, dodge and burn, remove imperfections, and also straighten horizons and many other editing functions.

It's really good to take pictures in RAW mode, which is what the professional photographers use. It saves the data as its original and it therefore allows you to do more changes on your own afterwards which gives you a lot more freedom. When you convert your photos, you should do so to TIFF or PSD format, JPEG loses data in compression.

When editing pictures, the first thing is usually to adjust the brightness of the picture. It is a fine-tuning of your exposure that you used taking the picture, and doing this makes judging other changes of the image more accurate. If you used the histogram when taking the image, usually you only need a minor adjustment. Then adjusting saturation is also a good feature to serve as reference, it makes a master correction to all colors. But avoid to pump up colors excessively, it makes it fake. Contrast is one of the most important qualities of an image. It's the degree of difference between adjacent colors. The last step of adjusting an image is the sharpening. It doesn't add more detail or resolution, it increases the contrsast between adjacent pixels so the detail is more succinct. Be careful so you don't oversharp which is the biggest risk.

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography:

Part Five: The Clsose-up world


For greater magnification, close-up lenses or add-on devices are required. The true macro lens is made to use for high-quality close-up picture taking. it has a focus range that goes from infinity to a close-up distance that yields 1:2 life-size reproduction. These lenses are quite expensive though, which is a big negative, but if you're interested in macro photography a lens like this would be really useful. Some accessories to get for macro shooting would be teleconverters, lens extensions, and close-up supplementary lenses.

Extension tubes and bellows permit varied magnification and produce quality image even at great reproduction, but a bad thing with them are that they reduce the amount of light transmitted by the lens and that will limit the range of stop-action photography under ambient light and it will be problematic when the wind is blowing.

Teleconverters is a good way to increase the focal length of the lens by 2X or 1.4X. You can do this and still keep the full focus range. They work well with telephoto lenses to take pictures of for example butterflies, frogs, and songbirds. Remember if you want edge-to-edge sharpness, stop down one or two stops from max aperture. Put the teleconverter on first on the body, then the extension tube and then the prime lens, if you're using it all.

Telephoto lenses are good because they let you maintain adequate working distance from subjects. They can also be used with telecoverters, extension tubes and bellows, and close-up supplementary lenses. It also works to combine all of them. If you're using a flash in nature, the best position for it is on the camera's hot shoe, but if you want you can put it to the side, above or behind the subject. In nature light illuminates the subject from any direction, but so can also your flash.

It's hard to shoot during mid-day when the sky is clear. Then it's needed to soften the sun's light, and one good way to do that is using a large umbrella of neutral color. This is used set up to block the direct sunlight from hitting the subject of the picture. Then you can use a matt white reflector to bounce the soft light back to the subject and the light will be softer. Doing this will be close to what it would have been like to shoot on a cloudy day.

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography:

Part Four: Light on the Land


To take good scenic pictures some clues are suggested in the beginning of part four in the book. The first one is a suggestion of having strong color as an indicator to create a nice photo. Here again, they remind us that the most attractive color is red so finding this hue in small batches and the picture has potential. This could be flowers, leaves, rocks or anything that can be taken in to a wider scene. And the red objects should get a lot of attention, and by doing so place them in the foreground in sharp detail to have the eye catch it right the way and the photograph will be interesting.

Something else really important for shooting landscape are the clouds. They give a good light to the picture and they can sometimes be really cool. And in sunrise and sunset, the clouds that are near the horizon can turn in many different colors and give opportunity to many nice photographs. Clouds give more detail and color to the landscapes than clear skies does.

A calm atmosphere is often beneficial to landscape photography. It allows to shoot with great depth of field and the chance of getting a good picture that you don't have to edit because they were blowing around in the wind. The best conditions for this usually occur before and after sunrise. Good landscape photos include an interesting foreground detail to grab the attention of the viewer and make the photograph more interesting. It's good if it contains something that drags the eyes to the picture.

If taking picture with the light from the side it give the landscape highlights and shadows and this make the photos very interesting. And the earlier in the day you take the picture, the more effect from the sidelight you will get. In the book there's an example to look at different planes when shooting landscape with with deep perspective scenics. The first plane is The foreground plane, that sets the scale for the composition. The second plane is the mid-ground plane, that leads the eye into the picture. The third plane is the feature plane which shows the center of interest. The fourth plane is the cloud plane and the fifth plane is the sky plane that comprises the different colors depending on what time of the day it is. Sometimes there's also a horizon plane in the background behind the feature plane.

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography

Part Three: Adventures with wildlife


Part three of the book focuses on wildlife and how to shoot animals, which might be pretty hard sometimes.When shooting wildlife you have to find animals that don't mind being near you. Those are divided into two groups, the first one are animals that are not afraid of humans because we never hunt them. We leave them alone because we don't want to eat them and they exist in environments where almost no humans exist. The other group is made up of animals that have learned that humans won't hurt them, like in wildlife parks and preserves. Before going to take photos of animals make sure to study the animal a little bit to know where they exist mainly, what their behavior is so that you don't get surprised and so that you can catch the behavior in it's natural appearance.

When approaching an animal stay low and move slowly when the animal is not looking at you and remember to keep the distance so the animal doesn't feel threatened.
Also make sure that the animal has an escape route, don't trap them in. To get actual good pictures of animals, a lot of patience is needed. You might have to wait for a long time for the shot you want.

When you want a shot in action patience is once again needed. Remember that action shots are quick and you might not have time to change settings but editing is possible later so there's no need to worry to much about it. Autofocus is recommended because it can be hard to get things in focus while animals are moving. But for closeup magnifications that show detail in the eyes, a manual fine-tne in order be needed to bring the feature into sharp focus.

So how big should the subject be in the frame? It's kind of up to the person to decide and the animals behavior is also to consider when deciding this. A rule of thumb for this is using enough lens power to show clear detail in the eyes of the animal, a clearly defined iris is the ideal. But once again, it depends on what's going on and how many animals are in the picture. When photographing a group it's good to have one leading subject and put the others in where their roles are most important  and play a role to the subject.

Something you can do with wildlife portraits is to set up the picture in three planes: a foreground, a midground and a background and with each layer to support the main subject. The subject is in the midground in order to have most focus on it. The light can make the picture so much more interesting. Using front light in the early morning or late in the afternoon are usually most productive. During mid-day the sun is so high so it's hard to get a good light on the subject. Using the light correctly will come with practice and you'll feel comfortable with what light works for different situations, after a while.

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography

Part two: Essential Skills
Exposure is the first it talks about in the book in part two and exposure is the first step in becoming a good photographer. Exposure is controlled by shutter speed and aperture size and it can be set automatically or manually. To maintain a good exposure it's good to watch the histogram on the LCD screen to see what parts are blown out. There are three basic options for exposure mode. Aperture Priority (AV) Mode which is that you choose the aperture and the camera automatically sets the corresponding shutter speed. AV mode is the best mode for all subjects since it gives priority to depth of field. Then theres's Shutter Priority (TV) Mode and this mode you set the shutter speed and then the camera sets the appropriate aperture. Then there's Manual Mode, where you set the shutter speed and aperture manually. One important thing to remember is that you might have to adjust the exposure when you're dealing with for example snow, since the camera automatically turns everything to 18% grey. Shooting with exposure compensation will help you out in these situations.

Shooting on sunny cloudless days might be a waste of time. It's very bright and subjects will cast shadows. A lot of the subject will loose its detail to excessive contrast. Therefore, shooting when it's cloudy out helps improve color saturation and when the sun scatters through the clouds we will be able to see more detail on the subject. Front light is best when shooting birds and mammals, you get contrast between the colors and a lot of detail will be shown. Side light reveals form and texture it gives long, deep  shadows and nothing will be in shadows so you can see all ridges, wrinkles and dimples and other things. It makes really pretty landscape pictures. Backlight is most effective when the sun is directly behind the subject. It is good to use  on subjects with indistinct, shaggy peripheries such as furry and feathered animals.

Depth of field determines how much of the image is in sharp detail. When shooting landscapes it's nice to show as much detail as possible, from the foreground all the way to horizon. WHen shooting for example an animal it might be nicer to just focus on he animal and the background won't be as sharp.

When shooting in shutter speed it's good when hold handing the camera to set the shutter to 1/200 for a 200 mm lens. No slower than the inverse of the lens. This is to avoid blur. A slower shutter speed will allows blur on the motion of the subject. Choosing shutter speed with an obvious blur is most commonly used when photographing moving water to enhance the movements of it.

The most important thing we learned in this chapter is designing the picture space. The conclusions for the visual priorities. These are; red is more attractive than yellow, large draws more attention than small, difference draws more attention than conformity, jagged lines are more striking than curved ones, diagonal lines are more attractive than vertical ones, sharpness is more attractive than blur and light is more attractive than dark. Another really important thing is the rule of thirds. which is that the center of the interest is placed on one third from bottom or top and from the sides.
This Part of the book was good for me as a beginner because it gave you the basic stuff that you need to know and it explained them well!

National Audubon Society Guide To Nature Photography

Part One: Choosing the right equipment

The first part of the book talks about equipment. Digital Cameras are very beneficial, some advantages are the option of retaking a shoot if it didn't turn out as expected, it has better image resolution, highlight and shadow detail and noise. One of the greatest benefits is the ability to change the ISO to adapt to the conditions you're shooting in. Also, when shooting digital you have the benefit of adjusting things on the computer later on, if something didn't come out exactly as you wanted it to. It's actually surprising to me how much you can do with photoshop. Almost too much in my opinion but I guess it's a personal choice.

When choosing camera it's according to the book  enough with a 6 -megapixel for an amateur, but  more serious photographers want probably a 10-40  megapixel DSLR, this gives more details and you'll be able to make bigger prints. The lens I would personally first start out with would be a 200mm or a 300mm, since it gets really expensive. The tripod is also important if you are serious about your photography, and is extra important while shooting scenes where you want longer exposures such as waterfalls or maybe lightening. There's more in the book about tripods which I didn't really find too interesting since I don't even have my own camera yet. I just know that tripods are very useful sometimes.

When it comes to the lens, it seems like it's good to stick with the brands, Canon and Nikon. They both have IS and VR, image stabilization, which I think is a great feature. And Auto-Focus is recommended since it usually work well and it's an easy option. Also, if I were to get an extra lens I think I would make sure that it was waterproof since I ski a lot and the snow could make it wet.

Next in the book is the lovely section about working in the field, Not! I honestly didn't like this section at all just because I don't think it's about photography, It's more common sense. He talks about how he's wearing his tripod on his shoulder so that he's ready to shoot as soon as he sees something interesting. A good thing for equipment I think is the vest, especially for hiking. It offers the equipment protection and it's easy to carry around. It's always there when you need it. One thing I thought was important is that the batteries will die faster when it's cold out so it's important to bring extra batteries in the winter.

Photographing in the winter with a lot of snow is something to think about. When the snow is all over it's going to mess with the brightness. snow and ice also work as natural reflectors to throw light into some portions of the scene. And always remember that the camera is always trying to make everything 18% grey!