Poor man's HDR without the cartoony look.

I like shadows, I really do. They add depth and meaning, and often mystery to an image. But there are some times where you just don't want them.

Take this picture. Taken on the deck at the Mungalli Creek Dairy Farm. Can you tell that it's a shot of people enjoying an afternoon tea on the shady deck?

Not at all because they're in shadow. Instead it's a photo of a nice green lawn, blue sky and some mountains in the distance.

And yet I could see the people clear as day with my eyes. And that's a big limitation with photography - the camera can't record a huge difference in highlights and shadows in the one frame. At least until now.

I've been reading up a bit on the latest fad to hit the photography world - HDR or High Dynamic Range. One of the most famous proponents of this technique in the travel photography world is Trey Ratcliffe. And while I can appreciate the art of it, it ain't for me. That cartoony look just doesn't do it for me. But just because you don't like the extreme look doesn't mean you can't use similar techniques to create realistic images when the contrast range is beyond what your camera can capture.

The first thing you have to do is take more than one picture! Although you might be able to get details in both shadows and highlights in one RAW image, the chances are the shadows are going to be noisy and the highlights slightly blown.

So you need to take one shot that exposes the darker part of your picture properly as in this image here. You can see that the patio area is nice and clear whereas the sunlit bit is way overexposed.

For the second shot (which was the one at the top of the post) I exposed for the outside areas, which then rendered the patio dark as dark can be with no detail whatsoever.

Now there are a couple of ways you can blend these two images - you can get special HDR software such as Photomatix Pro or you can do what I did here. The poor man's version of HDR is to bring both images into an image editing programme like Photoshop and place them one of top of the other so that they are layers in a single file.

Then it's just a simple matter of rubbing back the top layer so that the bottom layer shines on through.

That's what I did here. I put the brighter image (with the burnt out sky) on the top layer and just painted the sunny area back using a Layer Mask to let the bottom (darker image) shine through.

Painstaking? Yep. Tedious? Not too bad. Would it have been easier with HDR software? Dunno I don't have any. But I found it a pretty easy process and when I only had a few minutes to make a shot with impromptu models (tourists) and no big lights with me then it's a really fantastic solution.

eBook on travel writing and photography as a profession

Regular readers will know that I don't use this blog to sell stuff. But in this case I'm going to make an exception, at least I'm going to tell you about something that I think is well worth the money if you've ever considered a career in travel writing.

Some of Australia's leading travel writers have gotten together to write an eBook on the topic and I feel privileged to have been asked to write a chapter on the travel photography industry. Below is the blurb from Global Travel Writers but I heartily recommend it for those who have anything more than a passing interest in turning their passion for travel into a vocation.

GTW Press Release

Many people want to know how to become a travel writer, but don´t know where to start. You don´t need a degree in journalism to become a successful travel writer. A new E-book provides aspiring travel writers with all the information they´ll need to get a foothold in this coveted field.

TRAVEL WRITING AND TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY: From Dreams to Hard Reality is the first dedicated E-book on the subject. Written by a group of professional travel writers and photographers, it´s designed to inspire budding writers and photographers wishing to enter the highly competitive field of travel writing.

The new E-book, the collaborative work of the Australian-based group Global Travel Writers together with several special interest writers, is a no-nonsense, hands-on guide that will also appeal to established travel writers wishing to increase their income and/or write for new media platforms.

The 12 highly experienced writers who contribute to the first edition of this E-book on travel writing and photography provide a practical approach to the craft that takes readers through the processes of digging out story ideas, using the services of national tourism offices to arrange writer familiarisation trips and to help in researching stories, pitching story ideas to editors, the ethics of travel writing, writing the exact type of features that editors require and much more.

The chapter on 'New Media' contains exclusive material and advice on the latest techniques that writers can use to enhance the appeal of their features to editors and ultimately, to readers. Included also is indispensable advice on writing for the Internet, together with an in-depth blogging revenue model.

And, because photography is so important, two chapters have been devoted to travel photography for the digital age.

This comprehensive publication is the result of the combined experience of Global Travel Writers, a highly successful w riting and marketing cooperative established in 1997. The group´s members have had their work published around the globe.

TRAVEL WRITING AND TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY: From (Lofty) Dreams to Hard Reality is available for immediate purchase and download as a PDF for just USD $17.95 or AUD $19.95.at:

http://www.globaltravelwriters.com/e-book/

Fantastic FNQ photo Friday

Welcome to the first Fantastic FNQ photo Friday for 2010. For those of you who don't know FNQ stands for Far North Queensland - an area at the very top of Australia which I call home and spend a lot of time photographing.

It extends roughly from Townsville in the south all the way to the tip of Cape York at the very northern end of the country.

One of the most beautiful parts of FNQ is the amazing Daintree National Park. A world-heritage listed tropical rainforest it truly is an incredible place.

One of the hardest things about photographing rainforests though is the mono-tones. It's all green! Luscious, beautiful green to be sure but all the one colour.

To break it up so that it looks appealing photographically we often try to break it up by creating images around rivers and waterfalls. Another option is to get up above the forest at the amazing Daintree Discovery Centre. This is an amazing interpretive centre which has a boardwalk through the tops of the trees as well as a tower that goes even higher.

Yesterday's post was all about getting your camera into unusual positions - well there's no position more unusual in the Daintree than this. And just as a disclaimer here folks I have no affiliation with the centre, they don't even know about me I'm sure. I'm just telling like it is - definitely worth a visit and fantastic photography to be had.

Getting your camera underwater

The world is awash with photos. Everybody and their dog has a digital camera and snaps away willy nilly with it.

So how do you make your images stand out from the pack? One way is to come up with a different viewpoint - to get your camera somewhere other people don't.

One option is to take your camera underwater. You don't need to have a really expensive underwater housing with lots of strobe equipment. If you've got a point and shoot digital you can often find small housings for quite a low cost.

For those shooting with DSLR's one option is the Ewa-Marine bag. I've used one of these handy bags on a few commercial photo shoots, and often take it with me on trips just in case there's an opportunity for me to get wet.

The camera fits in pretty snugly and you can put a flash on top as well. It's pretty hard to push all the buttons on a digital camera so you'll want to set everything up before you go. For these shots of my youngest playing in our pool I put the ISO on 200, turned the flash off and just let 'er rip.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you're shooting underwater things get pretty murky pretty quickly. In other words you can't use a telephoto lens and shoot stuff 50 metres away. You need to put the wide angle lens on and get as close as you can. In this case I had the Canon 10-22mm extreme wide-angle on. I tend to not zoom all the way out to 10mm because it vignettes at the corners where the edges of the glass port get in the way.

One thing I can never stress enough is always play with a new piece of kit before you take it away. Get to know it so that you can use it instinctively when you get to your destination. Playing around with it in my back yard let me see that it's pretty hard to see the LCD so I just used it to check the histogram.

I also found that even though you can go up to 50 metres down with the bag I found it easiest to use when I was floating on the surface and had the boys come up to me. It's pretty hard to stay down unless you have a weight belt on. Allen Murabayashi over at the Photoshelter blog took his Ewa-Marine bag for a surf.

These bags aren't dirt cheap but if you're looking for a great way to get your camera somewhere different then it's a great investment. Oh, and they're great for self-portraits too! :)

Portraits with a wide angle lens

One thing that writing a blog does for you is help you to see how you view the world. When you spend a lot of time looking through your images you tend to notice patterns in terms of the way you use lenses, light and composition.

And browsing through my pictures of people the other day I was struck by something that I had never noticed before.

How I managed to miss it I have no idea but looking at these pictures all together it struck me square in the face. I don't see portraits as close-ups of people. I see them as shots taken with a wide angle lens showing the environment that surrounds people. Where they work, how they live, the world that shapes them.

It had never occured to me before but even though my all time photographer is Steve McCurry
(as I'm sure it is for many of us) his straight portraits with their shallow depth-of-field and piercing gazes aren't the pictures that move me. It's the ones where the people are smaller in the frame and are a part of the whole that surrounds them.

I suppose a psychiatrist would give some reason why this would be so but for the moment I'm taking it as a bit of a challenge. I'll continue to photograph people with a wide-angle lens but once I have the picture I envisioned I'm going to stick a telephoto lens on and practice at making close-up portraits. I don't know whether I'll enjoy it or not but figure it could be an opportunity to expand my vision. It's one thing to know how to do it, it's a completely different ballgame to produce something that you feel proud of, and something that resonates with you.

How about you? If you went back and looked over your pictures - particularly those that were of a common subject - do you think you'd come up with a common way of shooting them? Maybe it's time to break the mould a little bit and try shooting that subject in a different way. If you're in a rut it could be a great way to get the juices flowing again.

Telling a story at the theatre

If you're on assignment for either a magazine, or a commercial client, you can often tee it up so that you can photograph backstage, at dress rehearsals etc.

But when you're travelling by yourself, or with say a tour group, you won't usually get the same opportunity. So you have to photograph what everybody else sees.

The challenge then becomes to tell a complete story of the experience that goes beyond just a snap shot. As photographers we tend to concentrate on the main event - the performers on stage. But just photographing the pretty costumes and close-up portraits of the actors doesn't show what the experience is like as an audience member.

To do that you need to take the telephoto lens off and switch to the wide-angle. Because you won't be allowed to get up on stage you will need a way of fitting both the audience and the stage into the same frame and the wider the lens the easier this is to do.

One of the problems you encounter when you get both the stage and the audience in the same frame is the difference in light levels. The stage is hit by all sorts of lights, whereas the audience basically gets no direct lighting. It's all spill from the stage meaning that the first few rows are reasonably well lit, gradually fading to black the farther back you go.

By having both well-lit members of the audience, as well as darker areas behind them, you can give a feeling of intimacy and what it's like to sit in a darkened room and watch a performance so don't feel that you should only include the first few rows in your composition.

Keep an eye on your histogram to make sure that the stage isn't too bright too. Let your blacks fade to black rather than blow out the actors on stage. If you time these wide angle shot for quieter parts of the performance (helps if you have a programme of events) then you can get back to your long lens close-ups when the action is in full swing.

My blog plans for the year...

Well dear blog readers, if you're still here after such a long period of sporadic posts then I truly thank you.

Christmas and New Years is always pretty hectic and finding the time and motivation to sit down and blog proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

For the past two years I have pretty much posted a picture every single week day of the year! That's a lot of posts and I think it all just caught up with me.

Anyway I'm back on track and looking forward to another year of travel photography and adventures.

As far as my plans for the blog go for the next 12 months, I'm hoping to get a bit more back to my roots. The reason I started the blog in the first place. To post images that I like and talk a little bit about them. The technical stuff certainly, but just as importantly the feeling behind the image and what I wanted to convey.

On the technical side of things I'll be assuming that people are pretty familiar with terms like aperture, shutter speed, focal length, wide angle, telephoto. So the posts will be for an intermediate audience predominantly but that doesn't mean if you're a beginner you're not going to get a lot out of it - just that you might need to reach for your instruction manual every so often. :)

Mostly when I find other interesting websites and snippets of interest I tend to post that on my Twitter feed. I just find it easier to hit that old Retweet button and it means I can post a few in one day rather than save a week's worth up and post them all in one hit. Having said that I'll still stick lots of link in my general posts so you can go and find other sources of information.

I'll also do posts every now and again on how the profession of a travel photographer works. This one is a constantly moving target with many of our traditional markets drying up. Magazines are folding, newspapers are becoming giant corporation-run behemoths and the stock industry has seen an incredible increase in the supply of travel images but not such an increase in the demand. So of course that means a depression in prices. So I'll try to keep you all linked in to how things seem to be going.

But the essence of the next 12 months will be on travel photography and how it enriches all our lives. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to inspire you and some comments and we'll continue to grow this little community of ours.

So if you know of anybody who loves travel photography send them our way. Here's to a great 2010 and I look forward to getting to know as many of you as possible.

cheers

Paul