In part two of his series on shooting coastal rockpools, pro shooter Ignacio Palacios explains the technical aspects you need to consider to create stunning images.
While a great image begins with a strong creative element, a good understanding of the technical issues (including shutter speed, aperture, lenses, filters and post-production options) is essential. Last week, I discussed planning, weather, lighting and some of the basics of composition. Here, I want to look at some of the technical considerations that can help you create really beautiful images.
01 SHUTTER SPEED Water is an ideal subject when learning about shutter speeds. I love long exposures to blur the motion of waterfalls when I photograph along the coast of Sydney. An exposure of a few seconds will retain some detail in the water, but if you expose for a few minutes the sea will take on a milky appearance.
If the exposure goes for a few hours and the sky is clear, you will be able to get star trails. You can also try to photograph the Milky Way and pinpoint lights of stars. They will require much faster shutter speeds and much quicker ISO speeds. With the camera set at f/2.8 and a high ISO rating use the “500 rule”. Try dividing the number 500 by the focal length of the lens you’re using. So if you have a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera, you’ll set your shutter speed to 20 seconds. (500÷24 = 20.83). If you’re working with a cropped sensor camera, be sure to account for the crop factor.
A tripod and a shutter release cable are mandatory. Put the camera in bulb mode for a few seconds or an hour and experiment with different subjects.
Avalon Rockpool at sunrise. Pentax 645D, 25mm lens, 12s @ f/11, ISO 100.
02 LIFT OFF! Aerial photography is an important photographic skill if you shoot landscapes, but it can be tricky. From the air the world looks very different and you can find plenty of interesting patterns and subjects that you just don’t see at ground level.
I love aerial photography, but to charter a chopper or a light plane is very expensive. A cheaper alternative is to photograph from a cliff with a long lens. Sydney Heads offers some spectacular views, but be safe and stay within the prescribed viewing areas.
A helicopter flight will cost you about $850 an hour and it took me about 90 minutes to cover the whole length of the coast from Little Bay to Palm Beach. Unlike photos which are taken from land, aerial shots can be made in the middle of a sunny day. Whether you’re in a helicopter or light aircraft, ask if you can fly with the door removed – image quality of your shots will be better if you are not shooting through perspex. From a helicopter you have more manoeuvrability to control what you want to shoot in terms of angles and heights.
The vibrations of the helicopter are quite significant and you need to hold your camera tight without exposing it to the wind from the outside.
If you can, take two cameras. For my aerial images, I took a medium-format camera and a Nikon DSLR. I’d also recommend you use a zoom lens on the DSLR. For me it’s better to sacrifice a little bit of quality for the convenience and flexibility of a zoom lens and the possibility of pushing the ISO to 400 or 800.
Depending on the operator and their approvals, it may not be possible to fly at night, so make sure you take off early enough to cover the locations you want to shoot before it gets dark. If you take off at sunrise you will be able to stay in the air for as long as there is fuel in the helicopter. But that can be expensive because if you’re enjoying it too much, you may end up with a huge bill at the end of the flight!
Bilgola Rockpool from the air. Pentax 645D, 55mm f/2.8 lens, 1/250s @ f/7.1, ISO 200.
03 CAMERA BASICS A good-quality tripod is mandatory in landscape photography. Remember, you can’t correct a blurred image in Photoshop! Try to shoot in Raw mode as this will get you the finest image quality possible. Raw files are uncompressed and their dynamic range (the range of tones from black to white) is far greater than any JPEG file. This means you can record more details in the highlights and shadows of your images and you won’t have to worry about white balance as it can easily be corrected in post-production using a program like Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, Aperture or Capture One.
I always shoot in Aperture Priority mode and I never go above f/11. Each lens has a sweet spot and if you’re looking for maximum image quality you shouldn’t push the aperture to f/22 (or f/32 in the case of medium-format cameras) as this will create an optical issue called diffraction which will make the photograph softer. Therefore, although f/22 will get you the maximum depth of field, using f/9 or f/11 actually creates a sharper photograph.
As you are using a tripod you should take advantage of the option to shoot at ISO 100 (or lower if your camera allows). I always overexpose a little bit to capture more detail. I do this by using the exposure compensation (+/-) adjustment button.
North Curl Curl Rockpool at sunrise. Pentax 645D, 16mm f/2.8 lens, 15s @ f/11, ISO 100.
04 POST PRODUCTION I admit I’m not a purist and I love retouching my photographs. I enjoy photographing in the field as much as I enjoy editing and creating them at home. It’s true that brilliant photographs rely on unique conditions, but those conditions are sometimes difficult to find and processing in software such as Adobe Photoshop is a good way to make corrections and enhance your photographs.
In my view, all photographs need retouching. As a minimum, white balance, levels, contrast and sharpening should be optimised. Some images need more post-production work than others, but I go a step further to feed my curiosity and creativity and I push those pixels as far as I can without making my photographs look artificial or unnatural.
There are many different techniques to achieve similar results. With Photoshop, you will not be able to transform a bad image into an amazing photograph, but you will be able to turn an average image into a good one or a good, well-composed photograph into a great one. I usually do some slight adjustments in Camera Raw and then I get a bit more creative with Photoshop and other editing packages such as Nik Software.
05 BLACK AND WHITE Changes are free in the digital era and I often end up with several versions of the same image. Usually I create a black-and-white image and there are many techniques out there to convert colour images to black and white. I normally use Nik Software to create a black-and-white version and then tweak it a bit further in Photoshop. Generally, I convert to black and white when the scene doesn’t have a great deal of colour interest.
06 PANORAMAS When shooting panoramas, I set up the camera on manual mode and start shooting from the brighter end of the scene, making sure I don’t clip the highlights in the histogram. If you leave the auto white balance setting on, you might have to correct it later in Camera Raw.
If you want to get a good panoramic photograph by shooting multiple overlapping images, and then stitching them together on the computer, you should carefully consider two important factors.
First, keep the camera level as you pan from left to right. This is critical, because otherwise when you stitch the images, the sea level will not stitch well and you will have to spend a lot of time correcting the horizon in Photoshop.
Second, if you’re shooting close subjects such as rails or chains you need to eliminate image parallax error or they will not stitch well together. You can do this by positioning the optical centre of the lens over the point of rotation. To do this, I use a multi-purpose rail with an integrated clamp.
If you still have problems with horizons and distortion, you can post process the image in Photoshop using a tool called Warp (Edit > Transform > Warp). This normally resolves around 50 percent of horizons for me. The rest I have to manually clone to make them completely horizontal. Check all rails and chains as sometimes you will have to do quite a bit of cloning on areas where Photoshop or PT Gui can’t manage the alignment. Once you open your Raw photo with Camera Raw, synchronise the photographs and open them up in Photoshop or PT Gui to create a panorama.
07 WHICH LENS? In landscape photography, changing your lens or focal length can have a huge effect on the make-up and mood of the photo. Wide-angle lenses are very popular in landscape photography and they will get you the big scene, but sometimes, to isolate the point of interest and create images that reveal more details than can be seen with the naked eye, you’ll need a telephoto lens. This will also flatten the perspective, making the foreground and background appear closer to each other.
08 WORKING WITH FILTERS I find filters can be very handy, especially for coastal and landscape photography. In my bag I always carry the following filters:
• A B+W ND 3.0 filter slows the exposure by 10 stops (I use it to shoot a long exposure in the middle of the day). This filter factor is 1000x which means that only 0.1 percent of the available light will pass through it. Be aware that you have to focus and compose without the filter attached as once it’s adjusted you can barely see through it! I love using this filter on dull days. It creates a fantastic ‘fine art’ feel to seascapes when you’re shooting very long exposures. You can also use the Lee “Big Stopper” which reduces the light by 10 stops. Each filter will produce a different colour cast that can be corrected in Photoshop, but only if you shoot in Raw mode!
• A polariser filter is useful when the sun is right on top of you. With a polarising filter you can add drama to the sky and make it bluer (a polariser filter cuts the reflected light from particles in the air so the sky brightness decreases in relation to the clouds. This exaggerates the whites by darkening the blues, which increases both the contrast and the dramatic feel). They are also very useful for enhancing rainbows against a background. But they also reduce the light by about one stop. However, polariser filters don’t work well with wide angles. It causes an effect called ‘over polarisation’ and produces horrible vignetting. I use the polariser to make the sky bluer when the sun is on top of me or to remove or reduce glare and reflections
• I use a neutral density (ND) filter with a three- or four-stop reduction for photographs taken after sunrise (or just before sunset), when the light becomes a bit strong. ND filters are also useful to soften the flow of water for waterfall scenes and seascapes. A graduated ND filter (GND) has the same effect but will only alter one half of the image as they prevent the sky from becoming overexposed when you’re making longer exposures.
However, I don’t use filters very often and I normally take a few exposures that I merge in Photoshop. UV filters were almost mandatory for film cameras, but digital cameras are less sensitive to ultraviolet light and using a UV filter on a digital camera is pretty much useless and may actually adversely affect image quality.
You can stack up to four or five filters, but be aware that the colour cast will be more intense and, if you stack low-quality (plastic) filters, the image quality will be affected. If you do plan to stack several filters, make sure you use the slim versions of these filters. They do cost a bit more, but it’s worth it as it gives you a lot more options, particularly when you are using wide-angle lenses.
09 EXTRA GEAR For panoramic photos it’s important to have a shutter release cable or wireless shutter release. The window of opportunity to shoot at sunrise and sunset is just a few minutes so you have to work fast, especially when you are shooting a panorama. I find that a shutter release cable helps me get the job done neatly and quickly. It’s also mandatory to use the bulb mode for very long exposures!
You should bring a headlamp when you have to find your way to a lookout or clamber over rocks when it’s dark. Also, for safety, always take your mobile phone with you and let someone know where you are. Some of the cliffs are dangerous and you need to be aware of what the tide is doing so you don’t get trapped.
You should bring sandals and a change of shorts as you will often find yourself wading around in knee-deep water to get the right angle on some of the mini waterfalls. It also gets cold in winter so be sure to bring a jacket. And be prepared for your feet go numb standing around in cold water!
