A Photo a Day

Some personal advice on taking travel photos. Please also have a look at the “Photo-Tips” section on travelphoto.net

July 25, 2010

Freedom 2

Filed under: — site admin @ 3:20 pm

Looking at the photo I posted yesterday, I thought a tighter crop might be better and actually prefer the cropped result:
Cropped version of the leaves peeking through a fence

December 25, 2006

Photo Experiments: Christmas candle

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:06 am

Candle - no salt dispenser

Christmas dinner was dragging on in the otherwise good restaurant of the Tikida Garden Hotel (Marrakesh / Marrakech).
Obviously, there were far too many guests for the service, so I tried to kill some time looking at the pictures I had taken with my Lumix that day.
Then it occurred to me to point it at the flame of one of the candles.
As you can see in the above photo, the result was so bad, I immediately deleted it.
The next course still was not coming.
I unscrewed the lid of the salt dispenser, held it in front of my lens and took another shot.
This version was much better (below)
Thinking that I might share this, I retook the original version for comparison (above)

Christmas Candle II

Note: no digital retouching other than a slight crop and resizing to a web-compatible size.
With digital cameras, such experiments cost nothing - and may be quite entertaining.

March 18, 2005

Photo Tips: Capturing Movement

Filed under: — lbobke @ 10:27 pm

I wrote a little photo tip on “shooting” moving objects: Capturing Movement.

September 25, 2004

Photo Tips

Filed under: — site admin @ 8:32 am

I added a few new pages to my photo tips section:

  • Teleconverters (under “equipment“)
  • background matters
  • bracketing
  • promoting a photo page on the web (under building your own photo site)
  • I hope this helps! Feedback is always welcome…

    Laurenz

    August 24, 2004

    Taking photos in Machu Picchu

    Filed under: — Laurenz @ 4:09 pm

    A few days ago I had the privilege to see Machu-Picchu (Peru) and I burned lots of film!
    One piece of advice: the light is truly magical around sunrise.
    Also, there are hardly any tourists - the big buses arrive aeround 10 am.
    So, I’d recommend to be in Aguas Calientes the day before visiting the ruins, taking the bus at 5:30 am. Even before sunrise, the sky was remarkably bright and I could easiliy take picture with my 50 mm lens (1:1.4) and shortly after with the normal zoom (Minolta 24-85).

    Laurenz
    PS: when I left the site, two Viszcachas were sitting on the main entrance, but none of the tours saw them! Watch out for little humming birds as well!

    July 24, 2004

    New photo-tips

    Filed under: — site admin @ 9:09 pm

    I added some new photo tips on my website: taking pictures in museums, “shooting” from cars, trains and planes, wildlife- and animal-photography.
    If anyone’s interested: http://www.travelphoto.net/photos/english/photo-tips/

    April 11, 2004

    Using Filters

    Filed under: — Laurenz @ 8:49 am

    Usually, I’m very reluctant to use filters: polarization filters are very nice to eliminate or enhance reflections, make for a much more dramatic sky or saturated colours.
    I sometimes use a neutral gray filter to reduce contrasts (the filter darkens the bright parts of the picture) and a UV filter may be handy in the mountains or at the seaside.
    Colour Filters are something different altogether: even if you can change the colour of the sky to a beautiful blue, the rest of the photo will make clear that something is wrong.

    Here’s one example, where I liked the effect of a tobacco filter:

    Without Filter:

    In this case, I prefer the mood with filter to the unfiltered original. It actually comes closer to what I saw on this rainy day in Blandy’s Garden, Madeira (Portugal)

    Some photo tips.

    February 23, 2004

    Sicily: Temple in Agrigento

    agrigenttempel2.jpg
    Taken in Agrigento, Sicily.
    Here, I had some difficulties. No technical issues, but as soon as I had mounted the camera on my tripod, a guardian appeared, telling me in Italian that professional photographers were not allowed to take photos without a special permit (needless to say that you would have had to go back to town and surely, the office wouldn’t be open at that time).
    Pointing out that I’m not a pro didn’t help either. After all, I was using a tripod!
    Fortunately, I had taken a number of hand-held shots before as well as some pictures on the tripod.

    Still, if you are the proud owner of a professional looking camera and/or a big tripod, I’d recommend that when visiting historic sites at night you either enquire beforehand whether you would need a tripod, - or take as many hand-held pictures as you can and only then hurry up to use your tripod.

    January 30, 2004

    Malta: Dramatic Silhouettes

    Actually, it is quite easy to take pictures of dramatic silhouettes: you shoot into the sun, metering on a lighter part of the sky. Consequently, the foreground will be dark or even black.
    Getting the exposure right is pretty simple with spot metering (if your camera has this option).
    Still bracketing (taking pictures with different exposures) is highly recommended, - at least when you are using slide film.
    Sometimes, you want to have a nice silhouette in the centre or background, but would like to show the details in the foreground. In this case, it is advisable to use the above technique combined with a fill flash.
    Here is an example, the Ggantija Temple on Gozo (Malta). The place is 6000 years old!
    Other pictures I took showed much more detail but failed to capture the magic atmosphere.

    Ggantija Tempel, Gozo, Malta

    Other examples: Sunset in Glasgow or sunrise in the Himalayas.

    More photo-tips.

    January 26, 2004

    Photo-Tips

    Filed under: — Laurenz @ 8:28 pm

    Very often, I get mail asking for advice on technical issues. Very nice, but I’m not a pro!
    I’m sure many people on the web are better qualified.
    Still, I’m going to publish a few personal experiences here - and hope that this may be helpful to some other travel photographers.

    Laurenz

    Edited: I just added a special section with photo tips to my website



        

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    All photos on Travelphoto NET: Copyright Laurenz Bobke. Copyright for the photos on the Outstanding Travel Photos blog: the individual photographer
    Republication only with my written permission, and only with proper credit (including a link back to this site if shown on the web).

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