This was a case of seeing like your camera sees. While teaching a Outer Banks photo workshop, I arranged this pile of whelk shells on a pier piling so the students and I could photograph them. I set the shells up in the shadow of the fishing pier. The sun had been up about an hour and a half before making this photo. There was a lot of contrast, from the sunny beach highlights, to the shadows under the pier. I knew from experience the camera could not record this much contrast in a single image. I exposed for the shells and deliberately wanted the beach background to go pure white, without any detail. It worked as I envisioned, the scene seems to have been photographed in a studio with a white backdrop. I used my exposure compensation dial to add more light. The light meter was trying to average the scene, but I knew I wanted to expose for the darker shells and let the beach highlights turn pure white, so I added light by turning the exposure compensation dial up.

The camera sees completely different than we do, I could see detail in the shells and look at the beach and also see detail. The camera could only record one or the other. I could have chosen to expose for the sunlit beach and ended up with a silhouette of the fishing pier pilings and shells. Or, I could have taken two exposures, one for the shells, one for the beach and combined them with Photoshop layers and masks in order to have the correct exposure for both.

Seeing as your camera sees is an essential part of photography. I think envisioning how your camera sees, is what Ansell Adams meant when he said, “seeing with your minds eye”. If you can figure out, in your mind, what your camera will see before you click the shutter your images are bound to improve.

When I use the sunblock technique I still get the affects of a backlit scene, rim light, or semi-silhouette, but the sun is not as glaring and bright. When the sun is blocked it contributes to the image but does not have to be the main subject.

The sunblock technique works well with any lens and has other benefits also. I find if the sun is partially blocked it usually reduces lens flare. Of course, I always remove filters when shooting into the sun. Even good quality filters can contribute to lens flare and polarizing filters have very little effect when shooting towards the sun or away from the sun. They are most effective when shooting at right angles to the sun. I also try to use a lens hood with this technique. When including the sun in my image a lens hood has limited effect, but it may keep reflected light from causing more lens flare.

Block the sun by keeping it just out of the frame.

Another benefit to partially blocking the sun, is if I stop my aperture down to f/18 or f/22 I can create a starburst effect. The sun has to be just peeking out from behind something to create this effect. The starburst always adds drama to an image. I like to place the starburst on one of the rule of thirds cross points.

Sunblock is a perfect technique for photographers who don’t have the Photoshop skills, or time to combine more than one image in order to get the correct exposure for the sun and the foreground.

The next time you include the sun in your image I hope you experiment and try the sunblock technique out. My only question is:

What SPF is it?

The 1st photo, the yellow rose with the metal fence was captured in Manteo, NC. I initially set up so I was shooting down into the rose. There was a light colored driveway on the other side of the fence in the background that distracted from the rose and fence. I settled on a lower angle of view with the house and porch in the background out of focus to give this photo a sense of place. I also used my 70 to 200 mm lens which has a narrow angle of view so I could control what was in the background easier. There was enough distance between the rose and the house to ensure the house was out of focus so, it would not be distracting.

The next 2 photos were  photographed in Corolla, NC in the same garden. Both of these photos were taken in uneven dappled lighting.  Luckily, I was prepared for this problem, in my camera  backpack I carry my trusty 5 and 1 diffuser and reflector. I used the diffuser to even out the light.

Roses and Mother’s Day just seem to go together. Thank you to all the mothers out there, happy Mother’s Day.

Wanchese Harbor is a great photo destination. It is a real working fishing village located on Roanoke Island. You can expect to photograph everything from stacked up crab baskets, old rusty fishing trawler’s, colorful buoys, fishermen at work, and a multitude of close up photo opportunities. It is a little off the beaten path and most of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Outer Banks don’t know it exists. It is well worth the 20 min. drive from the beach. I also recommend having lunch or dinner at the Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurant overlooking the Wancheeses Harbor.

Below is a slideshow and link to my Wancheese photo gallery.

Wanchese Harbor – Images by Daniel Waters

If anyone notices other photos in my galleries that would work well with this treatment  please e-mail me and let me know which image and which bit should be in color.

Thank you for looking and your input.

A Bit Of Color – Images by Daniel Waters

Tips for photographing shells on the beach at sunrise:

• Be prepared to get your feet wet when photographing shells on the beach. In the summer months I wear shorts and no shoes and in the cold weather I have a pair of hip boots that pull over my shoes.
• Use a long telephoto lens. This allows you stay back away from the shell and the waves to keep your camera dry and safe. With a telephoto lenses it is also easier to blur the background.
• Watch your shutter speed. You want to have a slow enough shutter speed to blur the motion of the water but not so slow that you cannot see any detail in the water. I have found between 1/15 of a second and 1second work well depending on the speed of the wave and the magnification of the shell.
•  Use a tripod. A tripod is necessary when you shoot at slow shutter speeds.
•  Don’t forget  to shoot vertical images as well as horizontal. Sometimes vertical images will show more of the waves in the background than a horizontal image.
• Photograph from a low angle. Staying low allows you to see more of the ocean behind the shell.  It also puts the viewer at the same level as the shell and allows them to connect to your image easier. Another thing, a low angle does is show more reflections in the waves than a higher angle of view.
• Photograph before the sun rises and make sure there is a dramatic colorful sky to reflect in the waves.
• Fill the frame.  You won’t get that feeling of intimacy and motion if the shell is too small in the frame.
• Take lots of images and vary the shutter speed and framing often. This situation demands that you take lots of images. Each wave will be different and the more images you have the better  the chances of coming home with a keeper will be.

Here is a link to a blog post I wrote about keeping the shell in place as the waves wash around it.

http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/outer-banks/shell-on-a-stick

A photographer friend of mine, Mike told me about his photo marketing strategy. He went with a friend, for morals support, to get a biopsy. While in this large waiting room he noticed there was very little art on the walls. He made a large panoramic framed print and brought it to the doctors office with a contract stating, that he would leave it on display for one month free of charge as long as they left his card on the wall next to the print. He went back at the end of the month to pick it up, but they liked it so much they bought it. His plan was if it didn’t sell there, he would take it to another office and offer to hang it there for one month, and so on until it sold. In the meantime it was making the environment for the patients a little more pleasant and advertising his photography to everyone that came into the waiting room.

There is a investment of time and money in creating and framing a large print, but I think it’s worth it.    You can also use this large photograph as a centerpiece and draw when you do craft shows. It is also nice to see how your work looks large an impressive. This seems like a great way to make extra money, I’m going to give it a try.

http://dlwaters.photoshelter.com/gallery/Recent-Photos/G0000LNkHCzVVt5Y/

Here  is my 1st time lapse video. It was captured at, ” Monument to a Century of Flight” located in Kitty Hawk North Carolina behind the visitor center. I shot each photo 3 seconds apart keeping all of the settings the same by using manual exposure and focus. I mounted the camera on a tripod and used an intervalometer to set the exposures. There are 176 photos in this series, it took me a little over 8 1/2 min. to shoot.  I set the movie playback speed to 25 frames per second, the clip takes less than 8 seconds to play. I used this great software called LR time lapse. It allows you to combine time lapse movies in  Adobe Lightroom using the slideshow module. The software also lets you make adjustments to the images and it allows you to crop and pan the movie.  With my camera, I can crop down to 1/5 of the full frame and still have enough pixels for a 1080P movie. This allows me to crop and move around inside the full frame image during the movie. You’ll notice how this movie starts on the left and pans to the right, it is all done with software.

Time lapse movies are a lot of fun to make, and I plan on doing a lot more of them.

Thanks, Dan Waters

I am very excited that my photo made the cover of AAA’s Go Magazine. This magazine has a circulation of over 1 million. It thrills me to think that so many people will be seeing this picture. I call it “Bodie Island Lighthouse Blue Sky”. I like how the AAA magazine art directors put the “go” behind the lighthouse.

Thank you all for letting me share my good news with you.

Dan