I make no secret of the fact that I love photos of flowing water. And I also make no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan of using slow shutter speeds to create that “silky water” effect.

Just recently I got myself a better tripod (and a nice ballhead to go with it), and ever since then I’ve been playing around with this technique a bit more. I also just recently picked up an ND filter (“neutral density” – basically sunglasses for your lens) and decided to try it out.

ND filters are typically used to darkens a scene evenly, allowing for a slower shutter speed – which lets you blur out any movement… such as flowing water.

Previously, I’d been using my circular polarizing filter as a sort of poor-man’s ND filter. I could still use slow shutter speeds, but I was still somewhat limited by the available light – if it was too bright, I wouldn’t be able to use as slow of a shutter speed as I would have liked. The above photo, for example, was taken in the shade under a bridge in order to allow me the slow shutter speed I wanted.

So when the weather warmed up a bit this past weekend and I found myself at a local park with some streams and rocky cascades, I just had to give it a try.

For a first try, I’m pretty pleased with how these came out. The thing with using slower shutter speeds is that… well, you are using slower shutter speeds – which means you really need to hold the camera steady. In other words, you almost always need to use a tripod (and, ideally, a remote cable release).

Unfortunately, I didn’t have either of those things with me the day I took these shots – these shots are entirely hand-held.

Luckily the exposures I was using weren’t too terribly long, so I was able to get away with hand-holding – but I did have to get a bit creative with how I steadied the camera! The shot above, for example, was taken with the camera resting on the side of my shoe as I sat cross-legged on a rock!

I’m not sure why I’m so fond of this particular type of photographic effect, but I do know that it’s something I’ve been trying to do pretty much ever since I first picked up a digital camera.

Long exposures in general are just kind of fun – to me they imply motion where none exists in a way that I just find really compelling.

In the end of course this is just my taste – I like these kinds of photos, and more importantly I enjoy taking these kinds of photos.

(Source: Core Dump – Where the Water Flows.)

For me, winter is a very challenging season for photography. The short days combined with the harsh light, long shadows, and dull environments conspire to keep me inside and my camera unused.

Still, winter is not completely devoid of things to photograph – it’s just a bit more of a challenge, especially if you’re used to taking photos in the warm, sunny summertime!

Holiday Photos

It’s a little late for it now, but the holidays always provide lots of interesting subjects for photography.

Mmmm, bokeh!

If you’re into portrait photography, the holidays are a great time to practice your skills – or try “documenting” a holiday gathering (and quickly gain some sympathy for professional event photographers!).

Astrophotography

With the cold of winter often comes very clear skies – perfect for taking photos of the moon or planets or other astronomical objects – assuming you have a long lens (or an adapter for a telescope).

First person to make a “Luna” joke will get sent to the MOOOON!

Since the nights are longer in winter, you’ll have plenty of time to take photos – maybe even try taking some time-lapse photos, or try making one of those neat star-trail type exposures? Though do be sure to dress warmly and bring extra batteries if you plan on staying out for long!

Black & White

Winter isn’t exactly a very colorful time of year – between the white snow and the abundant shadows cast by the sun being low in the sky, there’s a lot of contrast, but not much color. But instead of bemoaning the lack of color, embrace it instead with black & white photography!

Who needs color?

Sometimes, by getting rid of color, you can bring out details in a photo that might have been masked or just overshadowed (ha, ha) by the colors.

Although most cameras will let you take black & white photos directly by changing a setting somewhere, you can often get better results by doing the conversion later, when you’re back at your computer. There are a surprising number of options available when converting a color photo into black & white – so play around with the settings and see what happens!

When in Doubt – Organize!

Sometimes though, winter just won’t cooperate. Maybe the snow melted, maybe it gets dark too soon, or maybe it’s just too darn cold out!

Whatever the reason, sometimes you just want to stay inside – and that’s OK too! If winter is keeping you from taking photos, perhaps you can work with some old ones, instead. Organizing & tagging your old photos (Twilight would approve) or spending some time editing some of your shots are great ways to make use of the otherwise unproductive time.

These are just a few of the things you can do to stay photographically active during the winter. If you have something you do to stay active in the winter and keep your creativity from going stagnant, be sure to share it in the comments below!

Hello everyone, and sorry for the unexpectedly long hiatus there!

Somehow, between the unpleasant surprise that was Hurricane Sandy, and then the whirlwind time that is the holidays, I’ve managed to find myself right in the middle of winter. Or, at least, that’s what the calendar says – because the distinct lack of snow around here would suggest otherwise… but I digress.

For many of us, winter is sort of the “off-season” (so to speak), and during a time like this, it can be hard to find the inspiration (or motivation) to take photos.

I’ve talked about performing photography experiments before – in addition to being a good learning tool, they are a great way to break out of the winter doldrums and create something interesting.

Another way to find inspiration that I like is to go to Flickr’s Camera Finder and look up the camera that you use. When you do, you’ll see a bunch of photos taken by people with the exact same camera – and I have to say, I’m almost always blown away by what I find people doing with the exact same camera as I have.

Oftentimes after just a few minutes looking at these photos, I feel inspired to go out and try and take some of my own – even if it’s just to try and figure out “how did they do that?” If nothing else, it helps give you an idea of what’s possible, and takes away that all-to-easy excuse of “well, that person’s got a better camera/lens/etc., so of course their photos will be better than mine…”

Yet another helpful inspiration-finding tool (that is woefully underused, IMHO) is that of Flickr “groups.” Much like with the camera finder, you can find (and join!) groups dedicated to the same camera – or even to specific lenses – and see what other people have done with the same stuff you have. You can also find groups for your area (or things in your area, such as parks or other landmarks) or for things you’re interested in.

(This is probably a good time to plug Shuttershy.org’s own Flickr group – if you have a Flickr account, join up and submit some photos!)

Finally, sometimes it helps to just talk with someone else for a while. I haven’t met a photographer yet who wasn’t willing to talk shop for a bit or just chit-chat about photography. Everyone has different views, styles, and experiences, and sharing those sorts of things can be inspiring as well.

However you do it, I hope you all stay inspired during the winter – and and before you know it, it’ll be Winter Wrap-Up time again. Happy shooting!

Have you ever wondered exactly what the differences between various apertures and focal lengths really have in your photos? I have – and the other day I set up an experiment specifically to find out for myself what photos taken at different focal lengths would really do to the way a subject appears.

To give myself something to focus on (ha, ha), I set up a row of wine bottles on a table, along with a decorative wall hanging in the background. The row of bottles lets me see how the depth of field changes, and the wall hanging has some nice shiny elements in it to produce those nice out-of-focus “bokeh” balls.

Improvising a photo studio

This is the setup I used – my camera, mounted on a tripod, with a cable release. (You could also use the self-timer on your camera if you don’t have a cable release.)

For all of the photos I took, I kept the focus on the very front bottle of wine. As I got to the longer focal lengths, I moved the camera and tripod back so as to keep that front wine bottle approximately the same size in the image. (Also: keep in mind my camera has a 2x crop factor, so to find the 35mm equivalent of any focal length I mention, just double it.)

20mm – F/1.7 – 1/13 sec (taken with 20mm f/1.7 lens)

This is the first test shot I took, using my favorite lens – a 20mm f/1.7. I shot this one wide open (that is, at f/1.7), and predictably the depth of field is quite shallow. (Astute viewers will also note the slight vignetting – or darkening – around the corners, which is not uncommon when using wide apertures like this.) The background is pleasingly blurred, which helps keep the focus on the subject – the front bottle.

However, since none of my other lenses have such a large aperture, I decided to try again, but this time using an aperture would be usable on all my lenses – in this case, I chose f/5.6.

20mm – f/5.6 – 0.8 sec (taken with 20mm f/1.7 lens)

As you can see, many more of the wine bottles are in focus compared to the previous photo. At this combination of aperture and focal length, things look kind of boring – the background is relatively in-focus, and is a bit distracting.

20mm – f/5.6 – 0.8 sec (taken with 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 lens)

For the next photo, I used a different lens – an intermediate 14-42mm zoom lens – but kept the focal length and aperture the same (20mm at f/5.6). Unsurprisingly, aside from the slight difference in perspective (caused by this lens being longer, and thus the point of view being slightly forward from where it was in the last photo), these two photos are basically identical.

42mm – f/5.6 – 1/2 sec (taken with 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 lens)

Now I’ve zoomed in as much as this lens will go – all the way to 42mm, more than double where I started. You can start to see the difference – the field of view is narrower, meaning you can’t see the cabinet off to the left side of the frame (well, almost), and the background is blurred a little bit more, but not much.

You can also start to see a sort of “compression” of the line of bottles – compared to the previous photo, the bottles almost look a bit closer together.

45mm – f/5.6 – 1/2 sec (taken with 45-200mm f/4-5.6 lens)

Now I’ve switched to my last lens, a 45-200mm zoom. This shot is at 45mm, little different from the last photo, but now you can really start to see the difference in how “deep” the scene looks. This is the telephoto effect, and it causes scenes to be “compressed” – that is, the foreground and background don’t look as far apart anymore, and the scene looks “flatter.”

I found this quite surprising when I first saw it so clearly like this – it’s kind of hard for my mind to get around how much of a difference it can have on the way a scene looks, since we never see like that with our eyes. (Though to be fair, some of the change in this scene is due to me moving the camera backwards a bit to keep the front wine bottle at the same relative size.)

132mm – f/5.6 – 1/3 sec (taken with 45-200mm f/4-5.6 lens)

This is the last image I could get, under the conditions of my little experiment. Taken at 132mm, you can see how the wine bottles look “compressed,” and surprisingly, the background is nearly as blurred than in the very first picture – despite the fact that this was shot at f/5.6!

This experiment was a bit of a learning experience for me – I’d read photography books and watched videos before and had sort of an idea of what to expect, but it wasn’t really “real” to me until I’d seen it myself (and tried it with my own camera).

Doing this kind of controlled experiment might not be for everyone, but it can be a fun way to learn more about what you can do with your camera. If you want to really get a “feel” for what all those settings mean on your camera, running a little experiment like this can be a great way to do it.

One nice thing about photo sharing sites is that they almost always let you “peek behind the curtain” (so to speak) to see additional information about the photo. This “behind the scenes” information is called “Exif” (for “exchangeable image file format“) – and almost every camera adds this information to the image files it produces.

Exif data gives you lots of technical information about a photo.

Looking at the Exif data for a photo is a great way to start figuring out “how’d they do that?” If you see a photo you like, you can look at the Exif data and see things like what the shutter speed was, what aperture was used, what mode the camera was in, what ISO speed was used, and lots of other information as well. (Some cameras’ Exif data can even tell you what lens was used!)

While looking at the Exif data won’t always tell you exactly how the photo was taken, it’s often a good starting point – especially if you’re still new to using your camera in anything but Auto or P (program) mode.

Another neat thing you can do, at least on Flickr (which is the site I’m most familiar with) is look up the camera that was used to take a particular photo. This gives you some basic info about the camera model, but it will also show you other photos taken with the same camera.

Flickr’s Camera Finder – showing results for my camera

This is especially fun to do with your own camera model – it’s great fun to look at what other people have managed to do using the exact same camera you have, and you can find some really great photos this way. Also, you can then look at these photos’ Exif data to learn how they were taken, or just use them as inspiration for what’s possible for you to do.

While peeking at Exif data isn’t quite the same as asking a fellow photographer, it’s still a useful way to learn more about how all those settings on your camera actually translate into images. I found it invaluable when I first got into photography, and I still use it today to learn new things – because there’s always something new to learn.

Let’s talk about filters – and I mean real filters, not software-based Instagram-style filters (that’s an article for a different day!).

Most filters are mounted on the end of a lens, typically by screwing into the end of the lens (although some have a “mount” that you attach first, and then put the filter in that). Different lenses may have different size filter mounts, which are expressed in terms of the diameter of the filter (in millimeters). For example, one lens might take 52mm filters, while another takes 46mm filters.

Although some of these filters’ effects can be replicated in software (and in some newer cameras, they can even be done in-camera!), I tend to think that you get better results when using a real filter. For one thing, you can see right away what the final effect will be, but also you get a more natural, realistic effect – because in the end, software filters are just emulating real effects, and emulation is never 100% perfect.

Circular Polarizing Filters

The deep blue color of the sky (and water) in this photo is the result of using a circular polarizing filter.

How this filter works is very technical and way beyond my capability to explain – suffice it to say that this works like polarizing sunglasses, in that it cuts down on glare and reflections (but not always, depending on the angle you’re viewing the reflection from). This is also one of the filters that produces an effect that is impossible to replicate in software – if you want the effect of a polarizing filter, you have to use the real thing.

This filter is surprisingly useful – not only does it help cut down on reflections, but it can make a blue sky look even more blue (a deeper blue), and gives extra contrast between the blue sky and white clouds.

Also, reflections can pop up in places you wouldn’t think of – try using one after it has rained, and see the difference. By cutting down on the countless reflections from water droplets and other shiny surfaces, your photos can have greater depth and intensity.

A good circular polarizing filter can be had for relatively little money, and is a handy addition to any photographer’s kit (especially for outdoor photography).

Neutral Density Filters

Basically, this filter is like sunglasses for your camera – it darkens the scene, but without affecting the overall tone of the light (hence the “neutral” – it is “neutral” in color). You’ll often see these referred to as just “ND” filters for short.

ND filters come in 2 basic varieties – solid and graduated – and all these varieties come in different strengths or intensities, usually defined by how many much light they block, expressed in terms of the number of aperture “stops” of adjustment you’d need to make to completely negate the darkening effect.

Solid ND filters are just that – a solid piece of glass (or plastic) of uniform darkness. They are useful for making a scene darker, so that you can use a longer shutter speed or larger aperture (or both). One very common use of these is to take pictures of streams and waterfalls with slow shutter speeds, so that the water is all blurred out and has that nice “silky” appearance. This is another effect that cannot truly be replicated in software.

The effect with the water in this photo is one of the most common
uses for a solid ND filter, although you can also achieve it (to a lesser extent)
using a polarizing filter, or anything that blocks out some light.

Graduated ND filters (or “ND grad filters,” as they’re often called) are not uniform – they have a gradient, meaning they are clear on one side, and then gradually become darker on the other side. These are useful for making part of a scene darker, for when you’re taking a picture that has parts that have very different levels of brightness. The most common example is sunrises or sunsets, where the sky is very bright, but the foreground is still (comparatively) dark. Since a camera can’t see the same way our eyes can (our eyes see a much bigger difference between light & dark), you need to use an ND grad filter to sort of “equalize” the two parts of the scene.

This photo would’ve been impossible to capture without an ND grad filter – at least without resorting to HDR techniques and multiple exposures.

Unlike solid ND filters, ND grad filters can be emulated in software – at least, somewhat. Two or more different exposures can be combined afterwards to produce a single image which simulates the effect of an ND filter – this is, in a nutshell, what HDR is all about.

Neutral density filters are a bit more specialized, and aren’t necessarily for everyone, but they are invaluable for certain situations.

Other Types of Filters

There are of course lots of other kinds of filters – colored filters, to give a scene a particular color cast, or filters to cause certain lighting effects (such as exaggerated flare) – and some of these can be replicated in software, and others cannot. But generally speaking all of these are specialty items, not something you’d find among most photographer’s gear.

Filters can produce interesting and artistic effects that would be difficult or downright impossible to do in software, and despite the popularity of things like Instagram and it’s ilk, real filters still have a place in modern photography.

Have any favorite filters that you use, or perhaps a different filter I didn’t mention here? Tell us all about it in the comments below – or share a photo as an example!

Filters photo by Flickr user Nadar.