7 Travel Photography Tips 从 How to Photograph Fireworks Displays 作者：Darren

Travel Photography is a lot of fun but presents some real challenges. Today Christina Nicholeshares 7 tips to help you on your next trip.

I once heard travel photography described as one of the most important mediums of photographic communication. As the photographer, you are literally creating an entire culture for an audience of people who may never be able to visit that place. Of course, this privilege carries a heavy responsibility. You must be able to present a culture in a way that informs, educates, and entertains.

So, what do you look for? Here are seven tips that will guide you in your photographic travels…

1. Look for “the big picture”. Give your audience a bird’s eye view of the location you have traveled to – full of color and vibrancy. Here, I have taken this shot on one of the highest peaks of Quito, Ecuador to overlook the city.

2. Capture things that are “out of the ordinary”. What is distinctly different from your culture? These are things that your audience will find interesting.

3. Find shapes. Other cultures use shapes, curves, and lines in architecture very differently. Be constantly on the alert for buildings, fences, and paths that are unique to your culture.

4. Seek the light. Make any image stunning with some dynamic lighting. Inside cathedrals and churches facilitate beautiful lighting with stained glass windows and skylights. Wait until mid morning or afternoon to capture high sidelight that will pour through the windows and hit the floor.

5. Look for contrast. Whether contrast in light tones verses dark tones, or contrast as in textures and locations, this will keep your images varied.

6. Third world countries especially have extreme diversity of textures, colors, patterns, andcontent. As a photographer, you have to unify all the different elements to an image that will “make sense” visually.

7. Photograph that which captures your soul. A poor child? A destitute village? A tropical landscape? A busy city center? Take pictures of things that matter to you, and you will come away with visually gripping images no matter where your travels may take you.

上周，沈阳是极度寒冷和极度大雪的一周。天太冷，以至于Onlighting不再发光了，只好一个人骑车出去。郊外，雪未扫，真是万里人踪少啊。路极滑，不敢骑车，骑骑走走，本来平常一个小时的路，大约需要2个小时，所以本周GPS纪录的里程只有30km。虽然路程短，回家感到疲顿之极。

发件人 雪客冰侠

发件人 冰歌

本周也是感受北国风光千里雪飘万里冰封的最佳时刻，尽管真是天寒地冻。到了王家湾水坝，发现太阳也被冻住了，光芒不再了，也只经济不景气，发光也部高了。拿着相机对这太阳照了唯一一张，据说这是极为恐怖的行为，能够破坏相机的CCD，CCD害怕强光。不过好像看起来问题不大。呵呵。浑河在不同时间冰冻形成的图案是不同，有着明显的记号。加上风雪图案也就多种多样，虽然极冷，但依然有在唱歌的流水，我称之谓冰歌。
本周不大爽快的事情，发现CCD巨脏，在照片右上角有个灰尘，抬起反光板多次吹好像作用不大，果冻笔黏啊黏啊，终于旧的去新的来，费了三四张粘纸在F20以前看不见灰尘了，幸运啊。

5 Tips For Travel With Only One Lens 从 How to Photograph Fireworks Displays 作者：Peter Carey

Whether traveling for business or just on a well deserved vacation, there are times when we all don’t feel like carrying around our full compliment of lenses, flashes and accessories. During trips like this the inner photographer in each of us starts to panic; “What if I need my wide angle lens?” “I want to capture some great close-ups” and they all too familiar “Which lens DO I take?” Right about now it’s best to tell your inner photographer to relax, everything will be ok. And then remind it of the benefits of traveling with just one lens:

Simplicity
Only one filter size needed
No lens changes means less dust on the sensor
A lighter camera bag or no bag at all! (gasp!)
And I’m sure there are more to be had, but the basic fact is it’s easier to travel with just one lens sometimes. Especially if you’re squeezing some photography into a business or family trip. My own reason for traveling with just one lens stems from a three week trip to Nepal last month that included 19 days of trekking in the Himalayas with plenty of dust. After seeing quite a bit of dust on the sensor from my wife’s last trip to Nepal, I decided it was time to stick with one lens, especially when everything that came with me would need to be carried by me for over 75 miles of trekking.

Here then are five tips for making the most of a one lens vacation!

1.Buy A Good All In One Zoom

These past two years have seen a plethora of wide range zoom lens land on the market. 8X and 10X lenses are fairly common now and have decent all around capabilities. For those using a DSLR with a 1.6 crop factor, something in the 18-200 range works well. For those with a full sized sensor the options are a bit more cumbersome and expensive. Both Nikon and Canon have excellent lenses in the 70-300mm range and some even down to 28mm. For a full size sensor, you’ll want as wide as you can go while still retaining image quality.

Also a consideration when picking ‘the’ lens is image stabilization. It’s easy to skimp on the price and try to save $50 here or $100 there, but if the lens you are interested in has an image stabilizing version, go for it. It can always be turned off to save the camera battery if you’re not zooming out a lot. While at the same time the better systems can allow you to handhold shots that typically benefit from use of a tripod. If you can leave the tripod behind, that’s even more weight and space saved.
2.Practice before you go

This tip can be a very eye opening experience if you’re not accustomed to a wide zoom range lens. Test the lens in all kinds of lighting situations and surely run it through its full f-stop range. Does bright light at 18mm and f/3.5 produce any vignette? Is the amount acceptable to you? How low of a shutter speed can you handhold when zoomed to 250mm or more? Will dusk shots be too hard with the appropriate f-stop? How fast is the focus when zoomed out and zoomed back? Get a feel for the weight of the lens too. Carry it around as you plan to do on your vacation and see if the lens length and weight are a problem.

3.Watch your hood


The lens hoods for wide range zooms always look a bit funky. They’ve got a hard job to do to successfully blocking out unwanted light in such a large range of zoom. And, admittedly, they won’t always get it all. One thing those hoods can do well is block your on-camera flash from reaching close subjects. If you are very close to the subject or have the zoom out a bit, that hood can create an unwanted shadow along the bottom of your picture as seen in the picture at right. In this case, you can’t even see just how truly adorable the kitten is and that’s a shame to find out 7000 miles later.

4.Learn to shoot panoramas

It may begrudge you to leave your super wide angle 10mm lens at home, but have no fear! With a bit of technique help and an article from DPS, you can still bring back wide angle shots from your trip. The DPS article is entitled How to Create Panoramas with Photoshop and Photomerge. There are now many other panorama programs out there for those not wishing to purchase the full version of Photoshop (Photomerge is also included in certain versions of Photoshop Elements). I’ve used Autopano Pro quite successfully and while it has a lot of features I don’t touch, the auto rendering and ‘hands off’ options work very well. Autopano also does a wonderful job of correcting lens distortion as well as color correction.

It will take two or three shots to make the one shot you would have had with a wide angle lens, and you’ll need to do a little more work metering the scene and setting the exposure so it doesn’t change between shots, but you may find greater latitude in composing the panoramas when faced with a slightly smaller field of view. The image below was stitched together automatically with Autopano Pro from 22 images, all shot in portrait configuration at 28mm. I missed my wide angle lens, but I didn’t miss this shot.


5.Cheat a bit with a close-up lens

Technically this would qualify as bringing along another lens. But most close-up lenses are not much bigger than a filter so I don’t consider it cheating. If you like to shoot macro images, a close up lens is a good compromise if you can’t bring along your best macro lens. Typically they screw on to the end of the lens and allow for focusing distances down to 1″ in some cases. Bringing along a close-up lens will open up different ways of viewing your vacation and can hopefully bring back shots you would have missed without it.

沈阳雪色

发件人 鸟岛野鸟

发件人 冰歌

         沈阳终于下雪了，不过好像不是很大，早上起来地面还不见雪色。骑车不远到了河边就看到了残存的沈阳第二场雪。河边，江山如画，心境舒畅。到了鸟岛看见众多野鸭，好像因为是雪后人迹少，野鸭们也不怕人，终于可以接近它们了，从150-200米到大约三十米左右，不过也有遗憾这些不怕人的鸭子不是带有色彩的，而是灰黑色的，不过上镜头啊。呵呵。一路上麻雀喜鹊也是非常多。看着鸟们的样子，希望能够多多看啊，天蓝、地白、鸟旺。

中国大学

        本周在北京大学学习，带了卡式机早上在校园走走，随手照了一些照片，心中有了很多想法，我的朋友之中很多都是大学里面的，因为工作原因也出差去的最多的地方就是高校了。现在高校越来越大，但是感觉好像缺失了精神，希望能够以我的视角来挖掘大学精神。我对大学，特别是老校区的大学精神，非常感觉。很多东西需要积累，经过了2-3年时间，走了大约10个左右的高校，留下了5个高校照相放在picasaweb上（http://picasaweb.google.com/nanowormx/ChinaUniversity#），感觉这些景色是我认为那个大学的大学精神。一孔之间。希望有机会到各位朋友所在的学校照相，大家告诉我最好的时间，我去看看那个高校的大学精神。谢谢大家。

How to Shoot Super Macro Photos 作者：Darren

In this post, professional photographer Yanik Chauvin from Yanik’s Photo School shows us how to take stunning super macro photos.

I’m a big fan of macro photography. So much so that when I chose my first ever digital camera, the Nikon Coolpix 4500, it was mostly base on its macro capabilities. And when I purchased my Nikon D70 with kit lens, the next lens in my bag was the Sigma 105mm macro.

After shooting lots of macros, I wanted to push the envelope and see if there was a way to get even closer to my subject (without the need for a microscope). Looking on the net, I found a photographer who did just that! Boy was I a happy camper. I have since been using this technique called “Super Macro” to take some pretty amazing photography.

Ok, before I get into the “how to”, let me first give you a brief explanation of what macro is. It’s basically close-up photography where the image projected on the camera sensor is relatively the same size as your subject. We give this term a ratio of 1:1. Most standard macro lenses give you up to 1:1 ratio. As for super macro, depending on your lens combination, you can usually get a ratio of 2:1 or greater. What this means is that your sensor sees closer than the human eye which leads to some unusual photography.

Equipment

Alright! Let’s look at what we need to achieve super macro photos.

• A macro lens (ideally a prime lens)
• A fast lens (ideally a prime lens with f1.8 or f1.4)
• A step-down ring
• A portable flash
• A tripod

The reasons why I suggest prime lenses is that they’re the sharpest lenses and when you’re staking that much glass in front of your sensor, things then to go soft very fast. The step-down ring should match your lenses’ respective diameters.

There are other ways to setup for super macros, some using extension tubes or teleconverters, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Setup

Now, let’s make it work.

Step 1: Put the macro lens on the camera (in my case it’s the Sigma 105mm)

Step2 : Make sure your lens is on manual focus

Step 3 : Screw the step-down ring onto the macro lens

Step 4 : Turn the aperture dial on your fast lens (in my case it’s the Nikkor 50mm) to it’s widest setting (smallest f-stop #). We need as much light as possible getting in.

Step 5 : Screw the front of the fast lens onto the front of the macro lens.

Step 6 : Put your camera on manual focus

This is what the setup should look like.

The reason I added the tripod and the flash in the equipment list is that, since there isn’t a lot of light making it to the sensor, you’ll either need a long shutter speed or more light.

You’ll notice that your depth of field (DOF) is extremely small (roughly 1 or 2mm) so things get blurry very fast. Make sure your subject isn’t moving or else you’ll be out of focus. If you insist on doing this hand held, exhale before you press the trigger… you might get lucky. ;-)

Being so close and having such a small DOF is a great combination for fun abstract photography. Use you imagination and have fun!

As for the flash, you’ll have to trigger it off camera because of the length of the combined lenses and the proximity of the subject to the lenses.

Here are some samples images as examples.

Morning frost on my canoe.

Orange Hawkweed

Daisy

Wolf Spider (if you look close enough, you’ll see my lens in its eyes!)

Try Yanik’s technique and then share your Super Macro Images in the Share Your Shots section of our forum.

霜叶如醉 拍好红叶的12个建议 from dp

　　1、拍摄秋天的红叶，不一定是指枫树，甚至不限定于“红”色，其它例如：槭树、银杏、变叶树…等，都可列入拍摄范围。此外，随风飘拂的红叶、雨后的红叶或缤纷的落叶，都是值得捕捉的画面。

　　2、拍摄红叶，可以从采光、取景、背景、构图等方面着手。拍摄红叶，可以采用逆光、斜侧光线，以突显叶片的形状、线条和脉络。为了消除叶片反光、使得主题层次分明、色彩饱和，最好加上遮光罩、偏光镜、减光镜等配件。

3、拍摄红叶，可以利用广角镜头，捕捉整片红叶林或满地落叶的景致。但是必须选择线条明显、色调饱和的枝干作为前景。

　　4、拍摄红叶，可以利用135-300mm以上的望远镜头，将位于高处的红叶拉近，特写优美的红叶形状。

　　5、能够近距离拍摄的红叶，适合使用微距镜头，以强调叶片清晰的脉络和质感。但是必须使用三脚架固定相机，并且尽量采用小光圈拍摄。

　　6、拍摄红叶，背景以绿色或深色为主，而且愈单纯愈好。单纯的背景，最能突显红叶色调和层次。倘若受制于现场环境和角度，无法处理杂乱背景时，可以采取低角度、由下往上拍，以蓝色天空为背景。

　　7、红叶摄影的构图，原则上以简洁有力为主。尽量利用大自然的光影、形状、脉络、色彩对比，表现红叶的美感与生命力。

　　8、拍摄红叶，可选使用低感光度、搭配三脚架，强调细腻的质感。

　　9、红叶的色彩主要以红橙黄三色为主，拍摄时应注意颜色的搭配，最好别穿上和红叶同色系的衣服，而改穿对比色，比如蓝色、绿色等，白色亦可。

　　10、拍摄的最佳地段为公路与河谷两旁，不必爬山。

　　11、由于红叶风景色彩丰富，斑驳多变，采用高压缩的JPEG格式压缩比例不能很大，强行用高压缩比则很容易产生产生伪色彩。所以，如果相机允许，存储空间足够，应首选用RAW格式拍摄，至少也应该采用高精度的JPEG格式。

12、最佳的拍摄时间，是早上十一点以前、下午三点以后，因为这时光线柔和，明暗反差及阴影比较小。