How I Shot This (2)

So, I was at Telunas Beach in Batam, and shot the above, which I really do like. Since Krystina asked how this was shot, this is 2nd of my picture "tutorial".

1.Timing
The most important thing is light. Best (and only) time to shoot landscapes is around sunrise or sunset. Since I'm not really a morning person, it's mostly sunset. This was shot just after the sun set, known as the "Blue Hour", as you can see why it is called that.

2.Equipment
A) Tripod
You don't need fancy equipment, but you do need a tripod. I never quite understood why, but after I bought it, then used it, I have to agree with many others that it is one of the best "accessories" to get, which will really bring your photography to another level.

B) Camera
I used my only DSLR I have, Nikon D90. Any camera that can shoot manual mode, is fine. I also like to shoot in Raw format, which I think is much better for any post processing.

C) Lens
I used Ultra Wide Angle lens Tokina 11-16mm. It's nice and wide, and very sharp. But I could have easily used my 18-200 for this shot.

3.Camera Settings
A) ISO
I always pick the lowest ISO available, when I want a long shutter exposure. So I picked ISO 100 - the lowest D90 has.

B) Shutter Speed
I didn't have a watch or phone with me, so I decided to stick to max of 30 seconds . Any longer, will be "Bulb" mode. You need a longer shutter speed when you have low light, or night shots. This has 2 effects

- Smooth Waters. Any water bodies becomes like glass.
- Star burst lights. Any light source, becomes star burst. Experiment with different aperture sizes, and see what works.

C) Aperture
So based on the above settings, I had to put aperture at F22, as my manual mode tells me as the right exposure. Some will say that above F16, there's diffraction. I've never seen any (to my naked eyes), so I'm not convinced that F22 is "wrong".

4.Composition
Besides light, the other thing to note is Composition
A) Leading Lines
What is interesting is the bridge leads your eye from the edge of the picture to the main object (huts).
I normally like going from the corners to the middle center-ish, but in this case, slight difference.

B) Rule of Thirds
Most folks will put the subject right smack in the middle. But if you put it a third off the middle (think of a tic tac toe grid, at any of the intersactions), the picture will look much better. So the Main Hut in the picture, is a third off.

5. Shoot!
So camera on tripod, composition sorted out, I used my timer (set to 2 seconds) and pressed the trigger!
The timer negates any camera shake, when you press the trigger. Sometimes I use a wireless trigger, you can also use a cable trigger - but a 2s timer also works fine.

That's it! Isn't so difficult, just keep trying and keep shooting!

How I Shot This (1)

I was at ARPC church camp @ Hotel Palace of Golden Horses, KL last week. And I walked around a bit, seeing what would be interesting to shoot. I saw the sun setting-ish, and thought it would make an interesting shot, so I shot the scene using my D90 + Tokina 11-16, setting it at 11mm, switched to manual shooting mode with aperture at F8; shutter speed 1/1250 (based on the sky exposure); ISO200 at RAW. I shot 6 shots actually, but only the middle 3 were used, see below.

Just note that this is w/o ANY processing, no in-camera or Lightroom processing, so it looks pretty dull. With Lightroom, I import all my pictures now using the adobe provided "Direct Positive +" preset. Due to the uneven light, I pulled my "highlights" slider to -100; "shadows" to +100; boosted the "clarity" and "contrasts" a little, and this gave me

So it's starting to look a bit better. Now, behind me, there's a "lake" so I couldn't move back. And I wanted all the palm trees in the picture, with a bit of space on the left - which is why I decided to shoot a few (6 in all). When I tried to stitch all 6, it was really warped/distorted, so I experimented with 1 less picture, until I thought the 3 looked best.

I use Microsoft's Image Composite Editor, which is the best free stitching program I've tried, and it gave me this. This is probably what the eye "naturally" sees.

But I wanted to give the clouds a bit more of a dramatic edge, so importing it back into Lightroom, I again pulled the highlights to -100 (to soften the brightness of the sun), shadows to +100 (bring out details in the shadows, else it is too dark); boosted the contrasts and clarity again (just gives more definition to the clouds, but the downside is that the trees look "artificial" with a bit of ugly halo, but it's a bit of a compromise) -it won't be everyone's taste, but I prefer it. There's this HDR quality which I'm not all that fond off on the trees, but I loved the effect on the clouds.

The end product is the picture right in the top!
This is for Bryan Kam, one of my photo mentors who helped me tremendously when I just started out, 1.5 years back, who was curious how I got the shot. So it's a step-by-step tutorial.

I just have to say Lightroom is a really great tool, and can't recommend it enough. It is easy to use, and very powerful (I'm only using the tip of the software's ability, and still lots to learn - thus my post processing isn't all that good, but I'm experimenting and learning).

Keep shooting and learning new stuff to try!