Photo Safaris - Stuck in a Rut?



				John Shaw Nature & Digital Photography Workshops Click here for locations and dates
				Mexico's Colonial Heartland March 17–24, 2007
				Horses and Icons of the Wild West August 26–September 1, 2007
				Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 7–21, 2007
				Australia Wildlife November 1–20, 2007

Ever feel like youre in a photographic rut, just producing the "same old, same old? You work a subject, but when you look at the resulting images you realize youve merely skimmed the surface. Youve taken the easy pictures, the obvious ones. Youve shot the exact same composition of Delicate Arch as has been taken by a zillion other photographersin fact, its the standard postcard shot that you saw in every shop in Moab. Youre starting to believe that "been there, done that" applies to your photography, as you snap one picture and move on. Your photography has become predictable, the results routine. Ever feel like this?

I certainly fall into this trap as often as anyone else. Here are seven exercises I use to counterbalance the blahs and re-ignite my photo excitement.

Photograph the same subjects at different times of the day.

Go back to those places youve worked, but photograph a sunrise location at sunset and vice versa. Youll be surprised at how familiar locations appear at different hours.

Heres a shot of Balanced Rock in Arches National Park taken in the afternoon, a pretty standard view of the formation.

And here it is at the first light of morning, a totally different photograph.

And here it is again, this time silhouetted against the twilight sky with a crescent moon.

Photograph using a different lens than you would normally choose.

I would wager that you most often use one lensyour favorite landscape lens or wildlife lens or close-up lensfor particular subjects. Try shooting wildlife pictures with a short lens to show habitat instead of always doing that tight portrait. Try taking landscapes with your long focal lengths. Try photographing close-ups with the focal length you would normally be least likely to pull out of your camera bag.

Gullfoss is one of the most massive waterfalls in all of Iceland, but heres a shot made with a 400mm lens of only one small section of the entire scene. Still, this one section conveys all the power and force of the larger surroundings.

We usually try to fill the frame with wildlife subjects. Heres one of my favorite brown bear photos, done with an 80-200mm zoom lens. Including lots of habitat says one thing for sure: this was not a zoo shot!

Find a potential subject in bad light and then predict when it would look the best.

If nothing else, youll sharpen your skills in reading the light while trying this exercise. Heres a sugar maple tree on an overcast autumn day. Normally you would pass this right by, but think about how it might appear under better lighting conditions.

Take as many views of one subject as you can.

Make yourself work one specific subject. Walk around, try different lenses, check out different camera angles. Look at this sequence of pictures of one specific saguaro cactus, all taken the same evening.

Take as many pictures as possible in one location.

Too often we equate mobility with productivity but they are definitely not the same. How often have you rushed from location to location, only to discover youve spent all your time traveling and precious little time actually photographing? On a recent Iceland photo safari we spent one entire day working Atlantic puffins and nothing but puffins. Puffins standing, puffins with fish, puffins at burrows, puffins sleeping. For the whole day we never moved more than 100 yards from our starting point. Yet in that one day the average film shoot was over 30 rolls. Because we kept working that one location we were able to be more precise in our coverage.

Limit yourself to only one frame of film.

You might be familiar with Jim Brandenburgs book, Chased by the Light, for which he shot one frame of film per day. While you certainly dont have to do this for as long a time as he did, you can use this technique to sharpen your skills. Lets say you had only one frame of film, one single exposure for a given location. You would want to make the best possible photograph. But remember, you cant bracket exposures, shoot with different lenses or play with filters. You have one and only one shot so you would spend extra time finding that one perfect composition.

This photo was the only shot I took all day: rocks and layered sandstone, with light reflected from canyon walls.

Try a different image format.

This is currently my favorite solution when Im in the photo doldrums. I intentionally start looking for panoramic compositions when Im in the field. I use my 35mm Nikons, take overlapping images, then stitch them together in Photoshop. This is hardly a new technique for me, as Ive been doing this for several years now, but Im still excited by the results. I dont have to carry a special panoramic camera in addition to my normal 35mm gear; consequently all my lenses are now potentially panoramic lenses also. If you dont know how to do this, hang on, as Ill give you step-by-step directions in a future column.

This is a simple panoramic in that its only two 35mm frames, shot with an 80-200mm zoom lens.

Heres a pan image from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, four frames taken with a 500mm lens. This would be impossible to do with any current panoramic camera.



	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383 Fax: (206) 463-5484 Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.