Thursday Tips: A Fool and His Money are Soon Parted

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money, Photography, Tips

There are few pursuits that will empty your wallet more quickly than photography.  Everything about photographic gear, for instance, is expensive.  I mean everything, from $30 (US) bubble levels to exotic prime telephoto lenses that exceed $10,000.  In the digital age, cameras are essentially treated as disposable commodities, accompanied by the explicit notion that of course you’re going to upgrade to the latest model every few years.  And as the bubble level reference above suggests, cameras and lenses are merely part of the equation.  Bags for your equipment, tripods and heads, filters and other accessories…the list is seemingly never-ending, and all the items on it are costly.  At the very least, the informal definition of “photographic equipment” has extended all the way to computer hardware and software ever since the digital darkroom became a realistic option more than a decade ago.

Two recent announcements reminded me of the truism expressed by the above paragraph.  The first is Adobe’s decision to end its perpetual license software offerings for the world’s image editing flagship program, Photoshop.  Whatever you think of the decision, one aspect of it is undeniable:  the price of ongoing full-time access to Photoshop jumped for any standalone user.  The other notable release was Canon’s announcement of the impending availability of its long-awaited 200-400/f4 zoom lens, along with the price—just under $12,000.  By themselves, these announcements don’t mean all that much; they are, however, emblematic of a larger point:  photography is an expensive endeavor and it’s not getting any less costly.

While it’s probably wise to accept the fact that you’re going to have to drop some cash to be involved in photography, you don’t have to bankrupt yourself.  You certainly can spend tens of thousands of (insert your currency of choice here) to outfit yourself and begin a lifelong journey on the upgrade carousel, but this isn’t necessary.  Even if you aspire to a kit populated with high end gear, you need not take out a second mortgage on your home.  Here are some suggestions for ways to keep photography-related purchases from consuming more of your budget than is desirable.

1)  With each piece of gear you’re contemplating buying, ask yourself whether it’s something that will truly further a tangible photographic/artistic goal.  There’s an almost infinite amount of “stuff” available for purchase out there that’s directly or indirectly related to photography.  It’s remarkable, however, how little of it is really necessary, by just about any definition of the term.  For instance, there are some awfully interesting filters on the market, but the only ones I own are a single polarizer and a pair of neutral density filters; I haven’t spent a dime on filters in the last five years, and have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future.

2)  Shoot with an older camera.  If you buy used or new-but-older camera bodies, you can often cut your purchase prices in half.  While the camera manufacturers would have you believe that anything isn’t the latest model is obsolete, that is rarely the case.  Acquiring a camera that is one generation behind current model lines will save you a tremendous amount of money without, in most cases, compromising quality or function in any meaningful way.  And yes, I have done this myself, more than once.

3) Buy used lenses and/or space out your purchases.  This is something else I’ve done, multiple times.  As long as the components and optics are in good shape, when it comes to image making, a used lens is 100% of a new one.  This is a great way to save a significant amount of cash, particularly considering the fact that a good lens can last you a lifetime.  And once you’ve put your kit completely together, stop shopping around.  I’ve been assembling my current lens outfit for the past eight years.  By purchasing one lens at a time, and putting a year or two between purchases, I’ve slowly been able to piece together a high end kit that meets my needs.  One more lens—which almost certainly won’t be purchased until some time next year, if then—and I’ll be done.

Of course, if you don’t need an interchangeable lens camera system, you can avoid this problem entirely.

4) Keep software purchases to a minimum.  There’s so much photography-related software out there these days, I can’t keep track of it all (and I wouldn’t want to try).  Much of it is either redundant, or is designed to be used as a means to make other software “easier to use.”  I know people who seem to buy every set of Photoshop plug-ins that come down the pike.  (Many of these people spend far more on add-ons than they did on Photoshop itself!) While many of these offerings are quite useful, few if any of them are truly necessary.  Furthermore, the more of these packages you have, the harder it is to master any of them.

5) Take care of your gear.  By taking decent care of your equipment, it can last a long, long time, thereby saving you a lot of money down the road.  And don’t misunderstand—I’m not suggesting foregoing use of your equipment.  I certainly don’t eschew use of my gear.  But I’ve been using the same photo backpack and tripod/ballhead for 10 years and counting, and see no need to replace any of this gear for the foreseeable future.

6) Consider any and all successive upgrades and consider whether they’re worth the trouble.  One of the dirty little secrets of photography is the fact that the camera you were so hot to update brought with it a whole host of needed ancillary updates.  For instance, let’s say I move from a 12 MP camera to a 36 MP camera (as I in fact did, last year).  All that extra resolution sounds great…and it is.  But it probably means getting new larger (and more expensive) flash cards to handle the threefold increase in file size.  It may also mean getting faster cards, since the larger files will take significantly longer, all other things equal, to write to your cards.  You may find that your lenses may be outresolved by your new camera’s sensor.  If that’s not enough, the upgrade may also mean an update to your digital storage system (e.g. larger hard drives).  There’s also a good chance that your entire computer system will no longer be able to adequately process the files you need—an entire computer upgrade may be in the offing.  In short, the cost of your camera update may triple once you’ve added in the secondary and tertiary costs involved in supporting the update.  Caveat emptor.

In sum, photography is expensive, but you can keep your expenses within manageable limits by applying a bit of restraint and common sense.  You need not empty your bank account to enjoyably engage in photography.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: Jaded

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great smoky mountains national park, Photography, Tips

One of the things that I’ve noticed about photographers is that many of them have a rather disturbing tendency to become bored with subject matter that they’ve seen before.  Nature photographers are probably the biggest offenders in this regard, and within this grouping the sub-category of landscape photographers are the worst.  (Full disclosure—I consider myself a landscape photographer.)  “Done to death” is the cynical—if popular—phrase.  It’s so hackneyed, it has its own acronym: DTD.

If I ever start acting this way myself—taking sublime natural scenes for granted simply because I’ve photographed them before (or, even worse, because I’ve seen a lot of others’ photographs), I hope someone will slap me silly.

During the first morning of my recent trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I was up on the Foothills Parkway, just a few miles from the park’s northeast entrance in Tennessee, to photograph sunrise.  The image immediately below was shot on that morning.  There were a couple of other photographers, who were clearly shooting together, at the same overlook that morning, about 50 feet from my position.  Shortly after the sun came up, as the two of them were packing up their belongings, I heard one say to the other:  “Well, that was a shrug,” in reference to the sunrise.  My jaw just about hit the ground.  If that was a shrug of a sunrise, I’d like to spend every morning shrugging to the point that my shoulders hurt.

Later on the same trip, one morning at Cades Cove, I ran into another photographer.  We spent a few minutes talking and he told me that he’d just arrived at the park.  At that point, I’d been on location for about a week, and he asked me for some suggestions about places to shoot.  I suggested several of the many beautiful rivers and creeks and a sour look came over his face.  “I’m sick to death of streams and creeks,” he told me.  (I wasn’t sure how that was possible if he’d just arrived, but never mind that.)  “I don’t care if I ever see another creek.  This place is just lousy with them.”  In the early evening of that same day, I was in the Elkmont section of the park, shooting along the Little River Trail and obtained the shot you see below.  Just another ho hum day shooting another one of the countless, boring streams in the Smokies.

Then there was the gentleman I stumbled across on my first day in the park—apparently it was his last.  He told me that he’d been shooting wildflowers for several days and that if he “never saw another wildflower it would be too soon.”  I’m pretty sure he missed the below scene, which I photographed the next day.

I understand the tendency to become somewhat jaded with subject matter after photographing it for days on end, but there’s a stark difference between the familiar and the prosaic, something that seems lost on many photographers.

I found myself cheek to jowl—a situation I heartily dislike—with a bevy of photographers (all part of a large workshop) one evening at Clingman’s Dome as I waited for the sun to set.  While I don’t like being hemmed in, I was pleased to be in the company of a bunch of people who decidedly did not take the scene for granted.  That much was clear by the cries of delight that went up from the assembled masses as the sun slowly disappeared behind a distant ridgeline.

Perhaps there’s hope for landscape photographers after all.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: A Matter of Perspective

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Perspective, Photography, Tips

Every so often, a novice photographer tags along with me in the field.  At the end of the shoot, they almost invariably say the same thing to me—you move around a lot!  Yes I do.  I think the biggest shortcoming for photographic newbies is the tendency to settle for the first shot they see.  Part of that “settling” is the propensity to shoot every scene at eye level.  Much of the time, this inclination leads to ho-hum imagery, and it’s a habit I think every photographer should break, immediately.

I’ve discussed this elsewhere, but years ago I attended a John Shaw photo seminar, and one of the things that stuck with me was his description of how, as a workshop leader, he noticed that the vast majority of his participants would approach a scene and immediately set up their tripods at full height.  I made a point of keeping an informal tally of my own observations in succeeding years and determined that he was absolutely right. With relatively few exceptions, unless some impediment requires people to do otherwise, people typically set up at full height, and they stand in the first place they find.

The one positive thing I can unequivocally say about shooting at eye level is that it’s the most convenient, comfortable way to shoot.  But the most convenient spot doesn’t necessarily yield the most interesting or vital perspective.

The Method

When I arrive at a scene for the first time, I set my tripod aside.  Yes, you read that correctly; while I always have my camera mounted on a tripod when I trip the shutter, I don’t make use of it at all immediately.  With my camera in hand, I carefully examine the scene with the naked eye, attempting to take in all of the potential elements of a possible photograph.  When I spot something I like, I examine the scene through the camera’s viewfinder (unless I have the wrong lens mounted on the camera, in which case I switch lenses and then proceed).  I continue this process until I find what I feel is the best option.  That almost invariably means moving—up and back, left and right and, yes—up and down.  I’ll squat, I’ll kneel, I’ll lay down…I do what it takes to put myself in what I believe is the best position for the shot.

Only when I find that spot—after making a mental note of the approximate ideal height—do I get the tripod and set it up at the noted position.  With the camera mounted, I fine tune the composition and then go about the process of formally capturing the image.  The tripod is an impediment when trying to find the best photographic position, so I keep it at arm’s length until I need it.

Zooming:  Reality and Fallacy

Note that this isn’t merely limited to finding the best height at which to position the camera—it’s important to spend some time moving around:  up and back, left and right, as I mentioned above—as well.  The forward and back aspect is often neglected, as a function (in part) of zoom lenses.  I often see people standing in one spot, zooming endlessly in and out.  Adjusting the focal length of the lens in this way has isn’t without value at times, but many people are under the false impression that changing the focal length changes perspective.

It doesn’t.

Focal length changes have implications for depth of field, of course, but from a compositional standpoint, zooming a lens only changes the field of view of the would-be image.  If you want to change perspective, you must move; pick yourself up (bring your camera along for company) and physically change your position.  Now you’re changing perspective.

The Payoff

What’s the benefit of adjusting perspective?  In short, more dynamic imagery.  Shots hastily taken from eye-level have a tendency to appear static, flat and stale to viewers, precisely because it produces the same perspective that they’re so used to seeing themselves.  But change that significantly—for instance, try getting very close and low in relation to a prominent foreground object—and you’ll be displaying something fresh, partly because it’s out of the ordinary and partly because this kind of perspective can produce the sense of adding a third dimension to what is, after all, a two-dimensional medium.

Give it a try.  Spend a bit more time thinking about and exploring your surroundings.  Most importantly, remember to move and examine different shooting perspectives.  See if it doesn’t make a difference in your image output.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: The New Gear Fallacy Redux

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Photography, Tips

Last year, in this very space, I wrote an article discussing the tendency of many novice photographers to believe that the only thing standing between them and magazine cover image success is a new piece of equipment or two:  a new camera, a new lens, a new piece of software.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of subtle—and some not-so-subtle—messages that are formulated specifically to further this belief.  After all, photographic gear manufacturers have a vested interest in selling their products.

Unfortunately it is rarely the case that the purchase of new equipment will bring image-related satisfaction.  Even though I’ve addressed this point in the past, based on the number of inquiries I’ve had relatively recently from people asking me what new camera (etc.) will solve their problems, it would appear a refresher is in order.

Exceptions to the Rule

Let me start by noting that there are some exceptions to the rule.  Sometimes a new piece of equipment will fill the bill.  For instance, someone recently told me how dissatisfied they were with the pictures of kids and pets that their low-end point and shoot was delivering.  The problem was that the camera was so slow to lock on the subject and fire a shot that the moment was gone before the shutter could be tripped.  This problem was completely addressable with a new camera—one with faster (possibly phased-based) autofocus and less shutter lag.  The only real dissatisfaction being expressed was that shots were being missed because of the limitations of the camera.  Eliminate the limitations and you eliminate the problem.

The Rule

This, however, isn’t the kind of problem that is typically being presented to me.  Ordinarily, the problems are more about how “boring” or “flat” or “poorly exposed” (etc.) one’s photos are.  Those aren’t equipment problems; those are photographer problems.  Getting a new camera or lens or software package, or any type of gear, for that matter, isn’t gong to provide a solution because the same person who was using the old equipment is going to be using the new equipment.

We live in an era when imaging companies constantly that photography is easy—especially if you use their equipment.  “Start taking great pictures.”  “Just point and click.”  It simply isn’t true.  Photography is fundamentally about seeing.  It’s about recognizing what makes a good image and figuring out how to apply the technique necessary to go about capturing it.  Your gear is of little or no help with that process.  If you find your images “boring” or “flat,” it’s not the camera or the lens that’s producing the problem.  There are ways to attempt to address the difficulty, but new gear isn’t one of them.

I recently posted an entry on my own blog discussing my experiences with the Nikon D800E, which I purchased in the middle of last year.  If you read the article, take note that I bought the camera because of what it would help me do when it came to image end use—not because I thought it would make my photography better…because it wouldn’t.

If you’re dissatisfied with your imagery, consider what you can do to improve your eye and your technique before you reach for your wallet.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: Printing, Part IV: Color Management and Printer Profiles

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calibration, color management, Photography, printer profiles, printing, Tips

“Why don’t my prints look like the image on my monitor?”  That’s the question I most frequently hear from people who are new to the printing process.  One of the dirty little secrets of printing is that, even under the best of circumstances, you really can’t expect your prints to look like the image on your screen.  Monitors are light-emitting devices while paper and other printed media are light-reflecting.  As a result, prints will always be less vibrant than the screen image that serves as their source.  To anticipate anything else is to set yourself up for perpetual disappointment.

Once this point is realized and accepted, you can move on to a part of the process that you can actually control and use to your advantage:  color management.  There are other “the print doesn’t look the way it should” issues that can successfully be addressed and understanding and implementing a color management system is the key to solving them.

Color Management

People who charge into the printing process with their heads down often run into problems:  prints that are habitually much too dark (even after accounting for the light-reflective properties of the print media) and prints with unexpected color shifts are probably the most common of these.  (While, in the strictest sense, brightness issues aren’t part of color management, the problem can typically be solved via a color managed workflow.)

Color management addresses the problem that arises when various hardware and software components interpret and render colors differently.  Have you ever viewed the same image on two different monitors and seen significant diversities in appearance?  The images may appear warmer or cooler, for instance, depending on the monitor.  That’s a color management issue.  We judge an image’s appearance, naturally enough, by looking at it.  If we can’t depend on how the image is rendered, we’re flying by the seat of our pants in terms of judging and correcting it.  Having a color managed workflow addresses these kinds of issues by providing a means for all of your devices to be on the same page when it comes to rendering colors.  In a nutshell, color management produces consistency and predictability in the appearance of imagery.

The first part of a color managed workflow involves calibrating your monitor.  There are many calibration packages on the market today, as you can see at this link.  There are plenty of viable options.  A good monitor calibration system will help you adjust your monitor controls to their optimum levels and produce a color profile that will be stored on your computer’s hard drive and will load every time you boot your computer, adjusting your display accordingly.  You now have a consistent, reliable set of values upon which to depend.  You now have a predictable environment when making image adjustments using your RAW converter and image editing program of choice, and this covers brightness as well as color rendering.  Ideally, your monitor should be recalibrated monthly.

Printer Profiles

The next color management step is to acquire and implement a profile designed for the paper and printer model (if not your specific printer—more on that later) that you’re using.  The type of paper you use makes a major, major difference in terms of how color is rendered.  If you don’t believe this, try printing the same image on glossy and matte papers, without making any adjustments to the image itself and comparing the prints side-by-side.  That’ll make a believer out of you.

Much like a monitor profile, a printer profile is a small file that essentially includes color rendering instructions that are read by your printer, when specified in the program you use to produce prints.  In combination with a calibrated monitor, a good printer profile immeasurably eases the process of producing consistent printing results.

Most paper manufacturers produce what is known as stock (or canned) profiles that correspond to their papers, sometimes delineated by printer make and model.  Once upon a time, most of these canned profiles weren’t very accurate, but they’ve gotten significantly better over the years.  And they’re usually free of cost.  You may want to experiment with a canned profile to see whether that, along with a calibrated monitor, is providing you with adequate, consistent printing results.

If you find canned profiles insufficiently predictable for your use, you may want to invest in custom printer profiles.  These profiles are developed specifically based on sample results created with your printer.  There are services that will create custom profiles for you, or you can produce your own with the right equipment.  (There are some profile creation systems sold as part of monitor calibration packages; a few of them are at the above linked site.)  A custom printer profile is designed for a specific type of paper and your printer—not just your make and model, the actual unit you’re using.  Properly produced, a custom profile is peerless when it comes to providing reliable, predictable results and if you’re going to limit yourself to just a few types of paper, they’re easily (in my opinion) worth the modest expense of purchasing one.  If you use a lot of different types of paper and you want the reliability of custom profiles, you may find it to be most cost effective to invest in a system that will allow you to produce your own profiles, but be forewarned that there’s a learning curve involved with doing so.  (Also note that if your printer has a black & white printing mode, you’ll need a separate profile for each type of paper you use for both color and black & white printing.)

If you’re serious about printing and suffer the details of the process, I think you’ll find learning about and implementing color management solutions well worth your time.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.