Photography Masterclass

Tips by Nigel Atherton.

• Travel photography may consist of portraiture, landscape, nature, architechture, etc.
• If you get up early in the morning you will not only get best light but also less crowds.
• Do not be overburden by your photo gear. Travel shooting often requires wide angle to telephoto. It is a good idea to invest in a 18-200 mm lens although the quality it produces may not be as good as two lenses 18-55 mm and 50-200 mm.
• Do not shoot everything with your lens focus set to infinity. Go closer to pick up details.
• Some images look better in portrait and some in landscape orientation. Turn your camera 90 degrees to see how it looks and if you are not sure, shoot both ways. You can of course crop your image later.
• Do not shoot from your eye level all the time, look up or down!
• Carrying a compact point&shoot camera may prove useful.
• Experiment with your camera’s settings: use slower shutter speed to create blur or wide aperture to achive required depth of field.
• Flash can also be handy in sunny bright days if used as fill flash. At night you can also use the flash but it is advizable to set it to a slow-sync mode, that way you will capture ambient light as well.
• Do not forget people, short telephoto lens is recommended for portraits.
• Even if you had a busy day, try to stay till the sunset as it is the most beatiful time of the day.

Bert Stephani tells in this video how he did his photo set in the woods.

The model was lit by hard sun light. He wanted to compensate it with speedlights. In the shade he had to set his speed light to the full output. When the model was standing in the direct sun light he had to back lit her.

He used flash through an umbrella to equalize the fore and backgrounds.

The direct sun light from above helped him separate the subject from the background.

His photos illustrate well the approaches he used in his session.

Any model, including male, needs to have some makeup when photographing.

The major rule is no shine on the skin. You need to have a matt finish and in order to get it, you have to apply foundation in downwards motion to go with the skin and not against the hair of the skin.

Then female and male models need to use blush.

For female models a classic eye looks great on photos. A neutral tone of different color may be applied.

The only part of the face that requires shine is lips. You can leave your natural color but add a bit of shine.

Also teeth should be as white as possible, so one really must take proper care of his/her teeth on a regular basis.

Neil Creek shows his method of holding a camera to minimize its shaking. It gets especially important when your shutter speed is slow.

You just need to twist your camera a little bit and it will be much steadier. Try to turn one hand one side and the other hand the other side a little bit.

It works well with point and shooet cameras but can be useful with DSLRs too.