Pierre Steenberg

Contrast and balance

August 19, 2018 • Leave a Comment

When photographers speak of contrast they typically refer to light and dark values. However, at times we like to contrast things such as a plant in the desert where we contrast life and death. We may want to use the contrast of color like when you place one red apple amongst a box of green apples. These contrasts can be powerful in your images. We...

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Get Close, Shoot From Lower Down

August 12, 2018 • Leave a Comment

We often plonk our tripods down fully extended and shoot from eye level because it is comfortable to do so. What do you think of this image? Just to the right of this image is a ledge. All the other photographers where shooting from that ledge. All of them were photographing from eye level. I decided to climb down from the ledge to this position...

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Photograph After Sunset

August 05, 2018 • Leave a Comment

Many photographers pack up and leave when the sun sets. I have found that I often get my best shots after the sun has gone to bed. The sky is regularly at its nicest just before sunrise or just after sunset. As long as your subject matter can deal with longer shutter speeds, stay out and shoot longer. To your eyes things may look dark and unattract...

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Directing the Viewer's Eyes

July 29, 2018 • Leave a Comment

One of the goals we have as photographers is to direct the viewer's eyes. We want to pull their eye's into the image. We want to keep them looking at our photograph for as long as possible. The longer we can get viewers to look at an image the better the image is (except if they are trying to figure out what on earth they are looking at). We want t...

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Think About Your Composition

July 22, 2018 • Leave a Comment

Photography is half science/technical and half art/vision. When you get to a scene what do you do in terms of your vision? I just take the scene in. I look at the major features before me. I look at the weather, the sky. I decide what I want to do with the major features in the scene. Then I walk around. I look at how the position of the major feat...

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Light

July 15, 2018 • Leave a Comment

If you have read my blogs from the beginning you may remember that the word "photography" means drawing or writing with light. That aught to tell us that photography is all about light. Yes, the scene is important but light is more important than the scene. I was photographing at Big Sur's McVay falls this year. Within an hour we had seen the weath...

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Shutter Speeds

July 08, 2018 • Leave a Comment

Before I take any picture I always ask myself: "Is there movement in scene?" If the answer is "no" then I really do not care too much about my shutter speed (I always use a tripod so sloooooow shutter speeds are not a problem and fast shutter speeds work just fine as well). Now we do need to be carefull to answer "no" to quickly because wind can ca...

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Light, mood and white balance

July 01, 2018 • Leave a Comment

On a recent workshop at Big Sur, California we visited the same location on two different days. We encountered very different conditions on each day. I made basically the same image composition wise. However, because of the conditions the light and mood of the two images are very different. Here is the first image from the first day we visited this...

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God-rays

June 24, 2018 • Leave a Comment

God-rays can come and go fast. Other times they may linger a bit longer. When you are lucky enough to be able to include them in your imagery they just add so much warmth and wonder to these images. This image was taken at Big Sur, California. The God-rays just draw you to the background. Yet, it helps to have a strong foreground. The ice plant...

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The human element in landscape photography

June 17, 2018 • Leave a Comment

When I learnt photography a few purists attempted their best to instill in me the principle of not every including any man-made object in the image. If you did, they would not classify the image as a landscape image. I still know some photographers that will not photograph any scene which includes any man-made object. To each his or her own; after...

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