Pierre Steenberg

Shoot well after sunset

October 12, 2014 • Leave a Comment

I have written about waiting for and shooting after sunset before. So here I go again. Often the clouds can be lit very nicely after sunset. The contrast and dynamic range (different between lightest parts and darkest parts of the image) are much lower. This makes it easier for your camera's sensor to get the entire range of light in the shot witho...

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Anticipate and be ready ...

October 05, 2014 • Leave a Comment

We where at this spot well before sunset. I looked at the clouds that were half way between the sun and the island. The clouds seemed fairly thin. It looked as if the scene was going to be transformed when the sun either moved in behind the clouds or sink down below them. Perhaps these clouds where going to be lit up with nice color. What was impor...

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Working fast ...

September 28, 2014 • Leave a Comment

One thinks of landscape photography as a slow endeavor. In deed I have waited many hours for the light to change; many times in vain. So when I tell photographic workshop participants that we need to work fast the beginners are often perplexed. I have been told many, many times that the.......... (mountain, lake, tree, insert landscape element) is...

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Take a professional workshop ...

September 21, 2014 • Leave a Comment

I will be assisting veteran pro photographer Don Smith (http://www.donsmithphotography.com) in teaching two professional photographic workshops during the next two weeks. Have you considered attending such a workshop? Let me tell you that these workshops do much, much more for your photography than spending money on a new camera. A new expensive ca...

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Add something for scale

September 14, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Sometimes the size of objects can be deceiving in photos. The magnitude of large elements can get lost. Small elements can be made to look large. Sometimes this is what we want and other times it is not. Look at this image: The size of the iceberg does not look that big without the boat. The boat adds scale. I took various shots of this iceberg.

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Lines create depth

September 07, 2014 • Leave a Comment

We have spoken about lead in lines and depth over and over again. So why is it addressed again? The reason is simple. Amateurs shoot flat pictures; images that you look at 2 dimensionally. When you look at such an image you see the whole image at once. You look at it with one glance. After all you are looking at an image which is physically flat (p...

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Camera settings for action

August 31, 2014 • Leave a Comment

When our subject is moving fast, we have to pick a shutter speed that will freeze the action (unless we are shooting a waterfall and choose to blur the flow, or we are shooting a propeller driven plane, in which case we need to freeze the plane but show the motion of the props.) The faster the subject moves, the faster shutter speed is required. We...

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Change your position, change the perspective

August 24, 2014 • Leave a Comment

This trip to Newfoundland was the first time in my life that I saw an iceberg. Growing up in Africa does not particularly lend itself to being able to view icebergs. It was quite a site; something so unusual for me. When we arrive on a scene we can be so excited about what we see and about photographing the site that our photographic judgment is mi...

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Find a foreground element

August 17, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Last week we talked about shooting in the woods. A great topic to shoot in forests is footpaths. They form good lead in lines and gives you a center point of focus. As with all landscape photography finding a good foreground element is important as they add so much to an image. They arrest the viewer's attention right away. They give depth. Once th...

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Shooting in the woods

August 10, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Last week I spoke about drab gray skies. Shooting in the woods when the sky acts as a giant diffuser is a great idea; soft light. What do you shoot when in the woods / forest? There are thousands of trees all around and they can all look the same. They can be so dense that it is difficult to find anything to shoot. A shot of thousands of tree trunk...

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