Pierre Steenberg

Bird Photography: Part II - Mistakes

October 04, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Julie Chen was kind enough to teach me the finer art of bird photography. Here is what I learned not to do. I will also share mistakes I made during this shoot. Firstly, when shooting water birds a polarizer filter really helps. Since my lens was new I don't have a polarizer that fits it yet; so I shot without one. An overcast day did not help as t...

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Bird Photography: Part I - Equipment

September 27, 2015 • Leave a Comment

I met up with expert bird photographer Julie Chen for a day of shooting. Julie was kind enough to share some of her expertise with me. During the next three weeks I will be talking about what bird photographers should do and should avoid. The weather did not cooperate for it was dark and foggy. My arm hurt because two elbow surgeries made my elbow...

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Pin sharp, front to back; Part II

September 20, 2015 • Leave a Comment

I hope you have your images ready to focus stack. For this exercise I just shot a few images of a camera and lens on a board. I took five shots each focused at a different place. Ready? Open Photoshop (I used Photoshop CC 2015). Do the following; File> Scripts> Load files into Stack: Now the following dialogue box shows up: Click on browse an...

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Pin sharp, front to back; Part I

September 13, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Landscape photography often require enormous depth of field (depth of the field {part of the image} in sharp focus). When we place an interesting object right in front of the image that has to be pin sharp AND we also want the mountain range in the distant background to be pin sharp we may run out of options to achieve this. The first line of attac...

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Photographic workshops: Part III

September 06, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Now that you have had a great photographic workshop it may be tempting to return to life as you knew it before the workshop. Stand firm against such temptations. Go out to shoot every week, even for just a bit. You need to get what you have learned at the workshop into your workflow. Your new found vision, techniques, and workflow should become a h...

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Photographic workshops: Part II

August 30, 2015 • Leave a Comment

Last week we talked about selecting the right workshop to meet your needs. Today we are discussing how to make the best of a workshop. Just like last week, we need to backtrack. Many people seek tips to make the best of a workshop while attending, but if you really want to get the most out of attending a workshop you need to prepare long before you...

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Photographic workshops: Part I

August 23, 2015 • Leave a Comment

In a previous blog I touted the importance of attending a photographic workshop if you really want to learn a lot and get to the next level; you should also come home with some great images. Today we are going to talk about how to select a photographic workshop that is best for YOU. Next week we will talk about how to get the most from attending a...

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Directing the viewer's eyes: Part III

August 16, 2015 • Leave a Comment

So last week we talked about using brightness to direct the viewer's eyes to where we want them to look and thereby to enhance our composition. This week we are going to explore using focus to direct the viewer's eyes. We have already said that the human eye will always go to that which is in focus. If there is an in focus element and an out of foc...

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Directing the viewer's eyes: Part II

August 09, 2015 • 2 Comments

Last week we said that photographers can direct a viewer's eyes by using brightness, anything different from the rest of the image, and focus. Today we pay closer attention to brightness. Remember that the human eye always goes to that which is the brightest. That includes bright colors and light brightness. Let's have a look at the following image...

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Sony A7R II and Canon lenses: Autofocus

August 06, 2015 • Leave a Comment

I was invited to a Sony event yesterday. During this event I spent about two to three hours with the Sony rep. I also tested the new Sony A7R II with my Canon gear. Given that the old A7R was really terrible at auto focusing with the Metabones adapters, I really wanted to see if this new camera lives up to the hype. How did things work out? First...

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