NZ Photo Info

Ever wondered how to get that silky smooth looking waterfall with nice vibrant colours? Well, it's not as difficult as you might think.

The main thing that you need to do is get the shutter speed down low. This particular image was shot at 1/5 sec. If you are shooting with low shutter speeds you will also need to have a good tripod or some other means of supporting your camera. You can use a cable release, or for this type of photography the shutter delay timer on your camera will work just as well.

Getting the shutter speed down low can be difficult during the day, but is easily achieved with the aid of a filter. You have a couple of choices, an ND (Neutral Density) filter - this basically reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor (or film) of your camera.

Backlighting is a technique whereby you light the subject from behind. That is, the light source (or sources) is in front of the camera but behind the subject. If the subject is opaque in nature such as the kiwifruit example you get a nice glowing effect.

You can take a couple of different approaches with this type of photography. Use available light, off camera lighting or a combination of both.

With my example here I needed a controlled environment so went with a single off camera flash triggered by a Flash Wave radio trigger. I also wanted a Hi-Key image which emphasized the dark areas of the kiwifruit slice (something a little different to the thousands of other kiwifruit images I have seen on the Internet).

When shooting in low light conditions or with long zoom lenses some sort of support is a must to avoid camera shake and ensure a sharp image. A tripod is the obvious choice and will give the best result but it is not always the most practical.

However there are a few situations where a tripod is not the most practical accessory:

• When you are going tramping it is extra weight that you have to carry.
• Shooting images in a crowd with limited space.
• When shooting with long lenses and you want to move around. Think sports photography.

I recently purchased a Manfrotto 680B monopod and 486RC2 ball head. While I could have got smaller and cheaper I wanted something that would last me for years to come. It is rated as being capable of holding a load of 10kg and weighs in at around 0.83kg.

Rather than try to sell the benefits of a monopod, here are a couple of images taken under the same conditions. One handheld without monopod and one taken with monopod.

With it raining off and on (more on than off) for the past few weeks I have had little chance to use my new Olympus E-510 since getting it.

So, as the rain poured down on Saturday afternoon I decided to build myself a light tent. Not that I really have a keen interest in product type photography, it is still an area that I wanted to explore. It is a great inexpensive way to learn more about lighting and what does and does not work.

I decided to build a PVC framed box covered with a white cloth. For lights I used some cheap lamps with a clip rather than a base which meant that I could clip them to the frame and position them where required.

At the moment I am using 20 Watt Eco Bulbs (Equivalent to 100Watts incandescent lights). They have a colour temperature of around 2700K. I will try some other light sources as the time permits.

Sometimes in order to get the results you're looking for you just have to change the way you look at things! By getting a different POV (Point Of View) than everyone else it will make your pictures different from the rest.

Lets take a fairly common subject as an example - birds at the beach. Anyone can take pictures of birds but how do you make your pictures stand out from everyone elses?

We will assume that we haven't been lucky enough and fast enough to capture birds in flight and that we have had to resort to a picture of the bird standing on the sand, a rock pole or some other object.