9 tips for efficient and safe photography during holidays

It has been a while since my last post, but I had a very good reason for it. I have spent together with my wife great holidays in the USA. We were travelling through South Western USA for three weeks, admiring magnificent landscapes and the nature of this area. During preparations and actual trip I have collected (or learned hard way, more on that later) some simple, yet efficient tips on how to organize a photo equipment, shooting sessions, preparing for unexpected situations, etc.

1. Take a tripod with you 

Doesn't matter which camera you have, using tripod is invaluable especially when shooting in early morning and early evening. Tripod makes possible to use longer exposure times while using low ISO values and small apertures. It results in turn in more sharp pictures. If one plans to create HDR images in post processing, tripod is actually a must have. 

2. Never, ever leave your photo camera on a tripod unattended

This is a lesson I have learned rather hard way. After a shooting session of the Horseshoe Bend in the morning I put my camera (mounted on the tripod) aside and walked several steps to get my bag. At this moment a sudden blast of wind put my camera down, which hit the rocky ground. After all I had a lot of luck, since camera and lens were operational, so I could make use of the set. But the autofocus system was at least partially damaged (only a few out of 51 autofocus points were working correctly). So the camera needed to be repaired after the holidays. Which brings me to next 2 tips.

3. Get your equipment insured

There are different forms of financial insurance. Either you can buy a separate insurance for the camera body (or even lenses), or choose a travel insurance which covers the photo equipment. In case of theft or damage it will save a lot of money. Since my camera is still in reparation, I don't know how much the reparation will cost. But since I have insured my equipment, I don't bother that much.

4. Bring a reserve photo set with you

If something really bad happens with the camera you still want to be able to take the photos, don't you? That is why it is very convenient to have a backup. During my holidays I had actually 3 cameras with me: 2 DSLRs and one compact camera. Next to that I had 11-16, 24-70, 70-200 mm lenses and as a backup the 18-200 mm lens with me 'just in case'. The 2nd DSLR body and 18-200mm lens I have hardly used, but at least I was prepared for unexpected.

5. Scout the place to visit in advance

By scouting I mean actually studying the locations to be visited before the trip, via Internet. Use Google Maps, Street View, discussion forums, travel blogs, and of course books. This is necessary, in my opinion, for two reasons: first, a holiday travel is packed with a lot of places and activities and typically planned to see as much as possible. And it means that the time spent on location has to be used optimally. Second, scouting location in advance increases the chance of finding an unique place to photograph that is not noticed in the first instance by the rest of the crowd. Sure, if it is a really iconic spot, it will probably be photographed by some other people, but still it is worth looking for it.

6. Start your visit in a local gift or post card shop

Sounds maybe strange, but visiting a local post card shop will give some inspirations on what to photograph. It can be invaluable especially in the less known places where you don't even have an idea how it would look like. To give an example: we have been confronted with the U.S. government shutdown during our holidays, so most of the iconic places located in National Parks were unaccessible for us. The first closed park on our way was Arches. While looking for alternatives we have seen a postcard of Corona Arch, being located outside the park, so available to public. So we knew immediately where to go the next day and what to photograph.

7. Talk to the "locals"

One one hand people living at the place have the knowledge that they absorbed over the years. They can tell about the places in their neighbourhood a lot of interesting stuff. On the other hand they have the most actual information about the location; something that often obsoletes the information in travel guides, or even on Internet. Many of them are also hobby or even professional photographers and (at least it is my experience so far) they eagerly share their experiences. 

8. Have your equipment prepared for the next shot

This is important in the situations when the equipment is twisted a lot: lenses are changed frequently, filters are placed, camera settings are manipulated. So, suppose you are photographing a close-up of the beautiful granite mountain with 70-200 mm lens, to reduce the reflections you have placed a polarizing filter in front of your lens, set your camera in bracketing mode to capture different exposures. Then you are done, pack the camera back in the bag, move on. Few kilometers further you have a different scenery, changing very quickly. You grab the camera to capture the moment, and... oh, filter has to be dismounted, bracketing switched off. Seconds are elapsed, scene is gone.

To deal with that I have developed a discipline to always bring my camera and lens to a kind of 'default' state after I am done with a certain composition or location. So after shooting I take some time to put the filters back in the bag, restore camera settings to those that I use as a starting point. With some cameras it can be done very quickly. Default settings and setup cause that I don't need to think about a starting point while preparing for next shot and reduce the time needed for adjustments. 

9. Plan your day with photography in mind

To take a nice photo you have to be on location when the light is nice. Being ready for shooting at sunrise or at sunset increases the chances for good lighting. Which means that it is good to know the times of local sunrise or sunset. Those two periods of the day definitely determined our daily rhythm during this holidays. Another aspect worth close observation is weather. Clouds during the day can create beautiful, interesting scenery and lighting conditions. So checking weather reports for an area to be visited is also my habit during the photo travel.

Organize a big portrait session - optimizing the flow

This post is a continuation of a series about shooting portraits for a school. I described briefly in one of previous articles about the general idea. In this post I am going to describe some human-related aspects of such session and give some tips on how to make it successful for the children, school staff and the photographer. To give you some context let me just summarize the challenge:

• The session takes 3 to 4 hours
• During this time 70 to 100 children gets photographed
• Each child is photographed twice: one photo is in a full-length pose, one as a close-up (depending on the situation either upper half of or head and shoulders
• Some children want to be photographed together with their brothers or sisters, school friends, etc.
• Each group is photographed as a whole together with their mentor teacher.

In short, such a day is intense and the border between intense and chaotic is thin. But it is the responsibility of a photographer to deliver the photos, so he need to ensure that the workplace remains decent during the day and such session doesn't turn into chaos. Here's an approach I have developed over several years. I am not telling it is perfect, but it works quite well.

1. Realize that you as a photographer are the director of the whole event. So think ahead about the possible scenarios and have a plan for different cases.
2. Get in touch with school staff in advance. Ask about their schedule, try to fit the session into school's rhythm. Ask for the school schedule during the day of the session. Plan the order in which the groups will attend the session.
3. Agree in advance how the teachers and parents will assist you. It is absolutely necessary to have help of the school staff or/and the parents. For a number of reasons: first, it is legally mandatory that teachers are present during any activity of a 'stranger'. Second, they are invaluable when guiding the group of children. They simply know how to do it efficiently. Third, children, especially the younger, feel more comfortable and safe when they have a trusted adult person close to them.
4. Prepare all your gear before starting shooting. Be on a location on time, way before the planned start. Keep in mind that setting up the background, lights, test shooting cost time (in my case it takes 90 minutes, because I need to iron the background).
5. After setting everything up look around and try to visualize how the children would walk (or rather run) on and around the setup. Then protect your most important parts! Put a chair, a table, anything that would stop the most active and enthusiast children from ruining into the arranged studio. I always stay in the front of setup, in the direction of the incoming group. As soon as I see them running I make some gestures to stop them and explain quickly how they should move and where to watch out. Then I keep them (together with a teacher) out of the actual scene, letting them stay or sit around the setup.
6. Be decisive. Children get quickly excited but they get bored also very fast. So it is important to start shooting immediately - just start talking to children, ask who is going to be first (for 100% there always will be at least one), put them in the marked place on the scene, explain what you are going to do (2 photos) and shoot. One, control, two - ready. Next child. Everything should take no more than several minutes.
7. Remember, you are a director. So when individual photos are ready, start to organize group photo. Depending on a group size decide about the number of rows, who will be in front, who in back (a rule of thumb is: smaller children in the front). 
8. Once the group photo is ready guide the group out of the scene. Remember again about securing your gear and the setup.
9. Control the setup in between the groups. Is the background still ok? Are all the lights operational? Do the assistants know how it works and how to proceed?
10. Be flexible. Sometimes you need to spend a bit more time with a child; either he/she is shy or requires some more attention during posing (like children wearing glasses). In this situation communicate to a teacher or parents so they know what is going on.
11. Ask the teacher or parent in case there is some intervention required during posing. Like fixing the hairs, clothing, etc. Again, it is about building the trust. Children trust their teachers and parents, not you. I always discuss this question in advance and ask assistants for help in such cases.
12. Have a couple of jokes ready. Use them when a child or group needs to be cheered up.

After my first Dutch Photo Walk - technicalities

Previously I have shared some thoughts about my participation in the Dutch City Walk. In this post I would like to share some technical aspects of the event. Note that most of my observations refer to the other topics, like "Street photography", "Shooting people", "Post processing".

Before

Check the proposed route in advance. It will help you to identify the potentially interesting spots and to pre-visualize the route.

Check the weather forecast. There is a couple of hours walking and you need to feel comfortable, without hassle of too cold, or too warm clothing. And, if it is going to rain, don't forget to take a proper stuff for protecting your gear. What I take with me is a rain sleeve, a small towel and a lens cleaning cloth. 

Obviously, take enough memory cards and fully loaded batteries.

More tough questions to answer are: which lens (or lenses) to take, to take or not a tripod. Before the photowalk I wasn't sure so I have asked other co-walkers. So learn from each other.
Finally I took the 24-70/2.8 lens (which, by the way, became my workhorse) and as a reserve a 18-200/3.6-5.6 lens. I didn't take a tripod because the interesting indoor places (like churches) were either in renovation or closed.

During

Personally I like to work lately with a predefined theme (and for this photowalk it was Delftware.

So the pictures like these were taken:

But in practice it is a walk and interacting with other people. So the photographic theme evolved during the walk. And it is a city, so I got inspired by a lot of interesting stuff:

My advice is also to look every now and there what other co-walkers are doing. You can learn a lot, and sometimes take interesting shot of them:

On the technical side: I tried to keep the camera settings as simple as possible and as universal as possible. Each moment something interesting can happen and I didn't want to ruin my photo just by having wrong settings. Here's what worked for me: the camera in the Aperture mode with auto-adjust ISO settings and with the second command dial button set for exposition compensation.

Every now and then I have switched the bracketing on, but kept it very simple (just 3 shots, under-, normal-, and over-) exposed with the F-stop distance between them set to 1. One important note,

I learned to switch bracketing mode off practically after each shot taken. For very simple reason: I wanted to be prepared for the next shot, starting from the stable set of settings. Forgetting to switch off bracketing can cost you unexpected under- and overexposed images.

So I kept the camera settings actually quite basic and simple and was able to focus more on the composition of my photos and on looking for the interesting places.

After

Generally first thing that I wanted after the event was to share the photos with the rest of the group and see what other did. And because group was so enthusiastic about the photography, first results were published the same evening. Discussions about the photos started, +1 on G+ were given.

For me it was important to see how others see the same places I saw through their camera. Again: a great learning moment.

How Google+ community helps me to advance as a photographer

When Google+ started last year, I joined the fast growing G+ community as soon as I could. And discovered almost immediately how nice Google+ deals with the photos - to view them, to share, to comment, etc. No wonder it has become a vibrant ecosystem full of passionate professional and amateur photographers. With so many people publishing amazing photography stuff and the ease of shaping the message stream it was very easy to create a "Photographers" circle and get inspired every day by their amazing pictures.
But it was just the beginning. After adding people to my circles I discovered that they are part of others, created specially for exploring different aspects of photography. One of such circles is associated with the 10000 Photographers around the world G+ page, curated by +Robert Skreiner. Robert does a nice thing: he manages a list of photographers (hobbyists and professionals) and allows everyone join his list under some conditions that can be summarized as: be active photographer and participant of the G+ photographers community.
I asked Robert for a membership of the group. I am not on his list yet, maybe will not ever be. But it doesn't actually matter. By applying to become part of the community I have made a commitment: to publish my photos regularly. And to watch and communicate with others about their work. Commitment to publish the photos helps me a lot in the moments when my enthusiasm for photography fades a bit and I need some extra push to grab my camera and take some shots. Another aspect is the quality of the photos I publish. Since I am part of a group that produces fantastic pictures, I need to improve my photos, trying new things, exploring new techniques or, simply put, produce good photos.
Every now and then I get the feedback about my photos. This helps as well of course.
And by commenting on the pictures I get to know new people and can share my thoughts on their photos which helps me to understand the photography better.
Does it all make Google+ unique? I think, yes and no. No, because the at the end there are people that create the community. And there are great people everywhere in the world and on Internet. And yes, because Google+ delivers tools to shape the communities easier than other platforms. And  it attracts great photographers from all over the world.

Fill space with people and a city photo starts to live

This post is a result of my experiments with photographing objects that can typically be found in a city: buildings, squares, tourist attractions, etc. After some initial trials, even if a photo contains the objects I originally wanted to I realized that often something is 'missing'. Let's take a few examples:

I like the above picture because of straight lines, the reflection visible on the right side of the frame. But what is it actually? 2nd try:

Suddenly, the passage starts to live. Now next to the shapes there is a dynamics, and the reflection is even more interesting.

Another example:

An ice cream car. That's it. But wait until the customers come:

Although the two boys and the ice cream man don't fill the frame, they add a lot to the scene. Now the photo starts to live, there is some story ongoing in the frame.

Last example:

This is one of the widely discussed buildings that emerged in Eindhoven city centre several years ago. You can like or dislike it, but  one thing is for sure - it is interesting. The mood of this picture (despite relative warm light) is somewhat cold. Empty space and a big 'egg' raising out of it. The same building with some dynamics around it:

I know that it is subjective, but to me the mood is different now, mainly due to a bicyclist on the first plane.  

So they are people that bring life to the city. Having them on a city photo can change it substantially. Something to remember when taking city shots next time.