Wednesday 15 January 2014

Great pics for adventure nuts !

Corsica, Italy and Southern Europe in general are such stunning areas, you won’t be able to resist shooting photos whenever you have your camera at hand. But it’s not all that easy to take the perfect pic!
So here are my top 10 tips for great photos in adventure-packed locations!



1 – the battery problem
Don’t you hate it when you’re about to take the best pic ever and then suddenly, your camera shuts down because you’ve run out of battery? I’m sure you do! So, always make sure you have spare batteries or even a solar charger to recharge it! These come in pretty handy.

2– Protected camera
When it’s cold or rainy – and we really hope it won’t be –, don’t forget to protect your camera and lenses. The last thing you want is to have soaking wet material as this might even damage the camera. When you go back to your hotel, leave your camera bag in a cool and dry place for a couple of hours. This is to prevent condensation forming before bringing your bag in a warm place.

3- Shoot early and late
Early birds and night owls will love this one! As you probably know, landscape images are best shot very early in the morning or just before sunset. At these times of day, there is rich colour in the sky and plenty of shadow detail and, colour and shadow are a photographer’s best friend! They take in all of the surrounding landscape and highlight the texture. Another tip is to avoid shooting at midday when the sun is at its highest as the images will have very little detail and will often be washed out.

4– Good quality pics
If you have a digital camera, then choose the file format you’ll shoot in before actually taking your pictures. Try shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG, so that you can later alter your exposure settings with a photo editing software. Review and tweak your settings after each shot.

5– Perfect reflections
For perfect reflections, you’ll need still water, great colours and a straight horizon line. Always try to shoot at sunrise or sunset when the weather conditions are generally calm and when the colours in the sky are all nice and bright. You might also want to use a tripod to avoid a wonky horizon.

6- Keep your whites white
If you’re shooting in snowy conditions, like in Alps or Corsican Mountains (May or June), you’ll notice that your camera meter will try to compensate for the brightness and lack of detail by making your image grey. To avoid this, you’ll need to use your exposure dial and increase it to +1 or +2 so that the snowy landscape on your photo remains bright white.

7- Freeze wildlife
It’s quite hard to capture wildlife in a single shot. Animals are often fast-moving and unpredictable. If you really want to catch that bird or mouflon on camera, you’ll have to take multiple shots in rapid succession. Choose the continuous shooting mode on your device. Otherwise, you can also set your shutter speed to a high number such as 1/160sec so that you can freeze that bird and eliminate blur more easily.

8- Composition rules
One of the important rules in photography is the composition rule or rule of thirds. Basically, you should always try to visualize a grid divided into thirds both vertically and horizontally. Digital cameras often have a grid mode you can choose to have on the screen. To put this rule into practice, place your subject of the scene on one of the intersecting points. That’ll guarantee you a better composition.

9- Keep it steady
In low light, you’ll almost always need a tripod. This tool enables you to keep the camera steady. It is also great for capturing sunrises and sunsets as a tripod enables you to use longer shutter speed. When in a natural environment, choose a lightweight and portable model.

10- Stay alert
You don’t want to miss the shot of the century but this can happen more often thank you think! It’s very easy to become so absorbed by the photo you’re composing that you often forget about everything else around you. In the land of mouflons (Corsican wild goats) for example, you’ll see how much it pays to work quickly and to keep an eye on your surroundings at all times.

No comments:

Post a Comment