One thing I LOVE about Nikons is the Creative Lighting System (CLS). Recent Nikon cameras and speedlights can be linked via line-of-sight infrared (IR) communication and you can trigger your Nikon speedlight off-camera without buying any additional equipment. The system is great and if you own a Nikon dSLR and Nikon speedlight (SB600/700/800/900), it's a great introduction to off-camera flash that you can play around with. By setting the speedlight as a remote, you then use the built-in flash on the camera to trigger the speedlight. You can tell the built-in flash to either fire or just be a trigger. I don't have time to put together a tutorial, but if you're interested and not sure how to do it, just look at your manual[s] or google "Nikon CLS" and you can figure out how to do it. It's relatively simple and straightforward, so go out and use it! You'll be amazed at the results you can get just with a little tinkering. One piece of advice: take note of what channel the speedlight is on!!! Last night, I embarrassingly made the rookie mistake of not keeping track of what channel the speedlight was on and what channel my camera was sending messages to. As a result I got very frustrated and didn't exactly get the shot I want. This takes me to today's photo tip: know your gear before going out in the field! You've got to be familiar with every aspect of your gear before going out in the field if you're going to get the shots you want. Read your manuals and find willing guinea pigs to try out your gear before going out on jobs. That way if you run into trouble, knowing your gear will help you effectively and efficiently troubleshoot. I figured out my problem last night relatively quickly (probably within 3-4 minutes), but I only had a couple minutes to get the shot I wanted, so by the time I figured out what was wrong the opportunity had passed. While I'm disappointed in myself, identifying the source of problems and learning from your mistakes will make you a better photographer. I hopefully won't be making this mistake again, and by sharing my experience here I hope you won't either!
Photo Tips
Photo Tip #3: Improvise!
In conjunction with the post below, I wanted to make note of another tip that I think is worth mentioning. Whenever you go on a shoot, whether it's for fun, for a client, for your family, for whatever, you have to be able to adapt to and make the most of your surroundings. I am a grad student....in the sciences. I don't have access to a studio, nor do I care to rent out one (I'd rather just drop my $$ on gear). So what do we do then in order to get studio-ish shots?? One word: improvise! The shots below were simply taken in my apartment, but you'd probably never guess if you didn't know me. I just rearranged a little for the shoot, took some pictures off the wall, gave my model some props I had lying around and started shooting. Neat what you can do with an old photo frame that woulda been thrown out, one of my guitars, and my office chair. Sure, when you improvise you are also going to increase your need for photoshop....some hooks needed to taken out of the wall, a couple blemishes on the chair, etc, but Photoshop CS5's "content aware fill" makes this unbelievably simple. If that doesn't take care of it, the spot healing brush or the healing brush should do the trick. I also increased the contract a little to brighten the wall (yes I could have blown out the entire wall in photoshop but I kinda like the look of it left the way it is). From expensive cameras to lenses to studios, not all of us have access to all the stuff the big boys do, but you can make some "big boy" shots with a little creativity and making the most out of what you've got. The digital medium is great for experimenting since you don't have to buy film and pay for processing, so get out there, do a little improvisation and experimenting and see what you get!
Photo Tip #2: Nature Photography
Two of my biggest influences in terms of photography are Ansel Adams and the photographers and editors of National Geographic magazine. If you're unfamiliar, do me a favor and hit up google and search for either. Next, click on the "images" tab and you'll be amazed at what you see. Whether we're talking landscapes, animals, insects, flowers, or almost anything you'd see outside, there are several things that make for great nature-based photographs. First, lets talk preparation. Preparation is extremely important when shooting nature photography. If you want to shoot a particular animal in the wild, do a little research. Figure out it's habitat, what it eats, whatever information you can find that might help you find it in the wild. Make sure if you go out into the wild and "shoot" animals (not in the hunting sense), don't disturb anything more than you have to in order to get the shot and most importantly, as an Eagle scout I feel it's my duty to say, leave everything not like you found it, but better than you found it. If you aim to shoot landscapes, do some recon on a resource like google earth where you can view different vantage points without even physically being there. Look at flickr and google images to see what other vantage points people have taken pics from to get an idea of not only what you want to go shoot, but an idea of what people haven't shot so you can make your shots your own. When you get to the location, look around and scout it out...do some recon. Check out the trajectory of the sun and look how the light falls at different times of day. If sightseeing, not all of this is possible, so I'd recommend having a strong knowledge of how to use and get the most out of your camera before going to a location you think will be worthwhile to shoot. The second point I want to make is when you shoot nature and landscapes, 99 times out of 100 you are going to need a great deal of patience in order to get the shot you want. For example, check out this article (the inspiration for this post) about Anton Jankovoy of Ukraine shooting stairs trails in the Himalayas. Practiced and honed his skills before he got there, lived in Nepal 6 months out of the year for three years shooting, and even practiced meditation to sooth his nerves when shooting the hours-long exposures he did. That's a LOT of patience, but his shots with star trails above Mt. Everest are stunning. If you watch the behind the scenes of the videographers for BBC's Planet Earth documentary, you'll see similar stories. Sometimes you're gonna have to wait for everything to be "just right" in order to hit the shutter, and that can take time once you get to your vantage point. Not everyone has this kind of patience, but the pay off in terms of the images you can get can be worth it and then some.
Last, sometimes outdoors when you have no control over the variables involved in what you are shooting, luck can play a huge part in your shots. Sometimes you can plain just get lucky. This isn't a bad thing. As long as you are out shooting and doing something you enjoy, don't ever take "you got lucky" as an insult. Some of the best photographers out there have taken some of their best shots simply by getting lucky. That being said, get out there and shoot....when shooting nature or anything outdoors, you'd be surprised what you can find and shoot with a little preparation, patience, and luck if you just take a closer look...sometimes even in your own backyard.
As a shameless PSA, remember that shooting outdoors is a privilege. The subjects we shoot may not be around forever, and while I'm not here to extoll the virtues of "being green" (I'm certainly not the greenest in real life nor do I strive to be), it is our duty as photographers to at least minimize our impact during a shoot. Be mindful of your surroundings and when you pack your gear up, take an extra second to look around and make sure you leave everything as you found it. Simple steps like these will help ensure that our subjects will be around to shoot and will ensure our ability to shoot them for years to come.