Pro Photo Tips Derek Sturman
Astrophotography and Fall photography
Light dictates Everything in Photography, INCLUDING shapes, colors and textures. Pay close attention to light and you’ll get better at all forms of photography. Astrophotography is often confusing or complicated for many photographers because of the inherent lack of light, but there is still light here, you just need to know how to use it.
Tip #1: (Astro Photography)
Expose your foreground and your sky separately. Consider how dark your foreground will be engulfed in a nighttime darkness. What you may not know is it is still being illuminated faintly by star light. Harness the stars' faint light, and adjust the length of exposure time to soak it all up. Using a shutter speed that is too long can lead to “Trails” or streak from earth's movement. This means you will either have a single image with a nice sharp sky with no trails and a dark foreground or, a longer exposure with a nice clean foreground with lots of detail in the shadows, but your sky is streaking. Get the best of both worlds by shooting the sky and foreground images separately. Use a longer exposure, with a lower ISO to photograph the foreground to produce a nice clean foreground with detail. Then, raise your ISO and reduce your shutter speed to create an image of the star trails. These can be combined later in photoshop or Lightroom giving you lots of options! Harness the light when you can, soak up more of it with longer exposure!
Tip #2: Compositions are Everywhere
Take time to notice the smaller details such as puddles of mud and water. Understanding light isn’t just about knowing when to shoot or where, it’s about knowing what direction to shoot as well. Light interacts with oils, waters, and colors very differently depending on your angle. Take time to move your head and camera position to see how things change. Here is an example where at certain angles the oils and colors were not even visible, but at the right angle the light reveals a colorful reflection of iridescent oils! That otherwise looked like a tiny mud puddle with nothing interesting to shoot!
Tip #3: Experimentation is what it’s all about.
Many people want to march into a well-known spot, set up their tripod, shoot right at the primetime and then pack up and leave and get that one iconic shot. The issue here is you may be trying too hard to recreate something you’ve seen before. As epic as it might be, have you considered that the person whose photo you are looking at was a lucky shot? Maybe they went to that spot to get a nice blue sky with some white clouds, but they ended up waiting and only getting an epic sunset to shoot. Or maybe they meant to shoot another direction entirely and then the light was just better in the direction of this shot! That’s not always the case but consider that sometimes, when you go somewhere the conditions are just different, maybe something else is now getting the more photogenic lighting.
Learn to let yourself try weird compositions and angles that follow the good conditions where you are in the moment. Learn how to create strong compositions in every scenario. Trying different compositions and perspectives is a good habit to get into. Learn to roll with the punches. Some of the best photos I have were moments where I was walking to or from an “iconic shot” and some random thing caught my eye, and I took the time to experiment with it.
Final Tip: Never let something that calls to you go unnoticed by your camera!
Not all locations or light are created equal. This is something I’ve noticed as a phenomenon for years; things are more likely to be different in our world than they are to be the same. Learn to follow your intuition and allow the place to show you what it has to offer. Being in the right place at the right time IS photography. Trying to make the place and the time what you imagine in your head is not possible.
