Ten Essentials to Producing Quality Tour & Activity Photos

2) MEMORY, REMEMBER, MEMORY:

It’s harder to go places if You don’t know where or when You are. Setting file names, Date & Time, and Geographic Locations (i.e. Metadata) will ease Your workflow organization today, tomorrow and next year. It’s Your memory, don’t lose it. Your mind goes next…

It’s healthy to reflect on the journey, keep an accurate record of the travels and You can create a clearer picture in Your mind when reviewing Your images.

3) INSPIRATION:

Exploration spurs creativity, and this can be a positive snowball effect. Discover the uniqueness of any location as a guide and You can frame a creative story around it.

“The quality of the photographs is in direct proportion to the quality of the relationship.” –Scott S. Stuckey. This was a journey with friends I consider family. A little trip just outside their hometown can reignite the creative side.

4) COMPOSITION:

Life is all about perspective: what remains in our field of view is how we process the experience. Composing an image requires Framing a picture, and this is essential to telling the story of the experience.

One basic concept is the ‘Rule of Thirds’, dividing the picture into horizontal and vertical thirds and allowing the subject to fall across the four points of intersection.

5) TIMING:

One of Life’s greatest conundrums, eh? Just _BREATHE _and You will work through it. Managing it in Photography is handling the life skills of practice and persistence. Our breath is essential to life, so exhale when releasing the trigger to reduce the shakes. The highest quality photo is a combination of observation and anticipation. Observation is in the profession of Photography and Guiding; anticipation comes with practice and persistence.

You can practice your timing by adjusting the camera’s Shutter Release Mode to Continuous. It allows You to take multiple frames per second while holding the Shutter.

6) SHUTTER SPEED:

Life can move by at the blink of an eye. How long Your lens stays open to capture it is measured in a fraction of a second. To reduce blur in motion images, faster Shutter speeds are required. A higher number indicates a larger denominator in fractions of a second. 1/3000 is a faster Shutter Speed than 1/60.

Faster shutter speeds will freeze motion, while slower shutter speeds will blur any motion.

7) APERTURE:

Our depth of field determines what appears sharp and in focus. A camera’s “f-stop” refers to the size of the hole in your lens that allows a certain amount of light to reach the ‘film’. The larger the f-stop number, the larger the focal range. At f-22 You will create a larger depth of field than at f-5.6. A small f-stop number will bring more detail to a small focal range in front and behind the subject. How much of the subject do you want in focus?

Taking a portrait of anything with a lower f-stop number will blur anything outside the focal range, creating the subject to ‘pop’ out of the image a little more.

8) ISO:

Clarity of what we see helps us appreciate it better. ISO Sensitivity processes the image clarity to come through in pixels, the tiny squares within Your image; essentially picture elements, or ‘pixels. The lower the ISO number the more light required to produce a quality image. Higher ISO numbers process the image faster and create and grainier, lower quality image.

Dark settings sometimes require a combination of settings on a DSLR. Using a higher ISO can sometimes help capture the subject at night, but be careful how high the ISO Sensitivity is set. These two images compare the graininess caused by higher ISO settings when shot at night.

9) EXPOSURE:

Life is all about balance… In order to create a quality image to a general audience You must be able to balance your camera’s Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. Setting Your Priority Mode on the top dial of many DSLRs allows the computer to assist in letting You isolate these priorities; or the camera can control the variety of activity You are framing. Balancing this creates highlights and shadows, relative depth of field, and limited motion blur.

_Portraits are a solid way to practice isolating each aspect of creating a quality image. Once I can isolate and control different aspects of the mechanics, I can then relax with the subject for better candid shots. _

10) PROTECT YOUR GEAR:

Finally, Life is SHORT. If You don’t take care of Yourself or Your Camera gear, it and You could end sooner than You want. Cleaning and maintaining camera equipment is an essential for anyone. Reducing the amount of damage done to camera lenses is essential. Don’t scratch Your eye, don’t scratch Your lens. Cover Your gear with caps, filters, coats, and hoods. A filter can be one of the cheapest preventative methods for scratching lenses.