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INSIDEphotoFebruary 2009

Edition 5

FUN W AYS TO IMPROVE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

INSIDE ASSIGNMENTS: STORY TELLINGways to use your camera to tell stories

DEADLINES: USING WHAT’S IN YOUR BAGskills for news photographers

SKILL FACTOR: FRAMINGhow to use frames to improve your images

PROCESS: DIGITAL INFRAREDusing Photoshop CS3 to make infrared images

TRAVELSHOOTER: ON ASSIGNMENTBali beyond Kuta beach

TECH NOTES: BATTERIESHow to care for your power sources



“How did you

get that?”

Get your friend

s to

marvel at your di

gital

photography a

bilities.

Free every month

Tell your friends all about us

www.insidephoto.info



CONTENTS

Page 5

Page 6

Page 17

Page 24

Page 18

0

Photo News from out there

INSIDE ASSIGNMENTS: STORY TELLING

ways to use your camera to tell stories

TECH NOTES: BATTERIES

How to care for your power sources

DEADLINES: USING WHAT’S IN YOUR

BAG

skills for news photographers

SKILL FACTOR: FRAMING

how to use frames to improve your im-

ages

PROCESS: DIGITAL INFRARED

using Photoshop CS3 to make infrared

images

TRAVELSHOOTER: ON ASSIGNMENT

Bali beyond Kuta beach Page 32

3



PUBLISHER / EDITOR / DESIGNER /

PHOTOGRAPHER S/ WRITERS:

John and Kath Cosgrove

Email: [email protected]

INSIDE Photo e-magazine is

published by:

INSIDE Photo

5 Council Street,

St Kilda

Dunedin,

New Zealand

Ph: + 64 3 4555998

Web: www.insidephoto.info

Material published in INSIDE

Photo is copyrighted and cannot

be reproduced (or photocopied)

other than for individual personal

use only.

Back editions of INSIDE photo are

available in the ‘archives’ section of

the website at www.insidephoto.info

www.insidephoto.info

WelcomeTo the February issue of INSIDE photo

This edition produced

with Serif PagePlus 9

This month we launch our

first redesign or rather de-

velopment. Over the past issues

I have been using demo copies of

Adobe Indesign 3 and Quark Ex-

press 8 to design the magazine

and this issue I went out and

brought Serif PagePlus 9. Man it

was the best $30 I have spent in a

long time. The ease of use and design

capabilities have allowed me to de-

sign and layout this issue just as

quickly as the other industry leading

programs and I have also redesigned

the website. That took me only four

hours compared to two days with an-other html program.

In this month’s issue I went back to

the concepts I first incorporated in

my magazine and concentrated on

the how-to-do aspect of digital pho-

tography with more easily attainable

subjects, assignments and skills for all

types of photographers.

We look this month at ways to layout

and present your images to tell sto-

ries with them. In Deadlines I talk

about making the most with what

you have in your bag using a motor-

cycle race meeting as an example

and I also look at how to frame

your images better. Bali is an

amazing destination and there are

a few pointers on how to shoot

well in this photogenic country and

finally I continue the series on how

to do infrared in Photoshop CS.

To all my friends and readers of

INSIDE photo -All the best for theNew Year

JohnC

4



PHOTO NEWS from around the world

PHOTO360 is different because it’s a interactive magazine usingsoftware developed by the Ceros group. The Ceros digital magazine

publishing platform was first developed in 2005 by a group of pub-

lishing industry professionals who sought to remedy the lack of a

truly interactive means of publishing content on the web in a for-

mat that was familiar to all.

They had looked at the many sub standard publications online and

then developed a fully interactive platform that combines content,

words, pictures, video and sound, all in one easy to use platform.

Now the Ceros team platform publishes over 700 titles by re-

nowned publishers including Flight International, FHM Bionic, GP2,

Eight, and Mal Tokyo -the world’s first animated manga comic

book.

PHOTO360 is from the editors who produce DIGITAL SLR USER out

of the UK and is full of news, shooting tips and reviews accompanied by video content. You turn pages by click-

ing in the top corners and zoom in and out using your mouse input wheel. Very cool so check it out on http://

cde.cerosmedia.com/1I4961e1b99be45837.cde.

The world’s first electronic photography magazine.

Hit hard by the global reces-

sions East Kodak plans to shed

between 3,500 and 4,500 work-

ers this year, the company an-

nounced January 29. The cuts,

coming as the company re-

ported a 24 percent drop in

sales, will reduce Kodak’s work-

force by 14 to 18 percent.

The punishing economy in the

second half of 2008 spared no

part of Kodak’s business. Kodak

draws about a third of its reve-

nue from film and photo pro-

cessing, a third from selling

digital cameras and other digi-

tal products to consumers, and

a third from digital imaging

products and services for busi-

nesses.

Kodak says the cuts include ex-

ecutive jobs, and Kodak execu-tives will forgo an annual bonus

program based on perfor-

mance.

Most remaining employees will

Kodak axes Jobs and

stops bonus payments

The new Epson Stylus Photo

R1900 combines the all-new EP-

SON UltraChrome™ Hi-Gloss2 ink

set and new Look Up Table (LUT)

technology to give photographers

rich uncompromising image detail

in giant A3 sized images. The ink

set features a brighter Magenta

and greener Yellow for more accu-

rate blue and green tones, the

Blue ink has been replaced by anall new orange ink for more natu-

ral skin tones and the UltraCh-

rome inks continue to push the

boundaries of smoother tonal gra-

dations.

A couple of real beauty’s from Epson

The new Epson Stylus Photo

TX700W all-in-one features inte-

grated Ethernet and wireless con-

nectivity for HQ photo printing

using the new 6 color INKdividu-

al™ Claria™ Photographic Inks, all

wrapped up in a sexy new piano

black body that oozes style and

substance. It copies and prints up

to 40 pages per minute and out-

puts a 6x4 inch print in as little as10 seconds. It has a large colour

2.5" LCD screen and intuitive user

interface on the front control

panel that allows easy access to

printer functions. www.epson.com



Winter for many has come and gone. For some it was just cold and wet, for others they were cov-

ered in a wonderful mantle of snow and ice. Stephen C sent me this wonderful night shot of the

houses in his neighborhood in Lyss Switzerland. He shot it on his new Canon EOS 40D at 400 ISO.

6



ON ASSIGNMENT : WAYS TO TELL STORI

The goal of every photographer is get people to stop and look at their images – the next part is to tell them7



S WITH YOUR CAMERA

ory about where we had been, what we had seen and what we were trying to achieve with our images.

By John Cosgrove

8



ON ASSIGNMENT

Remember those boring old

slide shows about Uncle

Jane’s and Aunty Fred’s holiday

to Rarotonga we all had to en-

dure as children, well they

were only trying to tell us a

story in their own clumsy way.

In essence as photographers

we are all in the story tellingbusiness.

Today we use flickr.com,

webshots.com, photo.net and

hundreds of other online hosts

to spread the word about our

digital photography adven-

tures.

The old maxim of ‘A picture is

worth a thousand words’ is a

good one but often we need to

show more than one photo to

really communicate with our

viewers.

Taking our cues from the me-

dia, they use five distinctive

ways to illustrate their stories:

Single Pictures, Sequences, Pic-

ture Combos, Pictures stories

and Photo essays.But one of the best feature pic-

ture hunters in the world, Dave

LaBelle, puts it more succinctly

in his handbook for aspiring

photographers ‘The Great Pic-

ture Hunt’. “Our goal should be

to use as many images as nec-

essary to tell the story - no

more, no less.”

One guide to this is to look at

National Geographic magazine.

They only use the right amountof images to tell the story and

yet when you get the chance to

talk to their photographers you

find that even though they shot

thousands of frames, the aver-

age number of photos used in

any story are only between 8 to

10 images.

Today many newspapers and

quite a few pictorial magazines

use the Single Picture way of

telling a story photographically.

They run just one image that

hopefully contains all the info

readers need to garner knowl-

edge about the subject and

what was happening just at the

moment of capture.

Newspaper and magazine pho-tographers follow the Who,

What, When, Where and How

logic to get their images.

“Our goal should be to use asmany images as necessary to

tell the story - no more, no

less.” Dave LaBelle

Single pictures are

the bread and

butter shots of news,

sports and magazine

photographers.

When you get to an

event you first look at

ways to include as

many of the five ten-ants of Who, What,

When, Where and How

into your images. Sometimes

9



Single Pictures On a Page

this means posing a picture

but often you can get a

good descriptive photo

containing the Who, What,

When and Where infor-

mation in one frame. The

trick is to vary your an-

gles and then look be-

yond the obvious. Takethe time to look around

and see what other ways you

can shoot the event from.

Answer the questions: Who, What,

When, Where and How , and you will

have your single news photo.

In these images above you

can see exactly what was

happening: it’s a rugby match,

a netball game and a high fly-

ing stunt motorcyclist.

We assume where it was tak-

en: At Carisbrook, at Edger

Stadium and on a moto x

track.

And we know roughly when it

was taken : Night or day.

10



ON ASSIGNMENT

The Picture Combos are two, three or four images grouped

together on one page and are intended to give readers a bitmore information about a specific event or interesting subject.

The photographer spends a bit more time with the subject and

provides the page designers with more detail shots rather than

trying to shot just one picture.

It’s often used when there are several good images from an

event and the page designer can’t choose just one frame so they

create a picture combo and fill ¼ or ½ an inside page.

When you arrive at an event take the time to look at ways to

shot detail shots as well as good strong action shots so that later

you can combine them into an effective picture combo. The se-

cret is again to look beyond the obvious and vary your view-

points. Use the zoom lens and always plan for one dominant

image to be supported by several close up detail shots.

Picture

Combos

Dominant photo

Supporting photos

‘Look beyond the

obvious’

11



Essays are not as tightly focused as

Picture Stories but they usually in-

volve a more in depth look at a

common theme or subject.

Essays take a bit more time to con-

struct and their themes can be as

simple as seasonal changes, people

reactions, placards or hoardings,

roadside letterboxes or dancers.

And yet they can also be a deep

meaningful look at the environ-

ment, a country’s racial problems or

a vignette of your favorite travel

destination.

There are more likely to be seen

alongside text heavy articles about

global or wider social issues. Each

photo, while well shot and topical is

loosely linked to the story.

Time Magazine uses picture essays

a lot.

So for most of us the types of photo

stories we will try and complete is

either the Picture Combo or Picture

Essays because the themes or story

ideas are a bit looser and fit our

time frame.

Picture essays

A more in depth

look at a common

theme or subject.

The photos look

closer at the subject

and you start to to

see more detail shots

with odd angles and

view points.

12



ON ASSIGNMENT

Sequences

13

Sequences



Sequences are a series of im-

ages that complete an action

or event, but are more often

than not used to show how to

do something rather than tell a

story.

They mark a passage of time in

which something happened

and through the use of a mo-

tor drive the photographer

captured a series of images.

In this sequence of images we

see a off road vehicle rolling

over – informative Yes, inter-

esting Maybe.

14



ON ASSIGNMENT

The Picture Story has one clear

theme as it focuses on just onesubject or event. You see them

every time you pick up a Nat

Geo, Time or Paris Match and

they are very tightly focused on

the theme or story line.

Just like a story you read they

start with an intro picture, have

a middle element to them to

reinforce the story idea and

then they have a closing shot to

end the story.

Many picture stories fail be-

cause the photographer fails to

identify the main theme or crux

of the story and instead just

shoots to fill holes.

And yet the Picture Story is a

great way to tell your viewers

that here is something you re-

ally feel passionate about and

look there is a series of images

that will introduce them to

your take or angle on this sto-

ry. Most picture stories startfrom just one idea, or photo

that you come across and do

take a bit of time to complete

as you have to look deeper into

the subject to find the better

images. You can’t just happy

snap your way around a story

hoping it’s going to look great

when you present it as it must

have a clear and concise

theme.

This is where many photo soci-

ety slide shows fail as they get

lost in a quagmire of images

which while looking very pretty

fail to coherently communicate

the theme. When done well

your photo story will be an in-

fluential communiqué with

each image supporting the

theme or message you are tell-

ing the readers about.

Picture

ANZAC DAY now and in the future

15



stories

16



Step one – the Establishing shot –

always shoot the location, the sky

overhead, the water views, fields

nearby, the building interior or

mountain scenes to introduce the

reader to the location of your story.

Step two – the Mid shot – this in-

troduces the main players in your

story, what do they look like in their

environment or workspace and how

do they fit into your theme or idea.

Step three – the Close ups – lots

of detail shots showing how your

subjects work, eat sleep and play in

their environment and how this re-

lates to your main story idea.

The

3Shot Rule

Now comes the hard part, you

repeat this sequence each time

your subject moves to another

room or area.

Follow your heart on whatmakes a good photo and how

far you can push your subjects

but try not to have a series of

pretty pictures that stand alone

rather than working together

to tell a story.

Planning

The key to successful story tell-

ing is the plan your coverage

and not go there to shoot up astorm and hope you will get

enough good images to illus-

trate a story.

ON ASSIGNMENTA few years ago I retrained as

an ENG news cameraman for

television duties at the media

company I was working for and

there the former BBC trainer

taught me the three shot rule. I

found that as a still photogra-

pher I was already applying this

rule to my work but not at the

level you must do it for televi-

sion news work.

Once you start practicing it you

find you will be looking deeper

into your subject and getting

better shots.

Some golden rules:

Don’t limit yourself to one sub-

ect – be flexible with your storyideas.

Go early and stay late

at all the events you

cover.

Go were people gather

as that is where the

stories are.

Vary your angles and

viewpoints.

Shoot lots of detail shots to

back up your idea or theme.

Always remember your theme

or story idea but try not to re-peat shots.

17



Tech Notes

BatteriesLove them or hate them

but most of us know very

little about the power source

of our all important digital

cameras. We know that they

run out just when we need

them the most and as ourcameras get older they always

seem to not last as long as

they used too.

Today we will find either Li-

Ions Lithium-ion batteries or

AA’s as the most common

type in our cameras, we can-

not shoot without them.

The GP Alkaline AA’s we buy

off the shelf are great for

point and shoot cameras or

flashes but many of us would

like to help the environment

so we seek out Ni-Cads as an

inexpensive and easy solution

to fixing our battery needs.

. As a heavy user I carry at

least two sets of extra camera

and flash batteries with me oneach assignment.

Rechargeable Ni-Cads are in-

expensive and great for the

flash because their power de-

livery is linear that is they

work strong and hard until

they are exhausted then they

drop off suddenly so when

they suddenly don’t recharge

as fast you know it’s time to

change them. My GP 2700’s

last about two hours of heavy

use. It pays to drain them

once every 6 months to re-

move any memory effect then

give them a good charge –

about 1 hour longer than the

blinking lights tell me.

Li-Ions are another form of re-

chargeable battery but store

more power with less long

term storage loss compared

with Ni-Cad AA’s and Ni-MH

(Nickel Metal-Hydride) batter-

ies. This means you can charge

them and not use your camera

for a few weeks or months and

there is no discernable loss of

power. Li-Ions are good be-

cause they deliver a stronger

more precise burst of power

which a digital camera needs

to active the sensor and ana-

logue to digital convertor and

other devices, in other words,

you need it to turn your little

beastie on each time you de-

press the shutter button. They

deliver the power for a goodlength of time then slowly fade

off as they drain. Again you will

need to fully drain your battery

once or twice a year to give it a

good chance to fully recharge.

But a note: when your camera

gets down to the blinking last

bar, change batteries because

if you shoot any more images

they may not be stored on the

CF card due to the lack of

power available.

Now comes the tricky part –

when should you change your

battery. Experience has shown

me that it’s time to buy a newapproved battery (not one of

the cheap Chinese generics)

when the one I am using can-

not hold its charge past one

hour even though I have fully

recharged it.

For heavy users this will be

about once every 15 months

for low level users you might

get about two to three years

out of it.

External battery packs or verti-

cal grips don’t give you more

power to drive big lenses faster

they just hook the extra bat-

tery up and make the whole

package last a lot longer.

To make your battery last lon-

ger turn off auto review and

auto rotate, and don’t use the

pop up flash.

The cameras

battery longevity

is based on how

many images we

shoot and how

long we spend

‘chimping’ or re-

viewing them.

18



19



Working well with what you have means gettingas close as you can using just a 80-200mm tele

zoom on a Canon EOS 30D.20



DEADLINES

Learn to work well using just the lenses and cameras in your bag.

For many news journalists

and photographers, what’s

in our camera bags is often the

limit of our equipment scales.

Only the major dailies and wire

services can afford the big long

lenses due to their high cost

factor, so we have to make do

with the longest lens in our kit

being an 80-200 tele zoom.

Now many would considershooting motorsport an exer-

cise in long lens photography

but it didn’t worry me the other

day when I called into the Lev-

els Raceway near Timaru to

shoot some action shots at the

Castrol NZ Superbike road rac-

ing championships.

Over the years I’ve been to

some amazing motorcycle rac-

ing events, from MotoGPs at

Phillips Island and Sepang to

FIM endurance races at Suzuka

and World Superbikes but be-

cause those were international

events and well supported by

the service divisions of Nikon

and Canon I was always able to

loan out a 600mm to use there.

At local events you use what

you have in the bag. The 80-

200 on a DSLR equates out to a

Working well withwhat you have...

21



Skills for news photographers

300mm due to the compression

factor of your sensor but even

this isn’t long enough when you

think about corning shots and

action images.

Race tracks are all about speed

but most of photos you see in

magazines including the crash

photos are taken when the

bikes are going at their slowestas they enter or leave corners.

But with today’s safety consid-

erations it means that photog-

raphers are often located well

away from the action so what

do you do with an 80-200 with

an effective range of only 25m?

That’s right; at around 25m a

player is only just making the

full frame, head to toe plus a

bit of the ground, on your im-

age in landscape format. Any-

thing less is a waste of time.

A racing car is bigger so you can

shoot them a bit further away

but a motorcycle isn’t so once I

had cleared the all important

safety briefing and signed my

life away with the organisers it

was time to look at the track

and see what my options were.

At the southern end of the

track there was a big sweeper

that exited onto the back

straight and there I saw the

possibility of getting within

10ms of the track if I stood be-

hind protective barriers, the

downside was that the riders

would be exiting at full throttle

so the speeds were quite high,

but they would be struggling to

hold down the front wheel so I

might get some wheelie shots.

It takes a bit of practice to

shoot a speeding motorcycle

and in most cases you will only

find out if your shots are any

good when you download them

later. So always shoot heaps of

frames.I tend to shoot most things at f8

as you know, but motor sport is

all about speed so I was aiming

for speeds above

1/500th of a second

to freeze the action

so it became a bal-

ancing act between

the lowest ISO I could

use and the need for a

high shutter speed. But

on the flipside I alsoshot some at slower

speeds to blur the action and

the backgrounds. Once I got

the hang of panning at a

higher speed I looked at a cou-

ple of other corners not usu-

ally used by the other

photographers there. One was

a right hand corner with a flag

marshal point nearby so I got

good shots as the riders ar-

rived under heavy braking.

This looks great from the other

side or head on but only if you

have a big lens. So shoot look-

ing over their shoulder to put

the viewer into the cockpit.

This type of view point is hard

to shoot and you must time itright. Relying on AI servo auto

focus only gives you a 50-50

chance of getting the shot so I

22



DEADLINES

reverted back to manual pre-

focusing and then panned the

camera to catch the right mo-

ment. The other corner was

more head on and high speed

but I still managed to freeze the

action although the success

rate was only 15%. A lot of im-

ages later I finally got the handeye co-ordination right.

Then it was off into the pits

with the 80-200 on my 30D to

shoot candid’s. The tele-zoom

is great for isolating people

and colour shots as you

wander around the pits, it

keeps you can get some

unique shots but also use

your standard wide-zoomfor different viewpoint of

riders working on their

bikes or preparing to

race. Vary your angle and look

for contrasting colours.

At the end of the day I had shot

a lot of images of bikes racing

around a track but later editing

the cards I threw away more

than 75% of them as being too

blurry or with the riders heads

or the front wheels cut off,

there was a lot of missed shots

and out of focus images as my

AF tried to keep up but I still

ended up with about 150 good

strong images of which I sent

away 30 to motorcycle maga-

zines and a few to D Scene togo with a story I did about a

young Dunedin rider doing well

there.

Remember the lack of a

long lens shouldn’t hinder you; in-

stead it should inspire you to look for

other ways to capture the action.

Shooting tips

· Always think safety – motor sports are dangerous

so never turn your back on the competitors, watch

where you stand and never walk across the track during

a race.

· Look for slow corners – hairpin bends or right

hand corners (bikes go slower on right hand bends – it’s

something to do with how riders feel about hanging off

the throttle side of the bike).

· Use flag marshal points to get as close as you can

High Shutter speeds are important

to freeze the action but they are

not your only choice. Try panning

the camera with a slower shutter

speed to introduce movement in

your image and clean up messybackgrounds.

23



but stay out of their line of vision as they have an im-

portant job to do.

· ALWAYS vary your angles and lenses to get dif-

ferent viewpoints.

· Don’t rely on one lens to shoot all your images as

they will quickly appear dull and repetitive.

· Review your work on the LCD once and then don’t

worry about it, I watched a photographer once who

chimped (spent all his time reviewing his shots) and he

missed a big smash which happened right in front of him.

24



SKILL FACTORS

COMPOSITITilting the camera upwards offers a wide-angle view of converging

buildings that form a dramatic frame around the Rockafeller Center

on Manhatten Island, New York.

25



This means that creativephotography depends of

the skill of the photographer

being able to see as the camera

sees. We all know that the cam-

era doesn’t accurately repro-

duce the scene in front of us

the way we see it now. This is

due to a variety of factors,

namely lens choice, our view-

point and the simple fact that

when we look at a scene we

only see what we want to see,

whereas the camera records

everything within the area we

select, including all the distract-

ing and messy bits.

Ever stood on the side of a road

and looked out over a stunning

scenic vista and said “Wow look

at that” and then you snapped

off a frame or two, confident

you had captured the essence

and colour of the scene. Later

when you were downloading

you cards and editing your im-

ages the question arose, “Why

did I take that shot?”

The rationale as to why some

of our pictures are often so dis-appointing with their back-

grounds all messed up with

objects we don’t remember or

our main subjects are surpris-

ingly smaller in the frame than

we recall and the entire scene

is dull and boring, is that we

didn’t compose our images cor-

rectly. We didn’t use the cam-

era to see with instead of

relying on our own eye.

ON - FRAMINGThe official word states that image

composition is

“The pleasing arrangement of

subjects and elements within the

picture frame”

26



There-in lies the

problem - Just how do

we compose a picture?

Photography is very subjective,

what you like is always totally

different to what others like –

that’s what makes it such a

challenging and exciting sport

as no two photographers arealike.

True many try and copy the

styles of the more famous

amongst us, but we can never

totally recreate the shot they

took. (I know someone will ar-

gue about the late great land-

scape photographer Galen

Rowell’s attempt to copyright

his shooting positions as somepeople were trying to recreate

his iconic images by standing on

the same spot, at the same

time of the day, in the same

season and weather conditions)

but this is about YOU trying to

improve your images by using

the advice of experts to de-

velop your own shooting style.

There are no hard and fast rules

to faithfully follow to make sure

your images has the ‘Correct’

composition as in itself compo-

sition is impossible to define –

Why? Because you view pho-

tos differently to me. That’s

what makes photography so

subjective – everyone has an

opinion.

The rules of composition are

only a series of principles and

rules that photographers have

developed over the past cen-

tury (and they took the basis of

their ideas from painters any-

way) and these rules have pro-

vided us with a means of

achieving a pleasing composi-

tion when applied properly. But

there are a lot of principles so

1 Using Objects

Take the time to always

Look around your subject

before you shot as often you

can see unusual objects or re-

flections in other buildings

which can greatly help the com-

position of your subject. Makingit much more interesting. An

aperture of f11 helps to keep all

the items in focus.

While I used trees and foli-

age to frame this MTB rider (above)

my 10 year old son used the ornate

gardens at Larnach Castle in Dunedin

to create this framing shot on his

Canon IXUS.

SKILL FACTORS

27



Surfing the web I found

many different references

to what are the elements of

composition in articles by

photographers and they in-

clude:

The rule of thirds, Center of

interest, Subject placement,

Simplicity, Viewpoint and

camera angle, Balance,

Shapes and lines, Pattern,

Volume, Lighting, Texture,

Tone, Background, Perspec-

tive, Contrast, Foreground

and Scale.

So you can see there are

many different ways to de-

scribe composition. The

question to answer is all-

ways ‘what do you like?’

2 Using Windows

The most obvious aid to

framing is to use any win-

dows available to you. This

shot of the sunrise catching the

peaks on the Rocky Mountainsin British Columbia, Canada,

was taken through the window

of SIA Airbus 350-600 flying

above them at 35,000ft on the

world’s longest flight from SIN

to NYC. The blurring of the win-

dow focuses you eye forward

into the frame. Shot using a

Canon EF 28-105mm lens set atf7.1 @ 1/80th of a second on

100 ISO with the focus set man-

ually to infinity.

3 Using the environment

These Japanese commuters at Shinjuku

station in Tokyo, are naturally framed by

their environment, the doors and the windows

of the train carriages. The addition of a second

frame - the guard’s window, creates an inter-

esting pattern but you can still see the point of

the photo without risking any subject merging.An aperture of f8 was good enough to keep it

all in focus and ISO400 copes well with the sub-

dued lighting conditions.

28



we will look over the next few

issues at ones which we can

use to improve how we see and

capture great images from ordi-

nary subjects. This second sec-

tion on composition covers

framing and how you can use it

tighten up the overall composi-

tion by blocking out messy

backgrounds and directing the

viewer’s attention to your in-

tended subject. When you have

time, before you shoot that

cool landscape or moment in

time take a few seconds to look

around your subject and see if

you can use any nearby man-

made or natural features to

frame your picture with. Any-

thing is usable as a frame: door

frames, window openings, arch

ways, a simple hole in a wall, a

gap in trees, overhanging

branches, the archways of a

bridge, or even bright colours or

shadows. Anything that’s going

to give you image an edge is us-

able. The effect is to stop your

viewer looking outside your pic-

ture and the interplay between

the foreground, your subject

and the background gives your

image depth.

Depth of field is important here

but note: # As most rules of

composition can be broken it’s

not that critical. Use an F stop

of greater than f11 to pull the

foreground and background to-

gether in the frame.

Summary: Look for ways toframe your pictures to keep

your viewers interest on your

intended subject.

SKILL FACTORS

P

oints to watch out for

with frames:

1: Bright colour escape

routes: Don’t make the ob-

ect framing your subject

brighter or more colourful as

this will cause confusion with

the viewer as to what it was

you were photographing (it’s

called merging points of in-

terest).

2: Watch out for trees thatappear out of no were.

Always have the trunk of the

tree visible otherwise who

knows where the branch

comes from.

3: Silhouettes are still the

best frames to work with.

NOT good framing

The colour of the

tent conflicts

with the subject

causing a merger

effect whereby

the viewer can-

not decide what

it is we were ac-

tually photo-

graphing.

29



The blue window frames (above) pro-

vides a nice colour contrast to this

small boy at an AIDS shelter in Cape

Town, just watch it doesn’t intrude on

the photo.

(Below left) The deep blue sky is the

frame for this photo at St Clair while

(below right) the grilles are the frames

for these cyclists in Beijing.



PROCESS

31

INFRARED part 2

Step 1: Open a good solid landscape with lots of green in it,

then choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Invert.

Step 2: In the Layers palette set the Blending Mode to Color.

Step 3: Selecting the Background layer on the Layers palette,

hit Crtl+J to copy the that layer then move the background-

copy layer to the top of your layers palette.

Step 4: Change the blending mode of this new layer to

Screen and adjust its opacity to suit.

A simple method using Adobe Photoshop CS3 to convert colour

images into infrared stylised images is:



GA BR I E LS GULLY LA W R E NC E 2009

32

From this to this

Step 5: merge all layers then select Crtl +J again to create a new

copy layer.

Step 6: Change the Blending mode on this new layer to Soft

Light and then select Filter >Blur > Gaussian Filter, set at around

20, to effectively blur out the image and give your infrared pic-ture that lovely inner glow these images have. Again adjust the

layers opacity to get the effect you want.

Step 7: Once you have the desired Infrared Effect it is time to

use the Layers Burn and Dodge trick to selectively darken or

lighten areas of the image to accentuate the Infrared effect. You

will notice that each image is different as trees and foliage give

off different levels of infrared so no two images are the same.

Step 8: Now Filter > Noise > Add Noise, making sure that

Monochrome and Uniform is selected. Add noise to a level

that looks good to you.

Step 9: Finally using the cropping tool with the back-

ground selected as Black, expand the canvas area and add

in some text to frame your image.

Step 10: Then you might like to add another Adjust-

ment layer > Solid Color and select a nice sepia yellow

and then change to that layers blending mode to multiplyand by reducing the Layer Opacity you can dial in just the

right amount of color to suit.



B

ali, its very name conjures up images of tropical beaches, diving in crystal clear

waters, pounding surf, high jungle adventures, friendly people, magical templesand memories to last a lifetime but believe me it’s one of those places that even if you

visited it every holiday for 10 years you still won’t see it all.

'Island of the Gods'Words and photos by John and Kath Cosgrove

33



Words and pictures by Kath and John Cosgrove

34



TRAVELSHOOTER

TANAH LOT

Most villages and towns in Bal

are full of temples, statues

and memorials. You can easily

become templed out if you

let it instead I recommend

looking at the more popular

Tanah Lot temple site, about

an hour up on the western

Bali is small. Only about 144

kilometres long from east

to west and 80 kilometres wide

from north to south, you can

even drive around it in one day

if you start early enough.

The island of Bali lies just south

of the equator and is one of

more than 13,000 islands that

makes up the Indonesian archi-

pelago. If you ask your friends

to describe Bali, they will all tell

you that it’s a topical paradiseeven if they haven’t been there

yet. They will even know where

it is as it is better known than

Jakarta or any of Indonesia’s

other fascinating and colourful

tourist destinations. In fact 80%

of international tourists who

visit Indonesia each year visit

Bali alone. Despite being part of

a nation that contains one of

the highest populations of Mus-

lims in the world, 93% of Bali's

4 million people adhere to Bali-

nese Hinduism. It is the

country’s largest tourist desti-

nation well known for its highly

developed arts and culture

scene, including dance, ornate

sandstone sculpture, paint-ing, leather, stone work,

woodcarving, metalworking

and music.

side. Tanah Lot

is very popular and offers a lot

of visuals of visitors and then

you can walk along the

beaches at low tide and shoot

rock pool life. Tanah Lot is best

visited in the late

afternoon as it of-

fers one of the best

sunsets you can

find in Bali. From

the nearby Le Meri-dien at Kediri you can get great

sunsets framed by palms and

the rugged coastline. The hotel



HOW TO:Get there: International

airlines servicing Bali, desti-

nation: Denpasar include

the following: Air Asia from

its hub at the LLC airport at

Kuala Lumpur. Cathay Pa-

cific Airways. Continental

Airlines, Eva Air. Japan Air-

lines. Korean Air. Malaysia

Airlines. Qantas Airways

from Sydney and Mel-

bourne and also check out

Jetstar. Singapore Airlines.

Thai Airways. Domestic air-line services in Bali are var-

ied but lucky for you

competition is fierce ,the

best thing to do is to go to

the airport and shop

around at the airline ticket

offices.

Travel Alert: High level

terrorism-related warnings

have been issued by West-

ern governments concern-

ing travel in Bali. Travellers

are advised to check their

local consular information

and monitor the situation

in Bali closely before mak-

ing travel plans.

Visas: You can pick up a

Visa-On Arrival - costingUS$10 for a stay of up to 7

days, US$25 for a stay of up

to 30 days.

Clothing: Light, airy, casual

clothes are the most practi-

cal and you'll find natural

fibers like cotton or linen

are the most comfortable

in Bali's often humid condi-

tions. Waist sashes should

be worn when visiting tem-

ples.

also hosts

a great

series of

water

slides suit-

able for allthe family and the usual high

quality golf course that over-

looks the temple.

NOTE:

Adjust

your

white

balance

settings to Cloudyor Shade to really pump up the golden glow of

the sunset and expose for the scene using ma-

trix metering to punch the saturation levels.

36



TRAVELSHOOTER

37



From a photographers point

of view Bali offers you a va-

riety of landscapes with rolling

hills and volcanic mountains,

rugged coastlines and sandy

beaches, lush tropical forests,

rows of rice terraces that circlethe hills and villages galore that

all provide a picturesque back-

drop to the colourful and

deeply spiritual culture of this

'Island of The Gods'.

When to go?

Even though it is located just in

the southern hemisphere, Bali

still complies with northern

hemisphere holiday times so

try not to travel there during

their high seasons of December

and January as you will find

prices rise steeply due to the

high demand. Bali is also a

prime location for Australian

travelers, so expect it to resem-

ble the Gold Coast during

Planning is the key to a successful

series of unique photo experiences

while holidaying in Bali so don’t try

and see everything, pace yourself

and shoot heaps.

Keep your camera batteries

charged and bring plenty of mem-ory cards because Bali is full of

cultural sights right by the road as

you drive along. Look out for re-

peating patterns in the hundreds

of carving businesses that display

their stone, wooden or ceramic

wares along the road on your way

to Ubud.

Use a tele zoom to merge back-

grounds and isolate patterns.

Temples are amazing collections of

geometric shapes and bright

colours. Remember to observe all

cultural rules and don’t just roll up

and start shooting – ask first,

women must wear a waist sash

when entering a temple. Bali is full

of religious icons and has devel-

oped a healthy business carving and

recreating religious memorabilia,

their work is fabulous and the temp-

tation is strong to buy and ship one

home so remember to observe yourcountry’s restrictions on importing

wooden carvings and historical rep-

licas and hunt around for bargains.38



TRAVELSHOOTER

Christmas and the southern

school holiday times. We met

one Aussie family that had been

taking their annual holidays in

Bali for the past 12 years and

loved every minute of it. Out-

side these times Bali is a bar-

gain seekers paradise with

deals on everything. Shop

around online and see what is

available and you will be sur-

prised. Don’t only just look at

the cheaper hotels as you will

often find great deals at the

branded five star venues as

well. Make sure there is a meal

package with your deal as some

hotels are a taxi ride to the

nearest restaurant and their

own fare can become a bit re-

petitive.

Going off season also has the

advantage of getting taxi farescheaper and event/activity

packages are also heavily dis-

counted plus you will miss the

crowds.

Weather wise Bali has a pretty

settled kind of seasonal

Monkey Forest is at the south-

ern end of Jl. Monkey Forest,

one of the three main streets

in Ubud. A holy temple full of

ravenous monkeys, so don't

bring any food or risk bites and

rabies injections. They are feed

by temple devotees and they

also try to steal from your bags

so don’t tempt them as they

can be very vicious.

Kuta beach is the mecca for all

the sun loving, surfing, bathing

beauties who desire Bali’s hotsun. It’s a tourist site so expect

vendors hounding you with

drinks, trinkets and the like.

Use a tele-zoom to capture

the action in the surf and re-

member to SLIP SLOP SLAP to

protect yourself from the sun.

Sanur Beach on the other side

of the Island is quiet and moreresort-like with lots of colourful

boats and photo ops for adven-

turous photographers.



Take one of the many cycling

trips offered where you ride

through out of the way villages

and plantations to really get a

taste of life in Bali. For lovers ofElephants, Bali hosts one of the

World's Best Elephant Parks,

whose facilities include a full

Reception and Information Cen-

tre, a comprehensive Museum

with a large collection of ele-

phant. You can get up closeand personal with these incred-

ible animals in a beautiful tropi-

cal park setting watching as the

elephants wash themselves in

the park lake, in between rid-

ing, painting or other activi-

ties. Hand feed them, touch

them, take photos with them,

its all on offer here at the Ele-

phant Safari Park.

40



TRAVELSHOOTER

weather with the west mon-

soons bringing heavy showers

and high humidity from Decem-

ber to March (but they only fall

during the nights so the days

are sunny and fine). The dry

season from June to September

has low humidity and is often

cool at night with hardly any

rain falling on the coastal areas.

Inland towards Ubud it can be

overcast and rainy on any day

all year round but I haven’tstruck a bad day yet. The aver-

age temperature ranges from

20 to 33 degrees Celsius so

pack accordingly.

Where to stay?

For the young at heart and the

party set there are enough at-

tractions in the party towns of

Kuta and adjacent Legian, tokeep you occupied. The more

subdued beaches at Lovina, Sa-

nur and Candidasa appeal to

those seeking a quieter stay.

Inland is Bali's cultural centre of

Ubud, private family villas suit

those wanting a more cultural

experience as it is near the

main painting, carving, dancing

and music-making centres.

Accommodation covers the en-

tire spectrum from 5 star to

budget in Bali so shop around

and be prepared to be spoiled

should you really want to spoil

yourself. Practise all the usual

safety considerations regard-

less of the star rating of your

hotel like knowing where the

fire escapes are, locking valu-

ables away, not waving your

cameras around, watching your

valuables and not telling any-

one your room number. Bali’s

draw card of sun, surf, fun and

adventure also attracts the

criminal element so travel to

Bali carries with it many warn-

ings about terrorism and drugs

so be safe and know what to do

in an emergency.

Getting around:

For photographers looking for

photo experiences the best way

to see the country is to hire a

van and driver, the front desk

can help by advising you of cur-

rent rates but you can also bar-

gain with drivers as the

competition is tight. Ask other

guests what they have been

paying and once you get a good

driver who 1: doesn’t rip you

off, 2: stop at all his mates’shops and galleries for a com-

mission and 3: stops when you

ask him so that you can shoot

scenic’s then hang onto him.

Renting a car with a driver for

the whole day, be prepared to

pay around Rp. 375 000

(NZD$65) for the whole day and

carefully plan your route and

tell him what you want to see.

The price is negotiable and to

be discussed before your trip.

Do not pay until the end of the

day.

Driving yourself is not a serious

option because the left hand

driving is confusing and the

traffic signals are rated as a

suggestion rather than the rule.

Traffic delays and jams are

common around the main cen-

tres and the routes confusing at

best. Also the local bottles of

petrol found at roadside stalls

outside the main centres isn’t

that good and you may find

yourself paying for damage to

the engine. It’s better to let

someone else take the worry of

driving and sit back and look

for photo ops.

Taxis are plentiful but can eas-

ily eat into your budget once all

the extras are added in.

Also watch out for the “fines”

from local policemen if driving

or riding a motorcycle yourself,

usually about NZD$10 to allow

you to keep on going.

Finally:

Plan your days around sight-

seeing but every couples of

days take a break day to relax,

take in a spa or massage or

simply chill out by the pool as

Bali offers a vast visual smor-

gasbord of images for any pho-

tographer.

41



42



This image was shot in Lawrence site of New Zealand’s big gold rush back in the

1890’s. I was impressed by the work done by the local community to restore

their old buildings. With the camera set to -1/3 rd exposure compensation in Av

mode, I setmy Canon EOS 30D to ISO 100 and shot it at f9 at 1/250 th of a second.

The extra compensation punched up the saturation levels on the image making it

more colourful. The roof lines hold your attention and the repeating patterns keep

you looking for more in this image.

43

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