ART IN NATURE

For many years, I've wanted to photograph the awesome sand dunes in Namibia from the air. I finally did that, and it was a thrilling experience. As much as I hate flying (my second favorite thing to do, after breathing, is standing on the ground), I had the air charter company take the door off the plane so I could shoot without any obstructions. I shared the plane with one of the men on my photo tour and his wife, and there was enough of an opening so both of us could get great shots.



Aerial photography is not easy. You're bouncing around while the landscape is whizzing past at a very fast rate (a minimum of 90 miles an hour). My strategy was to use the fastest shutter speed possible, so I set the camera on aperture priority at f/4, and this gave me the fastest shutter speed I could have given the lighting and the ISO. I used 200 ISO, so most of my shutter speeds were in the 1/2000 range. I also used image stabilization to help mitigate the significant movement of the camera.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH CHEETAHS

One of the points that I feel is important in photographing wildlife -- and I stress this in my Wildlife on-line photo course -- is that shooting from a low perspective gives greater stature to animals. At the same time, it creates an intimate and compelling portrait.

One of the frustrations in going on a safari is that you are forced to shoot from a vehicle (for safety reasons, obviously), and this means that the shooting perspective is higher than what I feel is desirable. Even two or three feet can mean the difference between a stunning image and one that is only mediocre.


On the Namibia photo tour, we visited a cheetah foundation devoted to ensuring the survival of this very special cat. The organization houses many cheetahs that can't be released back into the wild (usually because they were abandoned by their mothers -- or their mothers were killed by farmers -- and the cubs never learned to hunt), and we were allowed to shoot from ground level in certain places on the compound. The snarling cat you see here was behind a fence, but it was a 'photographer friendly' fence with large openings for camera lenses. This particular cat is known for an aggressive disposition, and that allowed each person in the group to get outstanding images. I shot this from ground level, and you can see how dynamic the shots are simply because I was three or four feet below where most other photographers are forced to take pictures of wildlife in Africa.

At the end of the shoot, each of us was breathless with excitement over this remarkable opportunity. Even if we could have taken pictures on the ground, cheetahs would never permit an approach this close. They have been hunted for too long, and they are extremely wary of people.

THE HIMBA PEOPLE

One of the highlights of a trip to Namibia is a visit with the Himba people. I arranged to have an interpreter help us get the pictures we want, and we were welcomed warmly by the chief of the tribe before we started photographing.



Stepping into a Himba village is like going back in time thousands of years, and it’s a remarkable experience culturally as well as photographically. In addition to visiting a village, I arranged to take pictures of some Himba models in tall grass which I felt made a very attractive natural environment. We photographed mostly women and young girls because they have such a unique and stylized hairstyle and dress. It is customary to smear their bodies and hair with a mixture of ochre and goat fat, and this accounts for their red color.



I used mostly my 70-200mm medium telephoto hand held, occasionally switching to a wide angle for unique perspectives. I made sure that we took the pictures in the early morning and just before sunset for the best lighting, and everyone in my group took awesome images. I used 200 ISO, although in one shot where an older woman was inside a hut I was forced to bump the ISO up to 5000 because it was so dark. The image is definitely full of noise, but I didn’t want to blast the scene with the artificial lighting of a flash.



I will be posting more pictures of the Himba on my website when I return home next week.

A CLASSIC S-CURVE

Photographers covert subjects with a beautifully defined S-curve, and sand dunes often provide that. There are dunes just outside of Swakopmund, Namibia that offer a variety of photographic subjects besides dunes (like chameleons, snakes, lizards, etc.), but I wanted to share this one particular image with you. The graphic lines were amazing, and from an elevated perspective (my photo tour took an excursion in a dune van that could negotiate the steep dunes), the S-curve was one of the best examples of this compositional element that I've seen in nature.

Tomorrow I'll post some photos I took of the Himba tribe.

MORE NAMIBIA IMAGES

One of the places we visit on the Namibia photo tour is a cheetah rehabilitation center. We can get up close and personal with these stunning cats, and even though the photography isn't easy, it's easier than shooting from a vehicle in the wild. We can walk around and get different vantage points, and it's a great chance to get intimate face shots.

The other images I have included in this blog are more pictures from the sand dune area of Sossosvlei as well as a picture of Bushman that we got. We spent one sunset photographing this unique tribe, and the experience was exceptional.

MORE GRAPHIC DESIGN IN NAMIBIA

Here is another shot that I like very much from the three days I spent with my photo tour in Namibia's famous sand dunes. The air was very hazy from the windy conditions kicking up a lot of sand, so I used Photoshop to add contrast and color saturation back into the scene.

NAMIBIA'S SAND DUNES

I am leading a photo tour right now in Namibia, and these images were taken over the last three days. Photographers come to this southwestern African country to photograph many things, but the orange sand dunes of Sossusvlei -- the largest in the world -- are at the top of the list for incredible subjects to shoot. In my on-line courses at Betterphoto.com, I stress graphic design and beautiful lines all the time, and that’s what these sand dunes are all about. At sunrise and sunset, they are incredible. There are so many dunes that you want to be everywhere at once to capture the stunning lighting and compositions. One morning we had lightning and thunder here which is quite unusual, and the sound of the thunder echoing off the dunes was almost surreal.

All of these pictures were taken with long lenses -- between a 200mm and a 500mm -- so I could crop tightly on the beautiful S-curves and C-curves.

NIGHT COLORS

Night photography means a dramatic mix of colors. Mercury vapor street lamps, neon signs, the sky reflecting city lights, tungsten lamps -- all of these types of light produce different colors, and the combination can be quite compelling. I took this image in Chicago, and I think the colors make this work so well.

What is also significant is the fact that I placed the chrome hemisphere so close to the camera and I used a wide angle lens. This dramatized the foreground and made it disproportionately large. The camera was only three feet away. The closer you get with a wide angle lens to the subject, the more exaggerated (and distorted) it becomes. It's a very effective visual technique.

CLOUD BACKGROUNDS

Last night there were some incredible clouds at sunset, and I quickly got out my camera to shoot. I use these kinds of images for backgrounds all the time, and I find they can make or break a picture. This helps me sell photos, and this technique mitigate one's frustration at white skies and unphotogenic weather conditions.

The picture of the Angami tribal dancers I shot in India were taken against a white sky. It was boring and uninspiring. I've used a number of backgrounds behind them, so I tried out this unique cloud. While you might think this kind of shot is unlikely (because it is), I can guarantee that the composite makes it more marketable.