Posts Tagged ‘leisure’
Fall Foliage - Be on Location For Colorful Pictures with Autumn Colors
Autumn Leaves And Digital Photography - Fall Foliage For Colorful Pictures
How to capture the essence of autumn colors in pictures when we enjoy the beauty of the autumn in New England or in one of the other states famous for the colorful fall foliage?
After many years of experience when taking pictures of autumn leaves for professional stock photography and for books and articles I reveal some of my techniques in this article. These tips are also for the general tourist just loving fall foliage and the autumn colors on location.
Nowadays it is so much easier and more fun to use digital cameras for taking pictures in the outdoors of autumn leaves and the nice colors of fall foliage. With a digital camera you can immediately check if your shot was hitting what you wanted to capture and it is easy to redo it if needed. In fact digital photography has opened the attraction of taking pictures to a much wider audience.
The captured digital files will easily support your memory of a nice fall experience and you can work on with them at home on your computer and display it for others.
When you are on location you can choose to achieve esthetic pleasant pictures without emphasis on the natural object you are choosing. Or you can go for nature photography in the pure sense of communicating species in nature like the aspen or the maple trees or insects on fall foliage e.g. preparing for the coming wintertime. Or you can choose to focus on landscape photography.
Many nature photographers would say they aim at combining these intentions, but in reality you might benefit from this distinction for your autumn photography.
First release your imagination for possible pictures - it isn’t just the option to take pictures of fall scenes with vivid autumn colors.
You can choose to communicate in your photos:
- Close-up shots of single colors or contrasting colors or a palette of autumn colors.
- Grand vistas of autumn scenics.
- Everything there are in between, like individual trees.
- Fallen colorful autumn leaves or leaves with strong colors still hanging or the branches.
- Combining autumn leaves with soil, with big stones, with the blue sky or with water.
- Make use of raindrops (as natural or some you add artificially to the autumn leaves)
- Make use of fruits of the season, or other signs of autumn.
- Combining the fall foliage with colorful mushrooms.
A simple digital camera will have many options to choose from for your autumn photography:
- Go close with the macro function
- Make wide angle shots
- Make tele photo shots
- Make experiments with the different settings, often provided with the camera, like soft colors or strong colors.
- Try the highest ASA setting to get more corny pictures.
Compose your picture to make it interesting
- Make a rather simple build up of the picture composition to avoid resulting messy photos.
- The telephoto setting of the lens is fine for isolating objects and blur the background.
- Try a very low position of the camera to add an interesting angle, or to isolate an object.
- With wide angle shots include some interesting object in the foreground. Make sure it will be in focus together with the rest of the picture.
- The main object in the picture can be framed to one of the sides - often to the left seems most natural.
- Be careful with deep shadows as they might come out completely black on your digital file and prohibit you to work on with the problem in Photoshop or another photo editing program.
As always the light is essential to get the bright autumn colors, but also days with overcast sky can give beautiful pictures and communicate the special mood of autumn.
In sun you have the option to make the full use of backlight to lightning up the magnificent leaf colors: reds, yellows and golden in combination with nuances of green. Especially when you combine backlit colorful leaves with isolation of leaves you can produce beautiful photos.
A circular polarizer filter is still useful equipment for digital photography in the outdoors and it will enhance the colors of the sky as well as the foliage if the sun is shining from an angel to your view.
Read more about autumn photography in ‘The Art of Outdoor Photography: Techniques for the Advanced Amateur and Professional’ by Boyd Norton, and about the further processing of your digital pictures in ‘Outdoor Photographer Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2′ by Rob Sheppard.
Soren Breiting has a background as a biologist and has been in stock photography for many years. You find a selection of Soren’s high quality stock photos of fall foliage at A-Z Fotos (azFOTOS.com) and autumn relevant links at fall-foliage.net/.
Tags: how-to, leisure, photography, plants, vacation
Camping Accessories You’ll Want to Remember
I love to shop for camping accessories at the big outdoor stores. I love to check out all the new gizmos and gadgets that someone has dreamed up for us.
But at the risk of getting carried away with the fun new stuff and forgetting to pack the most basic camping accessories, I always pull out my trusty camping checklist that I put together many years ago. My shopping and packing start there.
What are the basics? Of course it depends on what type of camping you plan on doing, but I prefer camping in tents. RV camping is another popular option these days, and the gear would overlap but probably be different depending on what type of camping you choose.
So the first thing on my list is a tent. I keep all the tent accessories like the ground cover and pegs stored with it, so I know I’ll remember them. On the shelf next to my tent I store the sleeping bags and inflatable mats. (Not the blow up kind, the kind that self inflate!)
Cooking supplies include a cook stove and fuel, matches, and utensils. I typically have a cook set all assembled with pots and pans, plates, and silverware that is only used for camping. This way I just have to grab the pack and I can trust I’ll have everything we need. I take along a grate as well in case I need one to cook over the open campfire. Some campsites have these and some do not.
Miscellaneous camping equipment includes flashlights, rope, a camera, an extra tarp, and I bring along some binoculars too.
Tags: leisure, recreation
Video Games Systems - Then to Now!
People are being impressed almost on a routine basis, by the unimaginable progress in technology that are continually occurring in our lives. Accordingly this endless expansion of technology is way beyond the mind’s ability to conceive. Cast your mind back over the last decade, there have been an incredible number of technological advances and betterments we have witnessed, that we would never in our craziest dreams believed was conceivable. Take mobile phones for example, primarily the intent was for them to be utilized as a method of verbal communication between two parties…now we take pictures, listen to our favorite songs, browse the internet and much more!
Potentially one of the most prevalent inventions to occur in our lives was the development of the video game. The capacity of someone to indeed imagine and conceptualize electronic games was something so radically different that people went haywire about them. Over time, the evolution of video games has not only stayed inventive, but their peripherals and the additional devices available for these games have furthermore shown to mock the creative confines of the community at large.
The hardware devices that are used to play console video games are called video game systems or video game consoles. Each producer of these devices also have their own compliment of games which can be played on their own systems. It is common for game designers to team up with system producers in a joint alliance in which each side gains the advantages of combined advertising and exposure for their products. Successful game and system partnerships such as their is with the Pokemon series of games and the always revolutionary Nintendo video game consoles is just one example of the big league relationships that are in place.
Along the way there have been a growing number of developers who have launched their own electronic game systems of which each have their own distinctive specifications and characteristics. Additionally the visual design of each of these video game systems is also particular to each developer and as such lends itself to various types of consumers.
As there is a considerable quantity of differing items a buyer needs to review when they are looking to purchase an electronic game system…it is sometimes quite a hard decision to make. Questions like; Which console will I purchase? What is the best video game system that’s suited to me? Which console has the best range of games available? These are just a few questions which will go through your head when trying to decide.