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Posted by Bill S on June 18, 2007 at 1:45:20 pm EDT
In reply to Hi I'm New (And I have pics of my latest adventure) posted by ericjustin on June 14, 2007 at 5:31:29 pm EDT

Tom,
My Leki hiking pole/monopod (Sierra Photo) has foam handles, not cork.

Eric - I would add Elliot Porter to your list of photographers whose work is well worth studying. He did a lot of work in the eastern US, although he is best known for his Grand Canyon and other western US images. It is well worth taking a workshop with one of the more famous outdoor photographers (I was lucky enough to know Ansel Adams and spend time with him, myself). But do watch out for the too-many workshops by people who aren't much more than amateurs themselves. Taking photos and having them critiqued by the top photographers is very instructive.

While I learned a great deal by using a view camera and by working in the darkroom with the various films and chemicals (under Adams' tutelage for at least a short time), I believe that the instant feedback of digital offers a lot to the learning experience. As Lizard says, though, you need to think about what the shot will come out like compared to what you want to say with the picture. An exercise that used to be standard in workshops (especially those oriented toward view cameras) was to take a piece of black cardboard and cut a frame in it that was the shape of the frame of the camera (8x10 inches for the typical 4x5 view camera, or a 2x3 ratio for the 35mm camera frame, which is what the length to width ratio for most digital SLRs - so 6x9 inches for example). Then walk around in the woods looking at things through that frame. Move it in and out from your eye (one eye, since the camera has effectively one eye), and study what the image will look like. You will have to learn by practice how the color your eye sees translates into the color of the image (and the altered color after you make a print following processing with Photoshop). I used to work almost exclusively in black and white, which takes even more practice to visualize. One thing you will find is that both media (film and digital) are more "contrasty" than what the eye sees. That is, not as great a range between the darkest parts of the image with detail and the lightest parts with the detail washed out.

One thing I would forget about right now that you mentioned is compression. If you shoot jpeg format, you have no control over what your particular camera does to do the compression. You just have to live with it, although you can sort of control it by using the histogram to see what is happening (if your camera allows you to see the histogram). What you should first concentrate on is getting a roughly right exposure, but mostly composition (which you already have a basically good eye for), which will include the effects of shutter speed vs aperture (shutter speed to intentionally freeze or blur motion and aperture to control depth of field) and lens focal length. On focal length, view that as a way of cropping the picture in camera. It is NOT a means of moving in close or back farther - only "leg zoom" can move you closer or farther. The perspective and relation of objects in the frame stays the same as you shift focal length ("zoom"), with change being only what you include and exclude.

A good starting approach is to concentrate on still life and fairly static objects that give you time to contemplate the picture. As you get experience, you will be able to do the same thing with dynamic subjects - animals that are moving, people in action, etc. What Cartier-Bresson referred to as the "decisive moment", that fleeting moment that tells the story you want to tell. One of my favorite photos by Adams is Moonrise over Hernando. Even though he shot it with a view camera that required stopping the car, getting the tripod and camera out and mounting and aiming them, he caught the "decisive moment" that a minute before or a minute after vanished. Looking at the photo you would think it was a carefully composed photo done with great patience, rather than effectively a "grab and shoot".

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