Tips for producing your best hunting/fishing photos

[Steve Foss]

Many, many images posted on this site are excellent. Some are not. Some are blown out, underexposed or can be improved on in many ways. Toward that end, here are some tips that can help anyone take better pictures of anglers/fish and hunters/game. No doubt there are things in here I haven’t mentioned, so if I miss something, chime in.

And good fishing/hunting!

1. Fill the frame with the subjects. When you do that, it draws the eye right to the subjects and adds drama. Conversely, don’t get so close that a fish’s nose or tail is cut off, or that a deer’s tall antler tines leave the frame.

2. When holding a fish you plan to release, support the fish’s belly or underside with one hand and hold it at an angle or horizontal. Holding a fish vertically with a hand under the gills (and all its weight dragging the vital organs downward toward the tail) can damage the fish internally and compromise its ability to survive after release.

3. If it’s sunny, put the sun behind the subjects (watch out that the sun isn’t actually in the frame or causing flared spots with the lens) and use your camera’s flash. With the sun behind them, people’s faces and fronts, as well as the fish, are evenly shaded, and the camera’s flash will fill that nicely and even out the exposure. Most cameras these days automatically give you the flash strength you need to do this. Also, subjects looking into the sun produce squinty eyes and pinched faces. On cloudy days with even light, filling with a small bump of flash will help kill any shadows, and will allow the color to be well saturated (underexposed color looks gloomy and dull).

4. Pay attention to what’s in the background. If you want proof of where you caught the fish, put something distinctive to that place in the background, like a sign. Otherwise, a background full of boats or docks or people swimming distracts from the focal point of the picture — the person and the fish.

5. If you are keeping the fish and have a livewell, you may consider putting the fish there until you can find the ideal background. Saturated sunsets/sunrises make wonderful backgrounds, but generally only when flash is used to even out the exposure. If you shoot a person against a bright background, the background usually is exposed nicely and the person is dark (underexposed).

6. Decide whether you want the fish to look bigger than it really is by having the subject hold it at arm's length toward the camera — or aim for realism by holding it close to the vest, so to speak.

7. A note on taste. This is a judgment call, but when shooting a fish, you may want to wipe off any visible blood. When shooting a hunter with game, rinsing off blood and sticking a tongue back in the mouth can make for a much more tasteful image.

8. With fish or game, the more visible the conformation and color of the subject, the better. Deer racks that are partly obscured or fish with their bellies or backs toward the camera keep you from revealing the beauty of what you’re holding. With game birds, try a closeup of smaller birds — like woodcock and Hungarian (gray)partridge — held in someone’s hand. A vignette of gun, decoys and ducks can be a nice image, too, or a row of roosters with the dogs standing by.

9. Sometimes the odd angle adds drama or humor. An example is a person holding a catfish with its mouth straight out toward the camera. The mouth is in focus, and focus fades away so the person is a bit blurry. It emphasizes the hugeness of a flathead’s mouth, and can bring chuckles to viewers.

A note: These are tips for images in general. Before posting any images on FM, please look at the policies and guidelines. Thanks!

[buzzsaw]

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Many, many images posted on this site are excellent. Some are not.

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Some are just too small.

[Steve Foss]

Now, Buzz, don't start that!

If posted images are so big that people with smaller screens have to scroll all around to see the whole image, its impact is wrecked.

Bad Buzz!!! Bad Buzz!!!

[Tom Wilson]

Excellent advice Steve. You did forget one of the most important things that we have learned over years of doing this...Take lots of photos. You will never be proud of the photo that you didn't take, and just by odds alone, one photo is never enough.

Tom W

[buzzsaw]

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Bad Buzz!!! Bad Buzz!!!

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I hope everybody knew that was tongue in cheek, obviously you did Steve. Like Steve said above..................

[buzzsaw]

Here is something I came across that people may have interest in regarding post processing.

Focalblade ^

One of the best sharpening tools out there is the Focalblade plugin for Photoshop:

[note from admin: please see forum rules before posting links to commercial products]

The main benefits of Focalblade are:

- You can set the amount of sharpening separately for the whole image and high contrast areas. This results in less noise on flat areas of image as when using Neatimage.

- You can reduce the amount of haloes in the programs 'Fix' settings. Halo artifacts are usually the thing that sets the limit of the amount of sharpening used.

[buzzsaw]

Here's some info on light.....

The most important element to many great photographs is the lighting. Warmth, depth, texture, form, contrast, and color are all dramatically affected by the angle of the sunlight, and thus the time of day. Shooting at the optimum time is often the biggest difference between an 'amateur' and a 'professional' shot.

In the early morning and late afternoon, when the sun is low, the light is gold and orange, giving your shot the warmth of a log fire. Professional photographers call these the 'magic hours' and most movies and magazine shots are made during this brief time. It takes extra planning, but saving your photography for one hour after sunrise, or one to two hours before sunset, will add stunning warmth to your shots.

Plan Your Day

Assuming a sunrise at 6am and sunset at 7pm, and that your spouse/kids/friends suddenly give you the reverence and servility you so obviously deserve, a good day might be:

5am: Pre-dawn: A pink, ethereal light and dreamy mist for lakes, rivers and landscapes.

6-7am: Dawn: Crisp, golden light for east-facing subjects.

7am-10am: Early morning: The city comes to life; joggers in the park.

10-2pm: Midday: The sun is too harsh for landscapes and people, but perfect for monuments, buildings & streets with tall buildings.

2pm-4pm: Afternoon: Deep blue skies with a polarizer.

4pm-6:45pm: Late Afternoon: Terrific warm, golden light on west-facing subjects. Best time for landscapes and people, particularly one hour before sunset.

6:45 - 7:30pm: Sunset: Great skies 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after sunset.

7:30-8pm: Dusk is great for skylines, while there¹s still a purple color to the sky.

9pm: Night shots, or go to bed - you¹ve got to be up early tomorrow!

[buzzsaw]

More info on light..................... copy and paste work at it's best.

Late to Bed, Early to Rise

When it comes to landscapes, morning and evening are the best time of day

If you've ever taken a photograph in a beautiful location and had it turn out bland and

uninteresting, it could be the angle and color of the light. This is especially true if

you took the photo in the middle of the day.

Angle of Light

Anywhere from 10am to 2pm, the sun is fairly high in the sky. The entire landscape is

flooded with approximately the same amount of light. There are few shadows, and the ones

that are apparent are not very long.

All of this results in a photograph that looks flat. Here is an experiment you can do to

see how this works. It's somewhat artifical, but the concept is the same. Take a light (a

flashlight will do) and find a surface that has some texture to it (brick, stone, etc.).

Shine the flashlight straight at the textured surface and take a photo.

This should result in a photo with some pattern, but nothing pronounced. Now, take the

light and hold it at a steep angle relative to the object you are photographing. Take

another photo. Now, you should clearly be able to see texture in the object. In fact, you

may notice some texture that was completely invisible without the angular light.

This same principle is at work with the sun and a landscape. Take sand dunes for example.

In the middle of the day, sand dunes do not look like much of anything except great big

piles of sand. There are no shadows to give them depth and dimension. However, when the

sun is rising and setting, every single pattern in every single dune is visible, and this

makes for wonderful photographic opportunities.

Color of Light

The color of light also changes at different times of day. Morning light tends to have a

"cool" or blue cast to it, while afternoon and evening light has a "warm" or orange cast

to it.

In the middle of the day, the light shining on your landscape does not have much color.

While this may not be a problem in some cases, a lot of times it will affect the "wow"

factor of your landscape photograph. A normal photograph taken in the middle of the day

will really come to life in the afternoon.

I am especially fond of late afternoon light and the golden color it lends to a

landscape. This effect is more pronounced when the scene that you are photographing

already includes some red, orange and yellow colors.

The best way to see for yourself how the color of light changes over the course of the

day is to take several different photographs of the same view at different times of day.

This exercise is much easier to do on a weekend at home rather than when you are on

vacation, so you might want to try it before the next big trip.

In Summary

While many of us are not inclined to schedule our entire vacations around the time of

day, it can make a real difference when looking for that special photograph. If you have

the opportunity, get up early one morning to take some pictures. Or, arrange the timing

of your nature hike so that you can take photos from a scenic vista as the sun goes down.

And by all means, continue to take photos in the middle of the day. While they might not

have the same punch as ones taken earlier or later, it's better than no photograph at all.

[buzzsaw]

Research shows how to take blur out of photo's/camera shake.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-6102910.html

[buzzsaw]

Photoshop commands to avoid!!

While Photoshop is a wonderful program, it is not perfect--especially when used by photographers. There are several commands that improve your photo, at such a high cost in terms of data loss that it is just not worth it.

Generally speaking, avoid all of the AUTO commands. Auto color, auto levels and auto contrast, in particular, produce dubious results. Using the MODE command to switch to GRAYSCALE causes a 66% data loss. Using MODE to switch to CMYK doesn't take into account ICC profiles. Avoid using the Average, Blur, Blur More, Sharpen, and Sharpen More filters and when working with photographs. Avoid using anything other than square pixels unless you are going to digital video.

[Steve Foss]

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it is not perfect--especially when used by photographers.

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Huh? While Photoshop, like any complex and deep program, takes a tremendous amount of time to truly master, some of the best Photoshop experts I know are shooters. I don't count myself one of those experts, though I know a handful of pro shooters who also are Photoshop assassins. I learned what I know from my wife, Lisa (Mrs. Catfish), who has been a computer graphic designer since the dawn of personal computers (no, she's not that old, she just started when she was 10 years old. ) and is a real assassin at Photoshop. I still depend on her for the really touchy stuff. Outdoor Photographer magazine has caught the digital darkroom wave in a big way, and each issue contains excellent how-to articles on methods to maximize your capability with Photoshop.

Aside from that sweeping generalization about photographers, I agree with what Buzz is saying. To amplify his comments on grayscale — aside from the data loss, changing from color to B&W using the grayscale feature is a VERY blunt tool. It's better to use the hue/saturation feature and completely desaturate the image. No data loss there. I use grayscale sometimes when toning images for the newspaper, but at 180 dpi, there's a lot of resolution/detail loss anyway, and they usually turn out just fine for that application.