SHORT AND SWEET

1. This picture has two subjects, and as such both of them need to be sharp. If one is ‘almost’ sharp, the image is degraded significantly. You can either use a smaller lens aperture, move further away, choose a wider lens, or take two separate shots where you focus on each deer separately and then composite the results.

2. For sweeping views of interior rooms, panorama images can be quite useful. I used a wide angle lens for this elegant room in a castle in the U.K., and that’s why there is distortion in the horizontal lines. This is an 8-frame composite. A single shot with a wide angle would not have encompassed the entire room.

3. This is La Fenice Theater in Venice, Italy. The lighting is so reddish that a normal tungsten white balance still produced a very yellow/red image. I had to switch to manual white balance mode and turn the dial so the Kelvin temperature read 2500K. Only then did the colors in the image match what I saw.

4. W all know that dramatic natural light outdoors is sunrise and sunset, but stormy skies and moody light also produce beautiful images. I photographed these horses in France last month in driving rain with my photo tour, and as much as I like and seek out golden lighting, this kind of light condition is powerful, too. §