Short and sweet

1. For extreme closeups with telephoto lenses, be cognizant of your depth of field. It’s very easy to let the camera decide what it should be and then you’re disappointed with the results because the subject isn’t completely sharp. For this portrait of a chimp in Kenya, I used f/11 so all the facial features were sharp. 2. The Udane Bridge in Mandalay, Burma is great to shoot at sunset. What defines the success of silhouetted images are the graphic shapes of the subjects. Simple, clean lines with non-distracting backgrounds make the best shots. Now, hundreds of tourists walk across the bridge and they make very poor subjects.

3. A very light, monochromatic sky behind a subject such as a bird can work. It’s simple, non-distracting, and forces all the attention on the subject. There is nothing wrong with that. For drama, though, replacing this kind of sky with storm clouds adds tremendous visual impact. 4. When shooting from a boat as I did in this picture at Elephant Island off the coast of Antarctica, use a shutter speed faster than you would think is necessary. The movement of the boat and hand holding the camera in this kind of situation requires a speed of at least 1/500 to insure sharp pictures. §