I was hired by a couple recently to give them a  two-day photo tour of the island. Stacy and Lance were their names and they live near Detroit.  Stacy was a sponge for information and Lance just loved to spend some time out in nature and smiled pleasantly  as we captured images. We found a location with particularly pleasing composition so we stopped and set up the dreaded tripods.

“Okay letʻs stop,” I suggested, “because this scene tells a story.”  Actually, I was out of breath, and needed to rest. (Stacy and Lance appeared to be hard-core fitness types, but I never actually asked.) So I suggested we stop to breathe with the disguise of making a photo. The spot worked, in any case, and they believed me. 

We made photos of this incredible winding path through the bamboo forest of Kīpahulu, Maui. Stacy was a very good amateur photographer. Her exposure was good and she processed her image perfectly using Adobe Lightroom4. After she posted this photo on facebook, I told her, “Perfect exposure!” It was. But her final product was lacking the emotion and the feeling of the magical place where we had stood.

I stepped Stacy from Lightroom4 into Photoshop and promised her that using Adobe Photoshop was an art, like painting, as opposed to some cheezy color-by-numbers application. I led Stacy through several layers of adjustment layers in about 20 minutes, and explained to her my reasons for “painting” the way I did. I preached her, “Do not allow the eye to escape the photo! Lead the viewer in using light and color.” I learned this concept from the great wizard Ben Willmore  as a student of his.

Stacy transformed her photo from a good “I was there” image, into a compelling visual story of mystery and curiosity. Wow. I love her photograph. I am now lead down this pathway on a visual journey! YOU GO GIRL! https://www.facebook.com/stacygarlington . Lance smiled. Below is her finished art.

Tell a compelling story.
Capture the viewer.
Lead the viewer through your artwork using light and color.
Do not allow the viewer to escape!

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I sat on the bridge watching the beautiful water and thought to myself before capturing the image, “What might I do with this scene, which will make it different?”. So I decided to shoot this as a vertical HDR panorama using my wide lens. The left half is 3 bracketed exposures, and the right half is three bracketed exposures. For those of you (advanced photographers) who understand “high dynamic range” tone-mapping, I took care of this part of the processing first using Photomatix Software. Because of the tone-mapping process I was able to capture the extreme contrast range from the highlighted water to the deep shadows in the lava rock. Next I blended the left and right halves together seemlessly using Adobe Photoshop CS6 > Edit > Automate > Photomerge.

It worked like a charm but I found that the finished image was way too busy for my own artistic taste. Sooooooo………. What would happen is I made it look like a night scene? …if I darken it and change the hue to blue? AHHHA! Yes! It is both real and surreal! The sun happened to have thick clouds which allowed this image work as a night scene. Whew, I pulled this one off by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!

I am slowly adding new Hawaii scenic images back into this new website rebuild. In a month, I should be back up to speed with my galleries. Feel free to subscribe to my blog. Mahalo!

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We all seem to love waterfalls. In Hawaii we are so fortunate to have a choice of several from which to choose on any given day. I spent the past two days guiding a private photo adventure with a young couple here on Maui and we kept finding ourselves drawn back to that good olʻ clear liquid H2O in fluid motion.

It is not just the water which attracts us, but more specifically moving water — water splashing, water tumbling, water dripping, water waving, and the “holy grail,” water falling. Why does water turn me on? Does water turn you on also? I thought about it and penciled my list of theories on to paper:

• Moving water releases negative ions and that is said to increase our serotonin, the so-called “dreamy hormone.”

• Waterfalls tend to be located in wilderness places where the air and Earth are clean.

• Our survival instinct tells us that water is necessary for life and thus we are most comfortable when we are near water.

• Moving water creates that wonderful “white noise” which entices our brain to wander aimlessly.

• Waterfalls change from day to day, hour to hour, and second to second. Humans are attracted to constant change.

• Moving water is usually situated next to still objects like stones or trees, creating a pleasing visual composition.

• Where there is moving, splashing or spraying water, there is often a rainbow. We humans loooove those rainbows!

• Water in motion means there is maybe a good place to swim. Swimming in Hawaiiʻs natural waterfall pools often means swimming buck naked! Ahhhhhh, yes….. Perhaps this is why falling water turns me on! …Woohoo!

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Okay, let me jump right into this hapless analogy. Rainbows make us smile. A rainbow is always fabulously beautiful to look at, but still it is only the Best Supporting Actor. It makes the lead character look good. So it is up to you as the Director of Photography to find your Best Actor. In this example my main character is Wally-the-Horse. The rainbow makes the photo of Wally come to life. Without it, Wally is just another horse in a pasture. Without Wally, the rainbow is just a seven-colored arc without a good screenplay. If we put Wally and the rainbow into the same scene together we might just win the award for Best Visual Effects!

Enough of this analogy. Here are some things I do upon photographing a rainbow:

1) I rarely use a tripod. Tripods will slow you down. Working fast with rainbows is key. 

2) I determine my Best Actor, or main subject, and locate that subject in the foreground.

3) I focus on the main subject, and not the rainbow. Cameras have a hard time focusing on rainbows, because rainbows are an optical phenomenon and are no particular distance from us.

4) Most often, I use a wide lens to show of the arch of the rainbow. With a wide angle lens you must remember to move in close to your main subject.

5) Keep the front of your lens dry. Rainbows are associated with water droplets and wind! I use a lens cloth to frequently wipe the droplets off the front of my glass.

6) When I have enough time, I will use my camera menu options to set “auto-exposure-bracket” (AEB) so when I press the shutter-release button one time my camera makes three different exposure values:  +1 EV / normal / -1 EV. (This is what we professionals call CYA, or “cover your ass”.)

7) As an alternative to bracketing I sometimes use the +/- exposure compensation button and underexpose (make darker) my rainbows by -3, or -7 EV to create more saturation of colors.

Living in Hawaii affords me plenty of opportunity to see rainbows. Did you know that when you see the coveted “double-rainbow,” the colors of the spectrum are in reverse order from the colors of the primary rainbow? If you have your own tips for photographing rainbows, please leave a comment for me. I am interested! If you have a friend just learning photography, please share this post with them as well.  ~Aloha.

The post The Award for Best Supporting Actor Goes to: RAINBOW! appeared first on Randy Jay Braun.

Here are a few favorite techniques I suggest using when eyes are a part of a photograph:

First - Always focus your lens on the eyelashes nearest to the camera. If I am using a camera with several auto-focus options, then I will use the single center focus point on the eyelashes before recomposing to capture the subject. Occasionally I just use old-fashioned manual focus.

Second - Engage in conversation while photographing your subject to provoke natural eye movements and facial expressions. Ask a perplexing question or talk about chocolate or boyfriends / girlfriends, or travel. This conversation will relax the subject and they may not even notice you are photographing them.

Third - Whenever possible, check to see that the eyes have a catch-light in them; a reflection of something bright or white. The catch-light brings dull eyes to life. I occasionally ask a friend to reflect some sunlight toward the eyes with a white card or small portable reflector (a car windshield sunscreen works great.)  Your on-camera flash can do this, but the catch-light looks much better if the reflection seen slightly on the side of the eye rather than centered on the pupil.

Next time you look into a personʻs eyes, try to read their story. And if they look back into yours, then remember they can see into your soul.

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This was my favorite image from my all-Maui photo tour yesterday. I had 397 more images just like it!

Wouldnʻt  we all like to see Tiger Woods whiff the ball on the first tee? I would. Just once.

Yesterday I took a fine couple on a ten-hour private photo-adventure tour of Maui. We covered 150 miles by car, and another long distance by foot. Larry and Rita followed me excitedly as I brought them to a dozen of my favorite scenic locations on the island and demonstrated how I prefer to expertly photograph each special place. I was the brilliant leader and they were the adoring students gobbling up every bit of advice. I was the smug king-of-he-hill, oh yes I was.

I shot several candids of Larry and Rita, promising to email shots to their California home as a fine memory of our day together. I rushed home late and eagerly turned on my Mac, and opened Adobe Lightroom, and slammed my completely filled 8 gigabyte CF card with 398 raw photo files into the external card reader. Boom! I was ready to rock and roll with my quick editing skills.

Ummm…. “FOLDER CONTAINS NO IMAGES”.  Okay, joke, a damaged cf card right? I put the card back into my camera to check the thumbnails again. “FOLDER CONTAINS NO IMAGES”. I swear they were just there minutes earlier. There must be some sort of mistake? I ran the file through my disc utility to verify and repair. Multiple errors! Ack! I could not repair!

Okay, I can get over the lost dayʻs batch of scenic photos….. But to call my clients and eat crow??? Oh, the pain, the humility, the torture! So embarrased!  My king-of-the-hill status was in ruins!

So are you guys feeling that little internal double-fist-pump now that I am a total goof? I think Larry and Rita are.

The post A Peculiar Sense of Warped Satisfaction appeared first on Randy Jay Braun.

So many new photographers ask me about my gear, and what new camera body they should purchase. It happened again yesterday. “Should I get the Nikon D3200 or the Nikon D5200? I want quality and so I think the more expensive one.” And again I explained to the photographer that generally any DSLR camera body purchased today will have more bells and whistles, and more latent quality than a typical photographer will ever, ever, ever use. I suggested that she save $400 and buy the lower level model for her needs. The money saved should go toward a nice tripod instead. (I didnʻt have the heart at the moment to tell her that a nice tripod actually will run about $800!  Thatʻll be a different blog post.)

I also told her that megapixels are over-rated. When you capture 24,100,000 pixels every time you push the button, you will soon need a new computer and several terabytes of external hard drives plugged in to it just to hold images. Seriously, 24.1 megapixels on a DX cropped sensor in a consumer-level DSLR? Maybe one out of a thousand camera buyers will ever need this amount of resolution.

More and more, the make-it or break-it of a photograph happens in the processing phase. More and more, I insist that my students and interns purchase and learn to use Adobe Lightroom software to make adjustments to to all of their images. It costs about $200, and you can try it for free for 30 days. Lightroom v.4 has emerged superior to other applications for cataloging, editing and processing digital photographs. I suggest watching Adobe TV tutorials, which are free and easy to follow.  I know this sounds like a paid commercial. It is not. It is my opinion.

This photograph of a Hawaiian paniolo keiki cowboy was processed fully in Lightroom v.4, with the exception of the soft focus edges. It was completely blah, as seen straight out of the camera. The dirty little secret here is that most images coming straight out of my own camera are blah! When I see something in Lightroom that catches my eye, I spend 15 minutes processing the image and move it out of the blah zone. Try this.

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Maybe “dictator” is too strong of a word, but the Mom always promises that her kid will be different; “Little Elmer just loves the camera! He will grow up to be a model. Smile Elmer!”

The issue for me as a photographer is getting from point “A” to point “B.” Point “A” is when the kid arrives at the shooting location. Lets say the little primate is a 4 or 5 year-old boy. I always make the assumption that I look like a scary, haunted, grizzly old man to him. (Please, keep your comments to yourself.) Generally, I keep my distance at first until I can warm up to the boy slowly by making small conversation about Happy Meals, pets, and Halloween candy. When the time gets closer to shooting, I sit on the floor and sometimes allow the child to take a photo with my camera. Or sometimes I will grab a quick snapshot of Mom and let the child view it on the back of the camera. This typically puts the little model at ease and builds trust.

When photographing kids, I usually use a long lens — 200mm to 300mm so that the Mom will be much closer to the child than I am. Although I am sometimes tempted to put tape over the Momʻs mouth so she will stop saying, “Smile Elmer! Smile, smile, smile, smile, smile smile!”  I have yet to do so. The more you tell a kid to smile, the more fake the smile becomes. Instead, I attempt to strike up a conversation about cartoons, or video games, or about being ticklish. Mainly, as a scary looking old geezer, I try to make myself as unintimidating as possible. I grab shots quickly and de-emphasize camera equipment and lights.

The winning shots of children are those where facial expressions are natural — rarely, if ever a forced smile. These particular photos are excerpts from last weekʻs shoot for The Maui Concierge Magazine cover. I create the monthly cover of a Maui child.  If you work in the hospitality industry and have a child whom you think may look great on this magazine cover, contact Allyson, the publisher at info@themauiconcierge.com.

Moms, really, donʻt worry. I will be very nice to your awesome little cherubs.

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Increasingly we tell the stories of our lives using more pictures and fewer words. Pictures cross language barriers and communicate more freely with uninhibited imagination than words. A photo is now captured instantly and transmitted with the speed of light around to the other side of the Earth where itʻs story will be told to a strange person in aforeign land, and the story will be clearly understood without the use of language. Photography is powerful. It is now a language we are all learning to speak more clearly from pre-teens to grandparents, we are all beginning to speak this universal language of pictures. More pictures and fewer words. Our camera has become our pen.

The loss of written and spoken language skills concerns me, but the storytelling skill by people using images is progressing rapidly. No longer am I satisfied to look at a photo of my friendʻs bowl of oatmeal each morning. I seek out images worldwide that have substance; a good compelling story. Photography has become the truly universal language.  Use your modern digital tools and speak from your heart.

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Hawaiian hula is my favorite subject to photograph. You will find my favorite images in the shopping gallery. Click yourself over there. Take a look and embrace the culture. Feel the motion and let my photographs take you to a different place. Have fun and give me some feedback on the new site, okay?

~randy

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