For professional photographers, it is often about positioning. In order to have a great composition, you have to be able to get into position for the shot. Today's post will be a brief course in proper technique for getting the kinds of shots that professionals get.
Let's get started.
One thing you won't see pro's do is simply walk around with their camera at standing height-eye level, and blast away. Anyone can do that. One way of making your image more dramatic is to get down low, so it looks like a child's eye view. Your subject now appears tall in the image, it's very effective. Good technique by this pro.
Click on the continue link for the rest of the lesson...
If say you are in Africa, and want to get closeups of interesting wildlife like hippos or crocs, you need to get close. That's what pro's like this one do. So as not to disturb the wildlife, you want to wade in slowly and get as close as required. Although this person is a pro, hmm, I wonder, since any pro stalking game like that would surely have a snorkel to breathe with.
You might be wondering, with his head underwater scouting the quarry, how can he accurately point the camera at the subject. Good question! But I simply cannot give away all professional secrets, you are lucky to be getting these ones!
Now of course, pro's use tripods! And some of these new ones allow you to mount the center column in the upside down position. How cool and useful is that. This is no doubt a dedicated pro photographer, documenting the ecological dlyevastating effect of hacking down random "young growth mini forests." He is about to show the world the sadness of this savage act.
In this case an assistant is required. Many pro's use assistants for lighting help, schlepping gear and so on. The assistant simply holds the photographer in the necessary position to compose, focus and click the shutter. Which hopefully doesn't take too long.
On the right hand side, we have a very clever pro, no? He is obtaining a point of view available to no one else, except maybe someone with a low flying helicopter.This picture is sure to be published in an important magazine or book. Now you might be wondering how he triggers the shutter. Will I tell you a pro secret such as this? Well, this time, sure. He sets his timer on 10 seconds, presses the shutter, then quickly raises the pole up to the perfect height to achieve a magical composition. How glorious!
Now speaking of camera support systems, what if you are going so incognito like this pro, that you cannot bring your tripod or anypod? You wouldn't want to just snap away without proper camera support, that would be very non-pro.
What this clever pro has done is build her own temporary camera support system. By applying a little pressure on the camera strap, opposite the direction her arms are holding the camera, she is creating great stability. It was very creative to utilize this passing child.
Well, I think we have covered the gamut of positioning and proper stabilizing technique. I'm sure you have appreciated the many pro secrets being shared today. I shall leave you with a bonus technique:
What if you are out shooting and a rainstorm hits? Many great images can be captured in a moody environment such as this. Pro photographers are like boy scouts, well actually we are better than boy scouts, because we are not only prepared but we have thousands of dollars worth of gear, which definitely outranks some badges and a swiss army knife.
But anyway, back to this important tip. If you think rain might be in the offing, bring appropriate rain protection. here we see that this pro has a perfect version of rain protection, which will assure that the camera and lens do not get wet which would compromise the important professional shoot.
Any pro's reading this post may add additional pro techniques in the comments below, or you amateurs are invited to comment on our pro techniques.
