Light Meters

Light meters are found inside your camera. Older meters are usually "center-weighted", meaning they read the amount of light within the center of the frame. Newer cameras usually offer more complex meters, allowing them to read the amount of light from many places within the frame. There is usually a box or circle in the viewfinder that designates the metering area. As the light changes within your metering area, your camera will give you some kind of indication of that change.
Meters are very simple tools. They cannot see color. Meters only read tonality, the darkness or lightness of an image. The meter looks at the light in the viewfinder and recommends an exposure by comparing the light pattern and quality with some kind of reference. Meters read the amount of light in and average it. The meter looks at the brightest spots and the darkest spots and says, "Let's be safe and put it in the middle.
This is fine, if you are after "average" toned images. Photographing dark black rocks, instead of getting black rocks, you would get gray rocks, as the meter would average the light to capture gray rocks. Photographing white snow, your film would come back as gray. The meter can't think "Oh, this is snow, so make it white." It can only "average". Understanding how the meter works is very important when photographing extreme or unusual lighting conditions. Let's explore it just a bit further.
There are four variables which can affect your camera's meter: the aperture on the lens, the shutter speed, the quantity of light available at the time you take your picture, and the brightness or tonality of your subject. Your camera already knows the aperture and shutter speed because you either set these manually, or you let the camera choose them. That leaves the quantity of light and the tonality of your subject - and your camera meter has no way to tell the difference between the two. If the sun goes behind a cloud, the quantity of light decreases, and your meter will register that change. In the same way, point your camera at a light colored rock, then point it at a dark rock, and the meter will tell you that the exposure has changed, even though the light has not.
Camera designers had to make a choice. What they chose was to calibrate the meter to accurately expose "middle-toned" subjects, those subjects neither light nor dark, but somewhere in between. The reference point they chose was 18 percent, roughly three stops brighter than black and three stops darker than white. A subject that reflects 18 percent of the light that strikes it is called a middle-toned subject. Probably the hardest technical problem photographers have to overcome is learning how to use their meter to make a properly exposed photograph. Since your camera's meter is calibrated to properly expose middle-toned subjects, it stands to reason that any subject that is not middle-toned will not be properly exposed. Here is the catch: Your meter does not tell you how to make a properly exposed photograph. It tells you how to make the thing you are metering come out middle-toned. If your subject is middle-toned in real life, then your exposure will be perfect. But unless we override our camera's meter, dark subjects and light subjects will also come out middle-toned. And that's not right.

Going Against the Meter
So how do we fix the problem? If we meter a light subject, like a snow-covered field, we know what the meter is going to do. It’s going to make the snow look middle-toned, or gray. We don't want gray snow, so we have to manually compensate by adding back in the light that the meter has told the camera to remove. We add extra light to the exposure of lightcolored subjects to make them appear normal in the photograph. And we do this by either opening the aperture or by slowing the shutter speed from the value that our meter tells us.
In the same way, suppose we are photographing a dark subject like wet tree bark or a dark rock. Our meter is going to try to make the bark look middle-toned. It tries to make everything we point it at look middle-toned. So we have to manually compensate by taking away the extra light that the meter has told the camera to add. We remove light (or add darkness) from the exposure of dark-colored subjects to make them appear normal in the photograph. And we do this by either closing down the aperture or by increasing the shutter speed from the value that our meter tells us.
Let's go over that again. Meter your subject. Compensate from what your meter tells you by adding more light for light-colored subjects or by subtracting light for dark-colored subjects. Take the picture. A handy phrase to help us remember this is: Add light to light, add dark to dark.

Photographic Designs in Nature

Colors
The world is a kaleidoscope of colors - some bright, vivid, neon and dazzling. Some may be soft, subtle and pastel. Colors can capture the attention and hold us with their intensity or move us to tears with their strong emotional qualities. There are seven basic colors (plus black and white) and each affects us differently and represents a variety of symbols.
Red : Red immediately attracts and demands attention. It is used to represent an emergency: fire, ambulances, red cross, blood. Emotionally, it is an exciting color, vibrant and strong, hot and powerful. It radiates energy and vitality.
Orange : As a mixture of red and yellow, orange has the qualities of both colors. Orange is used to symbolize fire and the sun.
Yellow : A bright and warm color, often representative of vitality, yellow attracts attention in its brightest tones. Yellow represents the sun.
Green : Green is the color of spring, grasses, and leaves. It symbolizes nature, growth, and youth. Emotionally, it is a cool and tranquil color, or it may be seen as a healthy, lush color.
Blue : Blue is a cool color. It represents the sky and the water around us. Emotionally, blue is a quiet and peaceful color, but may also be interpreted as lonely. Photographing in shade or late evening or pre-dawn can add a blue color cast to your images.
Indigo – Violet : These colors are commonly referred to as magenta, purple, and lavender. Purple symbolizes power, royalty and richness, possibly because of its rareness in nature. It is found in flowers and leaves, precious stones and in the setting sun on occasion.
White : Often thought of as the absence of color, white is associated with cleanliness, pureness, freshness and innocence. It symbolizes pure light or snow, or clouds, brightness and hope.
Black : Black is a very strong color. We associate black with the dark, shadows, with the unknown and our fear of the unknown. It represents a sense of lifelessness and is found in coal, burned wood, night, and shadows. It can imply mystery, evil, or a threatening and ominous feeling.

Branching
When you first look at a forest, it may seem to be a random tangle of branches and leaves. Continue looking and you will notice some regularity. Follow the path of the trunk of a single tree as it moves upward. Soon a branch will protrude out from the side, then another and another. From that branch will be smaller branches, then smaller ones, leading to twigs and eventually to leaves. Branching is again nature using the shortest possible line to get the greatest amount of coverage.

Fractals
In the mid 1970's, Benoit Mandelbrot, a mathematician at IBM, developed a geometry that could analyze and quantify nature's crags, whorls, billows and branching. He called this new branch of mathematics fractal geometry, taking the name from the Latin adjective fractus, which means "fractured, fragmented or broken". Since then, scientists have used fractals to define order in natural structures that defy analysis.
To fit into this new category of mathematics, a shape must have what Mandelbrot called self similarity. The details must look much like the larger picture. A small part of a cloud has the same kind of swirl or texture as the larger part. Look close or look far away and feel no sensation of size. They all look like clouds.

Texture
Textures give depth and "feeling" to a subject. They are accentuated on flat surfaces by the use of side light and shadow. Look for the play of shadows on surfaces. Watch for the direction of the light and how it creates shapes and lines and forms and adds dimension to your subject.

Case studies in Photography

Burning
In photography is called the burning issues that we often see the results on the shooting. This problem is when the film or image after printing, there is visible in the image of the images are missing because of the additional colors that are not printed on the desired image. The result is like taking something but we have a closed part of the image by color image such as a fire that partially cover the results of our image. This could be due to a leak in the camera in the light into the film that is impermeable in the room light on the camera so that light is recorded by the film and the printed results like that. To avoid this, secure the camera well, avoiding the image on the light is too bright.

Flare
We often encountered in the shooting result of additional colors is not too thick (vaguely) on the image that has been printed. This color can be various, such as red, blue, yellow, and others. In photography terms called Flare (light refraction). This can happen because of the light into the camera lens. The result is an image on a color that is not too thick (vaguely) refraction occurs because light by the camera lens, and then additional colors in the picture. But any photographers sometimes use it to embellish the image so that the results such as effect on the graphical image. To avoid the use of the camera lens.

Few about Composition in Photography

Get your subject out of the center

That's it. No complicated mathematical equation here. Get it out of the center. It's that simple. Most cameras have centered focusing brackets or "targets" in the viewfinder. When the focusing area is in the center of the frame, we tend to aim the "sights" at our target, a.k.a. subject. This is called the Bull's Eye Syndrome.

Getting the subject out of the center of the frame makes for a more interesting picture. Okay, why? Greek artists discovered that the human eye tends to rest on certain points in an image, and they considered this natural movement "the concert of the eye." Imagine a grid in the viewfinder, such as a tic-tac-toe pattern: two lines evenly spaced across and two lines evenly spaced down. Where the lines intersect is where the eye tends to focus. As the grid breaks up the frame into sections of three, this is called The Rule of Thirds. By placing your subject on one of these intersecting points, the eye can look at the center of interest, then feel free to move around the image to look at the rest of the photograph. A sense of movement is created.

The ancient Greeks were passionate lovers of thearts and sciences. They analyzed how we look at art and what makes art interesting or boring. Static, centered subjects keep the eye focused, even trapped, right in the middle. By providing an opportunity for the eye to move around the image, people found the art more interesting.
This movement of the eye is critical to making a boring, tourist shot into something that makes people say "Wow!" Take a moment and look at a picture you have on your wall. Or grab a magazine and just look at some graphic image. Watch the path your eye takes. First it zooms in on something of interest. Then it wanders over here and wanders over there. Does your eye feel locked in one place? Or does it just keep wandering all over the place? Does it zoom to one thing, then bounce to another, and bounce back to the first and back to the second? You feel like you're watching a tennis match. Or does your eye race all over the image, looking at everything and never standing still. After a while, you feel a little seasick, right?
Our eye likes to roam, but it enjoys a good rest once in a while. By putting your subject in one of those four intersections of the rule of thirds, you now offer the eye something to look at and places to roam.

Line it Up on the Horizon

Humans prefer things in their proper places and looking like they should. We have expectations that water runs down, trees grow up and the earth may be a ball but it looks flat from where we stand. Be careful in threatening those expectations.
One of the common expectations often threatened is the rule of a straight horizon. Excited about a beautiful sunset or landscape, we tend to forget to make sure the camera is level along the horizon. A tipped horizon can give a sense of sea sickness. Take time to lined up your horizon with trees growing straight up and the water running down hill, if that is your goal.

Horizontal vs Vertical

The camera has two formats to choose from: horizontal or vertical. The most popular is horizontal. Is it popular because it looks best? No. It’s popular because that is how cameras are made to be held, flat across our faces.

Manufacturers make the tripod screw mount to accommodate that format by putting it on the bottom of the camera body. Is it the best composition? Not always. Tall trees are best photographed vertically. There is a feeling of height and power. Landscapes may look best as a horizontal, but not always. Try both ways to see which you like when you get your film back, then decide. It’s an artistic choice, so use it.

Simplification
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Keep your images simple and they will have a greater strength and artistic concept. Learn to see the distractions and eliminate or minimize them. It is easy to stand there and try to get the whole scene into your picture, but what is the point? Tell us what the story is about by giving us a summary, not the whole book. Go for the simple.

Getting Too Excited

Too often the cougar comes out of the bushes when we aren’t ready to take a picture. Still we grab the camera for a few shots. Then we tell ourselves that even if they don’t turn out, at least we will have recorded what we saw. We get them back to find that we actually saw a blur. It happens. No matter how exciting it is to have a bull moose stride past you, a seasoned photographer learns to prevent getting too excited by understanding how their equipment works, how it sees, and by honing their skills through practice, learning to trust their instincts.

source from
A Basic Nature Photography Workshop
Presented by Brent and Lorelle VanFossen,
for more information you can visit
www.vanfossenpro.com or vanfossen@vanfossenpro.com

Few About Photography

• Journalism Photograpy (Fotografi Jurnalistik)
Journalistic photography is a special photo that displays the photos you have any news value, can be objects, or situations of human life that attract public attention because it as a news event that is able to reveal, explain and raise curiosity.
(Dictionary of Photography Bram nejad essay)

According to the understanding Hick, is a photo journalistic news presented in the form of an image or can be termed as an event that is displayed in the "language" image.

• Wedding Photograpy (Fotografi Pernikahan)
Wedding Photography is a specializes in dedication wedding-momment or event. Necessary for it, we should be understanding photography techniques, lighting and the customs and etiquette wedding.
(Dictionary of Photography Bram nejad essay)

• Architecture Photograpy (Fotografi Arsitektur)
Architectural photography is a specialized branch of photography on the objects of architecture with the documentary approach, and commercial art.
(Dictionary of Photography Bran nejad essay)

Architectural photography is the result of the paper documentation that can show not only the interests of documentation, but also in terms of architectural aesthetics, art, expression, communication, ethics, imagination, reality, emotions, harmony, drama, and the honesty and the dimensions of the lines.
(Ari Purwanting: architect, author, lecturer and housewife)

• Fashion Photograpy (Fotografi Fashion)
Fashion photography is photography that subjugate special photo equipment and clothing. A fashion photographer must be able to integrate with the fashion model to become an image (picture) that harmony.
(Dictionary of Photography Bram nejad essay)

• Aerial Photograpy (Fotografi Udara)
Air photography is special photography shooting air. Can be used for mapping, survey, or the measurement of spatial and agriculture.
(Dictionary of Photography Bram nejad essay)
Air photography is a combination of Wireless Technology, Remote Controlled Flying Ballon and that combined with creativity, experience and innovation in the world of photography services produce air that is capable of shooting up an impression, more value and meaning of a property.
(source: www.dynton.com)

• Fine Art Photograpy (Fotografi Seni)
Fine Art Photography is of photography that is used specifically for the art like the withdrawal canvas and brush.
(Dictionary of Photography Bram nejad essay)