HDR? I'm going to think about it!

This is my first attempt to HDR using Photomatix (http://www.hdrsoft.com/), probably the bets program around to edit your HDR photos. What is HDR? The word stands for High Dynamic Range and in very simple words it is the result of 3 or more images taken at different exposures and mixed together to achieve such an incredible dynamic range that most of the times neither the human eye is able to detect. For example one image is exposed for the shadows, one for the mid range and one for the highlights. The program blends them together and gives you a vast array of sliders to play with every aspect of the photo.

Usually the results look like a tad fake to me. People either overwork the images on purpose to achieve a specific effect, or they do it by misusing the program and create monster images, amazing to see but tiring, due to their non realistic look. The good ones, those who master the software, make great works, and I bow to them. Check out the HDR group in Flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/ to see what this is all about.

I have tried with a couple of photos on the trial software, this is why it comes with a water mark, and finally decided to keep this one to show you. We are far from the editing of some stunning images, here I used the blending mode that is said to give the more realistic results and played very little with the sliders.

When I browse people’s work in Flickr (www.flickr.com)I am always a tad suspicious about HDR images. Being a bit on the conservative side, those photos look just stunning compared to the others and still I’m not sure if this is ok or not. Confused by progress, that’s what I think I’m suffering now but…let me learn how to use the machine from hell and I might become a great HDR fan… !

Guethary, the beauty of the French Basque country

Well, the idea was to travel to the Delta of the Ebro river for the long weekend but it suddenly changed to a more family oriented plan when our friends Silvia and Pepe invited us to their house in Guethary, in the Basque area of France, very close to the border with Spain on the Atlantic side. We knew this place from before and accepting the invitation was an easy task, such is a beautiful area and such good hosts we had.

Travelling to the Basque country is quite a long journey from Madrid but is a pleasant trip altogether. You go from the up and down roller coaster of the "Sierra", the mountains nearby Madrid, to the flat lands of Castilla and finally among the green hills of the Spanish Basque country.

Once you cross the border with France and head to San Juan de Luz, the first major town along the coast, you start appreciating the mixed feeling you get from being so close to the sea and yet fully immersed into a green and agricultural landscape. Cows everywhere, surfers with bikes and their boards heading to the beaches, happy campers and all different kind of tourists, mostly relaxed and laid back.

Guethary itself is a nice and tidy little village. Not many houses, not terrible traffic, and a smooth atmosphere, peaceful and enjoyable. What really gathers your attention is the buildings. Is very unlikely to see a house that is "out of tune" with the other ones, the vast majority of them maintained the typical Basque style and are very much well taken care of. Freshly painted, shiny wooden windows, beautiful gardens and nothing around that mess up with the overall beauty.

This is a part of the world where people enjoy being outside, dining outside, drinking outside. Bars are pretty much everywhere, as well as restaurants, with many along the seaside, something, I assume, we all love.
During our stay we "tested" few of them and apart from one, they all rated from good to excellent.
Since the weather was not so great we decided to burn some calories walking with my friend's 4 dogs. I think I have a pretty decent idea of the geographical map of the town itself, as well as the close beaches. Of course both my friend Pepe and myself carried around the Nikons in search of decent images, and the beach was quite a hot spot for some shooting.

Last but not least we had the opportunity to grab an idea of what the "Cesta Punta" is. The typical Basque game also known as the "Pelota Vasca" really caught my attention for being so fast and entertaining. To add thrill to the game we watched, a local "howler" entertained us and blew our ears, yelling like a mad man (as he probably was) for a good 20 minutes. Then, disappointed with the referee he abandoned the court with major relief for those sitting at least in a 50 meters circle around him!

No fishing this time, just hundreds of shots with my aged D80. Some you can find here. Many thanks to our good friends for allowing us to repeat such a nice trip, we truly enjoyed it.

Pikes, my freshwater love affair

Before getting hooked to saltwater fishing I was an avid freshwater addict. while still in Italy, either when I was in Rome or Milan my target was any kind of predator I could find in lakes and rivers. By that time it was mostly Black Bass, Trouts, Chubs and Pikes, the latter being the highest in the ranking. When I finally moved to Spain, where I still reside, I switched my attention mostly to the salty drink yet haven't abandoned my first lover. I soon discovered that the potential for freshwater predators in the Iberian peninsula was much better than the one I had in my home country, and Pikes were numerous in several environment, among whom I favoured the small rivers.

The real heaven for me was the area of Castilla Leon, near Zamora and Benavente. This is where I found the Pikes in wading waters, eager to snack a top water lure or a skirted spinnerbait. To my greatest delight I could walk on the river for a long time without having to exit the water, from knee deep to the maximum allowed by my wading boots: casting under the trees, near the edges, on top of the weeds with weedless soft lures.

To be very honest this is till my favourite fishing of them all. I travel all over the tropics during the season but is when I go back and target my marbled friends, face to face, on my own or with one fishing buddy, that I make peace again with fishing. To add more interest to the adventure I have now found a way to carry my DSRL with me, and it really takes little risk (well, just a bit) to drawn, and finally I can take more decent photos with the help of my occasional fishing buddy. Among them all my friend Pepe http://josehweigand.blogspot.com/ is the one that better fits my idea of "ideal" fishing companion. Not only is an excellent fisherman, but he is also a very good photographer, and he has fun both fishing and snapping images altogether, not to mention posing for my attempts to catch a decent exposure.

The last day we spent together was delighted by an extremely good activity of our toothy friends which allowed us to take a good deal of photos, and of course have a blast fishing.

There's no monster fish among our catches but the strike of a Pike on a top water lure is something that really gives you a thrill. Finally, when a 10lb fish shows up is a big party, we're not picky guys...

He played a lot with his D300 furious shooting sequence and I carried forward my experiments with the external strobe, trying to learn something that the guys at Strobist show with so much skill at http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/.

Pepe also taught me a trick or two, and I'm very grateful to him to share his expertise. He has just put out his own blog this very week, actually through him I discovered that it was easy and suitable even for an Internet dork like me, and pushed the release of mine as well. We're counting the days to be back there, knee deep in the water casting on top of the weeds, waiting for the amazing blast of a Pike. No matter how small or big it is, we're there for the enjoyment.

My humble guide to better fishing portraits. Chapter 1

I'm far from being a professional photographer, whatever it means, and by no means I'm a good one but at least, I have dedicated 80% of my shooting time to grab images of recreational fisherman with their catches, or situations very much alike. Being in contact with several good photographers and very helpful magazine editors, I have slowly improved my skills and discovered new ways to make better photos. Of course there's much room for improvement, every day I learn a new trick and through the global web and it's many forums dedicated to photography and imaging, there's always so much to learn. Anyway, here's what I can pass along at the moment. This is what I have learnt so far and I hope it can be of some help for the readers of this humble blog.

Composition is sure enough one of the main issues. Most of the time you need your subject to fill the frame, what you don't want is to have a lot of sky, land or boat appearing in the shot, and the angler with the fish as a dot in the middle. Even worst is somebody's back or an arm included in the image, rods sticking out of the back of the angler and alike. The following image is an example of what to do not, in fact it includes in one single shot everything you can do wrong (and it was one of my biggest dog tooth tunas....)

Here is another image, less crowded, with a better cropping and yet with many undesirable elements in it. The back of another fisherman and the rod sticking behind the guy holding the fish

This is an idea of how a proper image should look like, tightly cropped, no much room around the angler and his catch and still some background to understand that he is in a beautiful place, the Andaman Islands in this case

Here is another example of what I consider a decent take, with the help of a beautiful stormy sky

A problem that often shows up is the leaning horizon. This is not an extremely big issue because you can easily correct it later in Photoshop , but if you get it right by the time of the exposure you have few advantages. First of all you don't have to crop the image, hence you don't risk to damage the take because you find yourself with the fish jaws in line with the cropping. You don't loose precious pixels either, they could come handy if your image need to go on a double spread. You save editing time too, and this is valuable when you have to work on hundreds of photos after a trip. The photo below is a decent example of wrong horizon, fortunately here there's enough room to correct it as you will see in the second image.

People, when at sea, usually wear sunglasses and hats. Nothing wrong with that, they add protection to your face and head in case a vagabond lure skyrockets against you or a flying treble hook decided to get a grip on you eye. The problem arises when is time to take a picture, in fact, especially in harsh midday sun, when the light is right on top of your subject, you cannot see his/her face or, at the best, is very dark, as you can see here.

The following photo shows how a flash, even a external flash put on camera, can lit up the whole image, get rid of the undesired shades and make the best of an harsh light. Quite an easy and handy solution. Whatever weather I'm in, whatever is the sun position I always use a fill flash. Put in manual, best of all off-camera, choose the correct amount of light you need not to over or under due and changing the angle of the light to your subject take few shots. Sometimes 1/64Th will be enough while other days, especially if you want to underexpose the sky, you might need to pump up the power and go to 1/4Th, or 1/2. So far, being so close to the subject, especially when using such extreme wide angle lenses, I have rarely needed to get full power but if you start clamping your flash further away from the subject, it might be necessary to take advantage of the full capacities of your strobe. I've yet to try that but as soon as I have some direct experience I will keep you posted.

We stop here for the moment, but this is not finished yet. In a following part I will try to explain new ways to take the best possible fishing photos. In the meanwhile, if you would like to contribute to this blog please go ahead and write your comments