4x4 Desert Photography

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Tue Oct 19, 2010 8:18 pm

I've had the opportunity to work with some pro photographers and I've learned some of their tricks - want to hear some of them and add your own?

First thing I learned... you take hundreds of pics, as many as your memory can hold BUT YOU ONLY SHOW the top 2-3.

The other 498 you keep on your computer, or delete them, but you don't show them :smiley2:

Quality, not quantity.

I see this on all websites after every trip - tons of photos pretty much the same. A car on the sand... another car on the sand... a car with sand behind it... a car with sand in front of it... a pro photographer would say "hide them" and aim to select the very very best 2-3 photos you got, and share those.

If you do that, you will soon be posting only excellent tip-top shots 8)

Add your own tip, and then I'll add another one; and if we all do that, we all learn something new and become better photographers.

EDIT: check out this amazing shot! National Geographic...

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Tue Oct 19, 2010 8:44 pm

Thanks PR for the advice
I'd love to do that ... thou I'm not a photographer, but I like taking pictures

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Tue Oct 19, 2010 9:20 pm

My photographer is ready ... I will show you some of his shots ..

--
Al Marshoudi .. like never before

Having a Nice backyard called Area + 18

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Tue Oct 19, 2010 10:21 pm

good point but sometimes it is not about the special money maker shot but about letting others see themselves on the sand. I have thousands of images that no one will see just like i have hundreds of hours of video that no one will see either...not that kind!

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Wed Oct 20, 2010 8:09 am

The "flying sand" photo is a popular one for the kind of driving we do.

A few tips I've learnt:

camera set to fast shutter speed, or put in sports mode;
focus set to lock on subject as you pan through;
set shutter to burst mode, or keep the button pressed for the camera to take many sequential photos


this pic taken by Mohamed Idris, and published in The National

Here's a nice article on shooting sports: http://www.shutterfreaks.com/Tips/StoppingMotion.htm and the author goes into how setting ISO 800 and ss 1/4000 can stop a baseball traveling at 90 mph so you can see the stitching, etc.

pseacraft, sure, I agree. The aim is to let people see themselves in the sands in really good shots.

Here is another use of sports mode, because it really captured the human moment pseacraft mentioned (I can't remember who took this photo, but it's one of my favourites! 8) I can actually feel the freshness of the water after a hot desert drive! Awesome!)

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Wed Oct 20, 2010 8:15 am

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Wed Oct 20, 2010 6:56 pm

pseacraft wrote:good point but sometimes it is not about the special money maker shot but about letting others see themselves on the sand. I have thousands of images that no one will see just like i have hundreds of hours of video that no one will see either...not that kind!

plz upload it i want to see it

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Mon Nov 01, 2010 1:44 pm

Another tip:

When you want to control how deep the focus of a photo is, you can change the Aperture number (usually marked 'A' or 'AF' on your camera, and written as F/4.5 or F/20).



This means if you want the background to be in focus, you should set Aperture to a high number, like this photo shows:



See in this photo how the camera focused only on one face? Because the Aperture was set too low a number:



For the desert, this is useful if you want to focus on something close and also see what's behind it, like this shot of the Land Rover Defender cockpit and the view outside:

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Mon Nov 08, 2010 3:30 am

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Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:20 pm

--
SaLeH Al RoMaitHi. AkA ScaVenger
WARNING : Desert Addict, do not feed him any Sand!!! Will bite

050-3036494