Innehållsförteckning för No. 295 från Photography Week

Welcome to the world’s No.1 weekly digital photography magazine. If you’re already a reader, thanks for your continued support and involvement; if you’re new to Photography Week, you’ve come to the right place! In addition to expert advice, brilliant tips and step-by-step tutorials, every issue features interactive galleries of the best new photos, how-to videos on essential shooting and editing techniques, and in-depth reviews of the latest camera kit. But that’s not the whole story. Photography Week is more than a magazine – it’s a community of like-minded people who are passionate about photography. To get involved, just follow any of the links below and share your shots and comments – your photo might even appear on our cover! JOIN THE PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK COMMUNITY AND START SHARING! FACEBOOK http://tiny.cc/7s2zgy TWITTER…

The stars we see in the night sky are in our local galaxy – Andromeda. Our solar system is 26,000 light years from the central galactic core, and from our view, individual stars within it become indiscernible – combining into a milky glow that gives the Milky Glow its name. These pinpricks of light are very faint, which makes photographing them particularly challenging. To capture the weak light you’ll need to be somewhere very, very dark, as light pollution from cities and other artificial light sources will easily overpower it. And to capture the light you’ll need to set an exposure that floods your sensor with as much light as possible during the time the shutter is open. The 500 Rule The exposure time itself is limited due to the…

The Northern Lights – aurora borealis – are one of the most amazing spectacles the night sky has to offer (those in the southern hemisphere get to see the Southern Lights – aurora australis). They’re the result of charged particles from the sun colliding with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the variation in colour is caused by different types of gas particles: the most common colour, a pale yellowish-green, is produced by oxygen molecule collisions about 60 miles above the Earth. Red auroras are created by oxygen, at heights of around 200 miles, while nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red aurora. Photographing auroras usually requires situating yourself at higher latitudes, closer to the poles. The strength of an aurora is measured by the Kp-index; rated from 0 to 9. The…

1 EXPOSURE Start working on the sky frame in Lightroom, using exactly the same sliders as in the single-frame method on the previous page. Boosting Vibrance and/or Saturation is a matter of personal preference, but a little can be added if desired. 2 IMAGE FOREGROUND If you adjust the white balance for the sky frame, make sure the same values are added to the foreground frame, or the two images will look different. Once these adjustments have been made, open both images in Photoshop as layers. 3 EDIT IN PHOTOSHOP With the foreground as the top layer, add a layer mask and carefully brush in the sky. Adjust the brush opacity, and go back and forth around the horizon until there is a seamless blend, and the foreground and sky…

1 HOUR Mist and fog are wonderful mood-setters for landscape photos, but the problem is that the conditions have to be just right for them to appear naturally. Natural fog only occurs when drops of moisture in the air cool suddenly. The rapid cooling transforms the invisible gas to visible droplets – think of warm breath on a cold day. It happens a lot where warm air above water meets cold land, or when a cold night air falls over warm ground. These kinds of conditions happen fairly often, but you need to be in the right place at the right time, so if you want guaranteed atmosphere in your landscapes you’ll need to create the fog yourself. You might think of a fog machine as a filmmaker’s tool, but…

When you’re travelling with your camera, arriving at a popular and photogenic location for the first time can be a bit daunting, especially if you’re pressed for time. Which are the must-shoot features or subjects, and where’s the best place to shoot them from? The new Pixeo photo-scouting app aims to make things easier. The app (it’s iOS-only at the moment, but an Android version is in the works) relies on crowdsourced information to produce maps of more than 10,000 popular photography locations. When you arrive at a location, tap a pin and you’ll get a preview of the nearest photo spot. You can then drill down and get details about the location, including a description and gallery of photos. The app also allows you to share your own locations,…

As we’ve discussed, the heavens are actually moving through the night at a fair old lick, enough to be recorded as motion blur if your exposure length exceeds the ‘500 rule’ (see the previous page), resulting in stars being recorded as elongated streaks, rather than dots. But photography is a creative medium, so what if we were to deliberately allow these streaks to occur, to help convey the stars’ movement in our static image? This technique is known as star trails, but for meaningful movement to be recorded we really need an exposure time of at least an hour, stretching to several hours for longer, more impressive-looking trails. Such lengthy exposures introduce their own set of problems. The longer the sensor is exposed, the greater the build-up of image noise,…

Sometimes, you’re presented with something unexpected. A highly unusual and peculiar set of atmospheric circumstances come together to result in what can only be described as a phenomena. By their very nature, these more unusual phenomena are difficult to predict and plan for. It becomes more a case of being in the right place at the right time – but of course the more you’re out and about in the small hours, the more lucky you’re likely to be! Here are some of the phenomena, and what causes them… Zodiacal Light Zodiacal light, or False Dawn, is a phenomenon of triangular light that emanates high into the atmosphere. These come from the direction of sunrise or sunset, and can be caught during twilight and the first hours of darkness during…

BUBBLE BATH NICK TURLEY “This was taken at a photography event at Warleigh House stately home in Devon, England. It was a fantastic event, with so many models and different looks created inside and in the grounds of the house. This shot is of the gorgeous Ashleigh Finn.” http://tiny.cc/rd3cpy TUNNEL VISION ROB GREEN “This is the foot tunnel running under the river Thames at Greenwich in east London.” http://tiny.cc/6ayety THE THREE SISTERS DAVE HORTON “The Three Sisters are rock stacks on the North Taranaki coast of New Zealand. The beach is only accessible for a short period around low tide, which on this day meant photographing the stacks in harsh early afternoon light, so a mono image seemed the best approach. I took three bracketed exposures, merged them into an…

Tamron’s new-generation 90mm macro lens is beautifully built, packed full of top-end features, and delivers sublime results – and it matches or beats the overall quality and performance of ‘own brand’ lenses that are far more expensive, making it a bargain to boot. We prefer the Tamron for shooting on both full-frame and APS-C format Canon and Nikon DSLRs, compared with the camera manufacturers’ own lenses. If you’re on a tight budget, meanwhile the Sigma 105mm is an excellent lens that’s unbeatable value, especially in the UK and Europe. Sony’s 90mm macro is another massively impressive lens, but it’s very expensive, and the value of its optical stabiliser is questionable, with recent Sony E-mount bodies adding five-axis sensor-shift stabilisation. The Pentax lens has a distinctly retro feel to it but…

Many of us are fascinated with the vast enormity of the unknown – space. Who hasn’t paused for an instant to gaze at the stars, totally lost in awe, transfixed by a moment in time that seemed as if it lasted forever… But how do you capture these magical night-time vistas on your camera? Well, armed with your DSLR or compact system camera and tripod, and perhaps a flask full of something warm, you’re halfway to becoming a star-shutterbug. Advances in imaging technology over the past decade have helped push the low-light and night photography boundaries, opening the genre to the masses. With such a fascinating subject, and the possibility of creating such mind-blowing images, it’s no wonder that nightscape photography has become one of the fastest-growing genres, and this…

The first thing you’ll need to know is when the moon will be in the night sky, and you’ll need to ensure there are no obstructions hindering the field of view where you intend to position it rising. Use the PhotoPills app to plot out the exact time of the moonrise alongside its exact position; the app will also help you calculate the time of the moon passing over high landscape features such as mountains. While normally the presence of cloud spells the end of an astro shoot, the moon semi-obscured by a bank of cloud can lend the shot real atmosphere. The moon moves fast, so brief shutter speeds of no more that two seconds are needed to capture its surface detail. It’s bright too, so you can get…

1 Our starting image is extremely dark, so the first step is to boost the Exposure, in this instance to +1.5. You can also add a serious amount of punch using the Contrast slider. 2 Now we can see it a little better, the image is somewhat blue, so we’ll increase the white balance slightly to 4000. Remember to adjust the slider value by eye to suit your image – every picture is different. 3 If there’s an adverse effect from light pollution, drop down the Highlights to reduce it. Subtlety is the key, or you can end up with an oversaturated look to the highlights. 4 A tweak to the Whites adjustment slider can also be beneficial. Adjust the slider by eye instead of a set value; for this…

The winners of the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year 2018 have been announced, with the 25 category winners whittled down from more than 8,000 images submitted by photographers in 60 countries. This international contest celebrates all types of food imagery, so while there are plenty of mouth-watering shots of delicious-looking food and drink, the submissions feature a wide variety of subject matter linked to food and food production, including humanitarian themes, landscapes, portraits and travel. Bangladeshi photographer Noor Ahmed Gelal was named Food Photographer of the Year 2018 for his shot entitled Praying with Food, which shows the breaking of a day-long fast at a Hindu temple in Dhaka, and was taken from an unusual vantage point looking down on the subjects. Click the link to see all…

For the little things in life, you can’t beat a good macro lens. Unlike zoom lenses that carry a ‘macro’ badge, most macro prime lenses deliver full 1.0x or 1:1 magnification at their closest focus distance. This enables you to fill the camera’s whole image sensor with something the size of a postage stamp, enabling enormous magnification when you view the resulting shots on screen or in print. Indeed, with APS-C or Micro Four Thirds crop-sensor cameras, you’ll get an even greater ‘effective’ magnification ratio between 1.5x and 2.0x, compared with a full-frame body. Many manufacturers make APS-C format as well as full-frame compatible macro lenses. However, they often have a relatively short focal length, which also results in a short minimum focus distance. In some cases the ‘working distance’…