Shots Of Ducks

Everybody hates shots of ducks. According to my friends’ opinion, capturing ducks is good-for-nothing. Last week, I read an article explaining needless of taking such shots. However, I am sure everybody took shots of ducks. I believe everybody had so called duck period in his/her life.

I admit that there are dozens of photos of ducks and these shots are very similar. It is very good to take interesting duck photos. In addition, I admit I do not find interesting such shots including my ones. It is interesting why people do not count capturing lowering sun useless. There are dozens of such photos. They look the same, not counting some interesting captures. What is the difference between duck photos and shots of the lowering sun? I do not know. Why is so funny to capture ducks and why is not funny to capture the lowering sun? I do not know. What about the flowers? You must be very talented to take interesting shots of flowers. You must be very creative if you would like to take a unique shot of flowers. Are flowers better ducks?

Please, do not misunderstand me. I know that most of duck shots are not interesting. Look at this photo taken by me. Nothing special.

My most interesting photo of duck is capturing a water drop with the duck. But, this shot is not very interesting.

However, taking shots of ducks was very important to me from point of view learning photography. I tried to capture other bird, too. But small birds can be taken hardly with my bridge camera. From this point of view, ducks, mallards and swans are ideal subject. They do not fear of people, so you can go very close to them.

I learned much taking such these half-wild birds. For example, I was very proud on my swam shot, until somebody did not mention that it was too white. The title of the shot is White Hunter. Somebody made a comment “It is indeed white”. :) From this point, I have started to use exposition correction. I do not know where this shot is. I can show you other shot of white swam like an example of a bad shot.

What can I say? Do not be afraid of taking ducks. Your photos may not win the photo of the year award, but you can learn much about the photography and you can earn useful practice.

Last but not least, you can enjoy the moment of pushing the shutter button on your camera. Is not it the most important for a hobby photographer?

Panorama Shots

Interesting part of landscape photography is panorama shots. There are special cameras for this purpose and many other cameras support panorama captures. My camera is one of them.

I liked the wide panorama captures and I wanted to take such shots. It is very easy. Panorama shots can be created without any support if you have a picture manipulating software like Photoshop or GIMP. All you have to have is a tripod. Just mount the camera to the tripod, make a shot, turn your camera horizontally, take the second shot and so on. In the end, you will have series of captures, which can be united with GIMP or other software. The only requirement is that pictures must have common parts.

I have a good book, the author of which suggested marking the first and the last picture of the panorama series. His method is simple. Before taking the first picture, capture your finger and after finishing the last shot, capture two of your fingers. Such way, you will know that images between “fingers” belong to one panorama series.

I applied this method. Later, when I uploaded photos to a computer, I realized that it was not necessary to do, as my camera supports the panorama shots and it put series into different folders. Now, I have very good capture of my fingers. :)

The software of my camera is able to create a panorama shot from the standalone photos. It is very easy; I selected the photos in the preferred order, set the direction of moving the camera and pressed the Create button.

The software cannot create a panorama shot from one of the series; other shots were good. I do not understand the reason of failure. I just suppose that I left too much time before two shots and the landscape changed too much. Do not forget, clouds fly over the sky, and if the sky is fairly big on the shot, then it is difficult to find the common part.

Now, I know there is no time to waste. I must take shots without delay, just turn the camera and press the button and turn and press, very quickly.

Landscapes

Recently, I started taking shot of landscapes. I enjoyed watching awesome landscape shots taken by others. Once, I got a book written about my home county. This book contained many photos of the countryside. The photos were awful. They were so awful that I could not describe them. I am still a newcomer hobby photographer, yet I knew I could make better photos.

When I was on holiday, I grabbed my camera and sat in my car to travel around and take some shots. This trip was very enjoyable to me and I took many photos. Of course, I met challenges. Before going to this trip, I read some books of landscape photographer. These books said the photographer must have woken up early to catch the wonderful lights of sunrise. I planned to wake up early morning. But, it was just a plan and when I went out of the town it was about 10:00 AM. I missed the colorful sunrise. :(

I was sure that I was wasting my time, but I did not give up and continued my tour. I stopped my car very often to take shots. Some interesting clouds swam across the blue sky.

The first challenge I met was setting the proper exposure values. I measure the light on the sky and the fields became dark. Measure light on the field, the sky became whiter and the clouds disappeared. Clever books I read did not say anything of this problem.

I tried different settings of the camera, and the optimal seemed measuring light on the clothes and increasing the exposure collection by about one positive number. Such way both the clouds and the fields were shown on the shots. Maybe it is not the standard way; however it gave the best result for me.

As I mentioned, I took many photos breaking one of the rules. This rule said that the photographer had to give a title to a shot before taking it. With other words, the photographer must know the reason of taking shot. Capturing wonderful landscape is not enough, as there are many shots of awesome landscapes. This rule is easy to understand, but very hard to keep. :)

Later, when I was browsing among the photo files, I learned importance of this rules. Next time, I will not waste my time capturing lovely but boring landscapes. I will save my time to find something really interesting.