Fantastic framing

Dario ‘Ropero’ Romano shows how to shoot fine-art interiors

aking photos of interiors is something I love doing – but shooting indoor spaces isn’t always easy. You may come across restrictions on the use of tripods or flash, so you need to be precise with your camera settings in order to get a well-exposed and noiseless image.

Special attention must be paid to composition, which I think makes

Tup 90% of a good image. One of the tricks I use a lot while composing my shots is to turn on the camera’s Live View mode and set the picture control [onaNikoncamera–other brands use different terminology] to Monochrome. This gives you a black and white image preview and is useful for revealing the balance between shadows and highlights in your chosen composition.

It is often a dream of many bird watchers to see a kingfisher. The flash of blue, the stunning oranges… it is truly a dream bird for many, that not everyone gets to see. However, there are a few possibilities to rent a hide, especially in the Czech Republic where I live, where you have an almost-100% chance of spotting one – and a great chance of shooting the perfect picture.

In the wild, it’s a different story. To find these birds you have to have luck, or have a top tip from someone in the know. Mostly this can come from local fishermen, ornithologists or communities that care about wildlife. But be careful: once you’ve had your first sighting of that little guy or girl, it’s pretty addictive to join their company far more often. Their colour, their size, their behaviour and their style of hunt are incredible, and leave you wanting more.

Recently I was able to finally fulfil my dreams and start photographing birds of prey, owls and small birds in flight. I was lucky enough to purchase a wildlife photographer’s dream setup from Sony, including two Sony Alpha 1 bodies, a 600mm f/4 GM, a 400mm f/2.8 GM and a 200-600mm G. It’s awesome to be out on the river with uncertain results. The tickling of the fingers while you are waiting, the feel of being in your camouflage suit for four hours to finally see one fly in front of you on your pre-determined branch: it’s priceless.

The street style of photography has been around since cameras were first designed. Back then, everything was shot on large-format or 35mm film, but it’s a look we still thrive to emulate in the modern day.

Even with our super-clean, noise-free mirrorless cameras, you can get creative in the edit and give your street images a little flavour of the past. In fact, the key is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t worry about details in your blacks, or striking detail in the highlights of your clouds: just drive your sliders to the max (well, not quite – but not far off) to create images that mainly feature high contrast while retaining the viewer’s eye on something interesting.

I shot this image back in the summer: it’s very crisp and clean, taken wide-open at f/2.8, with a shutter speed of 1/3,800 sec and a low ISO of 200. The original shot already has some decent contrast, due to the high sun creating some natural shadows in the background and light on the main subject up front and centre – but we’ll use some of Lightroom’s typical sliders to push the image’s strong elements into overdrive. (You can also do these steps in Camera Raw.)