HOT SHOT #3
said the Keith as he moved his AF point around.
“It’s made even more difficult because the two trees aren’t on the same plane,” said Neil. “We need to maximise your depth of field. Think of the area you want sharp, and focus roughly in the middle, so you maximise the sharpness in front and beyond that point of focus.”
As Keith adjusted his focus, a gust of wind whipped through the gnarled woods and rustled its way through the ferns and leaves.
“That’s going to blur if we shoot a one-second exposure like the last shot,” said Neil. “Let’s raise the ISO and freeze the movement, but first, switch to manual focus so your focus is locked.”
Keith raised the ISO until he reached 1/125 sec and took a few shots. “Now we’ve got those images in the bag, let’s push our luck,” said Neil as he handed Keith a remote shutter release.
“A self-timer won’t help us here, as we’ll need to precisely time the shot for when the wind dies down,” he explained. “As soon as it does, fire the shutter.”
Keith attached the remote shutter release and returned to ISO100. After a few minutes, there was a break in the wind just long enough to capture Hot Shot #2.
Faces in the trees
As the sun began to rise higher in the sky, Neil called time on Wistman’s Wood and the pair headed off to a nearby pine forest. As they were walking down a lane en route, they noticed soft light illuminating a clearing full of silver birch trees.
They approached two trees, with a third fallen just in front of them. “I like the relationship here,” said Neil. “There’s a bit of a family dynamic, and the tree on the left has some very human-looking features.”
Neil quickly found a composition and set up his tripod. “Separation isn’t just about lighting and depth of field,” he said as he beckoned Keith over to his position. “See how – when you stand here – there are very few trees intersecting with the ones in the foreground?”
“It’s much cleaner, isn’t it?” said Keith. Neil nodded: “Exactly.”
Keith moved his tripod into position. “It would be nice to frame the facial features on the left tree, but they’re quite high up the trunk,” said Neil. “Yes, if I tilt the camera upwards I get too much canopy and sky, and begin to cut off the fallen trunk,” said Keith.
Neil began extending the legs of his own tripod: “Let’s put your camera on here,” he said. “This is why I always opt for the tallest tripod I can find. If we raise the height of the camera we can angle it down slightly to compensate for the sky and hopefully still frame the features that we want to.”
Since the trees were roughly on the same plane, Neil felt they could get away with a wide-open aperture to help the main subjects pop against the busy woodland behind. But as the pair inputted their exposure settings, the sun broke through the clouds and highlighted the trio of trees.
Spitting rain had left the leaves with a glossy surface and the sunlight was causing notable glare. Neil’s solution was to attach a polarising filter to cut the reflections. “I tend not to use polarisers if I can help it,” he said. “I’m not bothered