Trees, Black and White, Backlighting and Ossian Lindholm!

Intro by Skip Cohen

What a kick these short snipets of wisdom are from Ossian Lindholm. I love the simplicity of each tip he's sharing in this new series. 

In one of the rooms in our home all the photographs on the walls are of trees and all black and white. Work by a number of great friends over the years cover the walls, John Sexton, Rod Dresser, Bob Coates, Dave Ashby and Robert Stewart, just to name a few. What I love the most is showing guests the images, because the average consumer doesn't really understand black and white, especially the artist's look and feel from soft contrast to powerful high contrast, almost pure black and white.

I'm not sure black and white has ever been more fun to shoot than it is right now. Technology has given us more tools for creativity than at any time in the almost 180 year history of photography.

Then, in this post, Ossian gave us a bonus, but stayed with the tree theme and a quick reminder on metering to help you get the very most out of your images. Now imagine what it would be like to take a class with Ossian!

Want to learn photography closer to home? Ossian is coming to Maine this summer, June 21 - 27, to teach The Art and Craft of Mindful Travel Photography workshop at the Maine Media Workshop. Located in the gorgeous coastal town of Rockport Maine, the class is an ideal time for you to fine tune your skills an artist and learn from one of the very best in the world. This class will fill at 12 people. 

Sometimes you're walking around with your gear and you come across a situation like this one. It's just a tree, but you see the potential for a great image in your mind's eye.  You say to yourself , "This is perfect for shooting HDR in Black and White with a wide angle lens". 

The settings are different and with a scene like this you have time for a correct composition. There's no rush.

I put the camera on a tripod and I choose f 16  because I was looking for a deep Depth of Field. I set the camera on 100 ISO because I was looking for the best quality. I didn't mind a slower shutter speed since my subject wasn't moving.  Plus, I was shooting with a tripod. Expecting to do an HDR image, I set the camera on auto-bracketing mode with +/- 1.0 EV.

Then I was ready to shoot the tree and sometimes nothing adds more drama than black and white.

Here's another look at a completely different scenario, trees with a red back light. 

Photography is light and some of your most beautiful images, just require understanding how to meter. The secret here was simply correct metering of the back light. 

This is my favorite series of photos to explain the benefits of using the Manual exposure mode. This was before sunrise and the sky had a beautiful red color. I set my camera on Manual mode and pointing to the sky I metered the light :  f 2.8  1/15 sec 

Then, without changing that exposure value I took several photos. 

The fun of photography and capturing images you love goes directly back to practice, practice, practice. Learn to experiment and get to know all the different shooting modes of your camera. Then, when something spectacular comes along you're ready to match your vision with your results.