Pro Techniques

Architectural photography normally involves shooting exteriors and interiors, ranging from residential to corporate and industrial. Hospitality photography moves in a different direction. John Bellenis explains: “I would define hospitality photography as shooting hotels, resorts, cruise lines, spas, and destinations. It’s a niche market that encompasses a range of photographic disciplines: architectural exteriors, interiors, lifestyle, food, and travel. I enjoy it because it keeps things fresh and the demands are varied photographically.

An exposed photographic plate or a segment of exposed film inside a dark camera body are analog equivalents of today’s Raw file. Before digital technology made it possible to capture visual images electronically, a photograph was visible only after it had been processed in a darkroom with chemicals. Now the processing is handled either in camera or by Raw rendering software. The word “Raw” is not an acronym; it’s a simple description for a file that contains pure data, invisible to the human eye.

To photograph the wild horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina you have to deal with the fact that they are indeed wild and thus not particularly welcoming of a photographer’s attention.
But first you have to deal with the Outer Banks, a 200-mile stretch of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. “It’s important to have an awareness of time, tide, and weather,” Lisa Cueman says of the location. “You can get into your photography, but not so much that you lose a sense of your surroundings.”

As primarily a landscape photographer Iam often in a situation where I am struggling to give a feeling of scale to big dramatic views. I will look for something to place close to the camera, such as a dramatic flower or rock, to capture the viewer’s attention and draw them deeper into the photo. In some cases, though, I find including a person rather than a natural element within the scene does a better job of it. Not only does the figure add scale, but it also makes viewers feel like they are standing within the scene rather than looking at a print on the wall, a kind of visual empathy.

Caving,” “spelunking,” “potholing.” Whatever you call it, this subterranean activity is not for everyone. There’s even a phobia that keeps some out of caves—speluncaphobia. Then, of course, there’s fear of darkness (achluophobia) and the rather more common claustrophobia—fear of no escape from small or enclosed spaces.

The picture of the Buddhist nun drinking tea in the Drepung Monastery in Tibet was going to be perfect. The light coming in through a window behind her was capturing the texture of her skin and casting a glow on the tea and the rising steam, and from my training in studio photography I knew how rarely light like this happens in real life. But by the time I’d asked for and received permission to take the photo, the moment had passed: she’d finished her tea and was about to move from the light. So now, along with permission to take the photo, I had to get permission to recreate it.

Wildlife photographers with any interest in photographing big Alaskan brown bears should certainly consider the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, professed to have the highest concentration of large adult brown bears in the world with over 70 bears having been seen at any one time. The sanctuary is located on the Alaskan Peninsula about 100 air miles west of Homer and is only reachable by floatplane.