My pic­ture of the day is a man on a bike rid­ing through Quar­ry Lakes park in Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia, a rel­a­tive­ly new park devel­oped from an old grav­el quar­ry.

Too often, I leave the set­tings on my cam­era to what­ev­er the last shoot or pic­ture required and then find that a day or 2 lat­er, those set­tings are not appro­pri­ate for the next shoot. Many of my pic­tures are spon­ta­neous action shots and do not allow much time to check the set­tings, let alone frame and focus. Even when I have the time, it is easy to for­get (my mind is like a seive) one or more impor­tant con­trols that could be set to take a bet­ter pic­ture. So bor­row­ing from many oth­er pho­tog­ra­pher’s sug­ges­tions, this is a list of 10 default cam­era set­tings for my Nikon D80 that I review before I leave the house.

ISO = 100
Auto Focus = On
Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous
VR = On and Nor­mal
Cam­era Mode = Auto
Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW
White bal­ance = Auto
Meter­ing = Matrix
Bat­tery = Charged
Card = For­mat­ted

ISO = 100 - This is a killer. Using the lens­es I own, I often must crank the ISO to get decent expo­sure. Pho­tograph­ing musi­cians in avail­able light is tough as are action shots of surfers with my 70 ‑300 f/4.5–5.6 lens. If I for­get to reset the ISO back to 100, I lat­er find the nice land­scape pic­tures I took to be very noisy at ISO 3200.

Auto Focus = on - As my eyes get worse, I depend more and more on aut­o­fo­cus. I some­times shut this off after get­ting the prop­er mid-air point of focus when antic­i­pat­ing a crit­ter to walk or fly into that space. For­get this and you will waste a few pre­cious shots lat­er when you are try­ing to shoot any­thing else. It is also a good idea to occa­sion­al­ly check that the diopter set­ting in the view find­er is adjust­ed to your vision.

Aut­o­fo­cus = Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo — Often, for me, quick grab shots are of mov­ing tar­gets so my default is Con­tin­u­ous Ser­vo (AF‑C). Hit­ting the AF but­ton twice will eas­i­ly take me to Sin­gle Ser­vo (AF‑S) if I want to lock focus.

VR = On and nor­mal - For lens­es equip­ment­ed with VR, the major­i­ty of my shots are hand­held, but when tak­ing long expo­sures on a tri­pod, Nikon rec­om­mends shut­ting VR off. The penal­ty for for­get­ting to turn this back on is blur­ry long dis­tance shots when you are back to shoot­ing hand­held. I rarely touch the normal/active switch, but it can be moved and nor­mal is my default. You might use Active when shoot­ing from a mov­ing car, but I am usu­al­ly dri­ving and not tak­ing pic­tures. It is right next to the VR on/off switch, so check it while you are there.

Cam­era Mode = Auto - I usu­al­ly shoot in Aper­ture or Shut­ter pri­or­i­ty modes and some­times in Man­u­al and one or the oth­er may not be right for an instant grab shot. So, my defa­lut set­ting is Auto. I may take a quick shot in auto, review the meter set­tings and then move to a pri­or­i­ty mode from there.

Pic­ture Qual­i­ty = RAW - It is more work, but I need all the help (and res­o­lu­tion) I can get, so I shoot in RAW. There are times when I want to dis­play the pic­tures quick­ly to a client. I will then shoot RAW + JPEG. For­get to reset this and it great­ly reduces stor­age space. I may also shoot in JPEG only when using burst mode for action shots and need more buffer space. 5 or 6 RAW shots will fill the buffer and may cause me to miss the best shot in a series. For­get to go back to RAW and you lose res­o­lu­tion and many oth­er con­trols (like the abil­i­ty to change white bal­ance) when you need it.

White Bal­ance = Auto - Anoth­er killer set­ting if wrong. It is not dif­fi­cult to hit the WB but­ton and turn the dial think­ing you are chang­ing the ISO and end up shoot­ing day­light pic­tures with a Tung­sten White Bal­ance and nev­er notice this until you are back home review­ing pic­tures. At least I think that is what hap­pened. This is where shoot­ing in RAW mode helped recov­er some shots.

Meter­ing = Matrix - Unless I specif­i­cal­ly want spot meter­ing for a shot, I default to Matrix Meter­ing. I am still study­ing when best to change this set­ting.

Bat­tery = charged - This seems sil­ly but espe­cial­ly when tak­ing long expo­sure pic­tures, you can nev­er have too many ful­ly charged bat­ter­ies. You will not be hap­py dri­ving to that spot and car­ry­ing all your gear down the goat path to the beach in the dark and run­ning out of pow­er after 5 shots. Bru­tal. Anoth­er thing to con­sid­er, Rick Sam­mon says that low bat­ter­ies oper­ate at high­er tem­per­a­tures which may affect the col­or bal­ance in the image sen­sor.

Card = for­mat­ted - I try to start a shoot with an emp­ty card. there is noth­ing like run­ning out of mem­o­ry and hav­ing to delete select­ed shots from a pre­vi­ous shoot and won­der­ing if you had already down­loaded them. When you get home, down­load the pic­tures, then back them up to a sec­ond dri­ve and then (and only then) for­mat the card. For­mat­ting not only deletes the pic­tures but cleans all the bad bits out and pro­vides max­i­mum stor­age avail­abil­i­ty.

So, who says that dig­i­tal cam­eras make tak­ing pic­tures eas­i­er then ever. In the old days, after load­ing the film, you only thought of aper­ture, shut­ter speed and focus. Now there are dozens of but­tons, menus and sub menus that can make your day or cause you grief. The set­tings I cov­er here are easy to get at and change (or mess up). I am not even talk­ing about cus­tom set­tings, deep with­in the menu dun­geon. See your Thom Hogan guide for those set­tings.

I have suf­fered from every one of these set­ting fail­ures, some­times more then one at a time. So, I have writ­ten them down on a piece of paper and put them in the clear win­dow on my cam­era bag in an attempt to min­i­mize the dam­age and just maybe get some bet­ter pic­tures. These may not be your default set­tings, but they are all good things to think about before leav­ing for that shoot and look­ing unpre­pared. The best time to check your set­tings just might be when you get home, while the pic­tures are down­load­ing to your PC.

I can­not pos­tive­ly iden­ti­fy this but­ter­fly or flower which I found along the Merced Riv­er just east of Mari­posa, but it is still my pic­ture of the day.

In the last work­shop, we talked of pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties in our back­yard, one of which occurs when there is a “minus tide”. Essen­tial­ly, a minus tide is a rel­a­tive­ly rare, very low ocean water lev­el con­di­tion that expos­es a large amount of reef or ocean bot­tom. The coast here has a vast amount of shal­low reef that, at a very low tide, traps many marine ani­mals and expos­es under­wa­ter plant life not nor­mal­ly seen while walk­ing on the beach dur­ing reg­u­lar tides.

I found this more tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion on the inter­net:

Jeff Ren­ner
What’s a minus tide?
A minus tide, also some­times called a neg­a­tive tide, is an unusu­al­ly low tide. Tide ‘heights’ are ref­er­enced to a base lev­el set as zero. This lev­el, called the ‘datum’, is the same lev­el used to ref­er­ence water depths on NOAA nav­i­ga­tion­al charts.

Usu­al­ly, low tides still remain a bit above zero, often a foot or two above. But the swing from high tide to low tide lev­els is great­est when the sun and moon are either on exact oppo­site sides of the earth, or espe­cial­ly when they’re on the same side of the earth. This cor­re­sponds to a full or a ‘new’ moon. The grav­i­ta­tion­al ‘tug’ by both the sun and moon pull water toward them. As the earth rotates under the oceans, high tides occur when that part of the earth is fac­ing either the moon or sun (or both). Low tides occur about six hours lat­er, when the earth has turned nine­ty degrees away from either of those ‘bulges’ of water.

Sun­flower Sea Star

This is indeed a pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­ture a wide vari­ety of sea life pro­vid­ed the light is right and you are very care­ful with your equip­ment. Of course, you must con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of drop­ping your cam­era in the water. Even if the strap is secure­ly around your neck, the rocks are slip­pery and if you fall in, your cam­era is going with you. These are things prob­a­bly obvi­ous to you but did not occur to me until I got out there for the first time.

But, if you are adven­tur­ous and except that risk, here are a few tips.
- Water proof boots help you get around eas­i­er and give you a bit more con­fi­dence.
- This is a good place to exper­i­ment with a polar­iz­ing fil­ter which can reduce reflec­tions on the sur­face of the water and pro­vide bet­ter pho­to­graph­ic access.
- Polar­ized sun­glass­es will also help your vision.
- Some kind of a reflec­tor can be used to illu­mi­nate the crit­ters hid­ing in the cracks or pro­vide more direct light when the sun is low.
- I find a tri­pod to be a hin­drance but you may want to try one if the light­ing is poor.

When are these tides? Well, there are 2 low tides every 24 hours, but the times vary. You just need to know what time they hap­pen and how low they will go. And you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to wait for an absolute minus tide. Look for any tide near 0 and take a walk to the beach with your cam­era.

Click here to go to the dai­ly tide chart adjust­ed for Half Moon Bay. The chart shows the tides 2 days at a time. Scroll down to find more search options and a link for the entire year. I see that that the minus tides for August and Sep­tem­ber will most­ly be between 1am and 5am, when they do occur. Octo­ber and Novem­ber have some low tides on some late after­noons. The first week of Decem­ber is look­ing good for some ‑1.50 foot tides.

Check out pho­tos oth­ers have tak­en. Click here to go to Flickr pic­tures tagged with the words “fitzger­ald and marine” which show many pic­tures from the Fitzger­ald Marine Pre­serve in Moss Beach. The pre­serve is eas­i­ly accessed and very pop­u­lar dur­ing these low tides.

Click here to go to a tide pool group in Flickr.

The Half Moon Bay Review post­ed an arti­cle about the Fitzger­ald Marine Pre­serve and how it recent­ly gained enhanced pro­tec­tion sta­tus, a good thing with the state park clos­ings loom­ing over our heads. Click here to read it.

Well, that should keep you busy for a bit. Have fun and take some pic­tures!

Fol­low this link to the gallery of pic­tures we took at the Prince­ton Art Walk this past Sat­ur­day. This is a most unusu­al event put on by the artist com­mu­ni­ty of Half Moon Bay and the Coast­side. Watch for future hap­pen­ings.

Lori and I will be per­form­ing Light Draw­ing at the Prince­ton Art Walk tomor­row. This is in Prince­ton Har­bor, Half Moon Bay, CA, start­ing at 7pm. This is a free and organ­ic event in which artist’s open their stu­dios and homes to an evolv­ing dis­play of inter­ac­tive art. Most activ­i­ties will be up and down Har­vard Street. Look for us after dark to be pro­ject­ing near real time light draw­ings on the sides of build­ings.

For more details, see this arti­cle in the Half Moon Bay Review and this PDF doc­u­ment for the sched­ule of events.

See you there!

This was tak­en 2 weeks ago and is my first attempt at the mature sub­ject of the Gold­en Gate Bridge peek­ing out of the fog. Tak­en from the Marin Head­lands, be pre­pared to sit around wait­ing for the right con­di­tions. Bring a book or load the iPod with a col­lec­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts. And be pre­pared for the cold and wind. Also, the fog can move very fast and the pic­ture can be gone in the time it takes you to get out of the car and focus your cam­era. I did a fair amount of lev­el cor­rec­tion in Pho­to­shop and a lit­tle red sat­u­ra­tion to get the effect I was look­ing for. Check­ing the web cams (see the link in the right col­umn) can help sur­vey the con­di­tions which may change dras­ti­cal­ly by the time you get there.

Is this a young red­tail hawk? He was fair­ly big and his tail was not red. Any­way, that is my pic­ture of the day.

Just dri­ving down High­way 1 and noticed the irri­ga­tion and John­son House in har­mon­ic con­ver­gence. Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

Our last pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop dis­cussed the online pho­to host­ing site, Flickr and here are the notes I pre­pared:

In addi­tion to host­ing pic­tures from pho­tog­ra­phers around the world, Flickr also func­tions as an online com­mu­ni­ty and a social net­work­ing site and can be used to meet oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers that share your inter­ests. Keep in mind that Flickr’s pri­ma­ry func­tion is to dis­play your pic­tures and you can choose what oth­ers see or how much you inter­act with any­one else. In short, it is noth­ing like Face­book, no one is bug­ging you to be their friend and there are no ads when view­ing your pic­tures, even for the free accounts. There is one ad on the free account when you go to your Flickr home page, but it is small.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, as of June, 2009, Flickr hosts 3.6 bil­lion pic­tures. It was start­ed by Ludi­cor in Cana­da in 2004 and bought by Yahoo in 2005. At that time, all con­tent was moved to the Unit­ed States and is now sub­ject to US laws. It is cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lar pho­to host­ing site.

There are both free and Pro accounts avail­able. The free account lim­its your pic­ture upload to 100 megabytes a month. The Pro account cost $25 for a year and allows you unlim­it­ed uploads. You can upload video, all accounts are lim­it­ed to 90 sec­onds for each movie and pro accounts may upload High Def­i­n­i­tion video.

A note on the upload lim­it – if you have a free account, do not direct­ly down­load pic­tures from your 10 megapix­el cam­era into Flickr. Learn to use soft­ware to reduce your image files to a much small­er size while retain­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty. This will allow you to upload many more pic­tures tak­ing full advan­tage of your free account. And select only your best pic­tures to upload. Leave the blurred and dupli­cate pic­tures out. You wouldn’t put those blurred pic­tures in your pho­to album.

A Yahoo ID is required to join. If you do not have a Yahoo ID, Flickr makes it easy for you to com­plete the form to get one.

Flickr is used by ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers as a quick and easy way to share their work with friends, fam­i­ly and clients. Blog­gers use it as an easy place to store pho­tos to use on their blogs and to allow oth­ers to use for web con­tent or print­ing.

I find Flickr very easy to use and con­fig­ure to my spec­i­fi­ca­tions. You con­trol all pri­va­cy set­tings for pho­tos, whether the gen­er­al pub­lic can see them or just friends and fam­i­ly who are mem­bers. You can send guest pass­es to non mem­bers to see pic­tures you list­ed as pri­vate. You have some con­trol over how your gallery appears to oth­ers. You can orga­nize your pho­tos into sets and col­lec­tions. And there is plen­ty of assis­tance pro­vid­ed by Flickr to help you get the most out of your page.

Cen­sor­ship (what you see) defaults to the strictest lev­el, suit­able for minors. You can adjust what you allow your­self to view from there.

There are few restric­tions to what peo­ple can post. This is reg­u­lat­ed only by the coun­try from which you are view­ing. Ger­many and Chi­na have very strict restric­tions on what their cit­i­zens may view on Flickr.

Beyond pub­lish­ing my pho­tos, I find real val­ue view­ing the work of oth­ers. If you seek to improve your pho­tog­ra­phy, look­ing at and ana­lyz­ing oth­er pho­tos is an excel­lent way to learn. Some peo­ple fol­low their own course and pre­fer not to be influ­enced by oth­er work. More pow­er to them. I find oth­er work very inter­est­ing, edu­ca­tion­al and inspir­ing and find Flickr is an excel­lent source for help and ideas.

Groups – Search out groups with­in Flickr, there are thou­sands of them, each with a spe­cif­ic theme in mind and thou­sands of peo­ple con­tribute to these groups every­day. If you need inspi­ra­tion or want to learn a new tech­nique, vis­it a group with a theme that inter­ests you. You can view the pho­tos by select­ing from thumb­nails or run a slideshow of the entire pool. Again, look­ing at and eval­u­at­ing other’s work is a great way to fur­ther your abil­i­ties.

Some great groups to vis­it are “The Com­mons” and “Explore”. The Com­mons hosts pho­tos with no known copy­right restric­tions and is filled with pic­tures from the Library of Con­gress, the Smith­son­ian Insti­tute and many inter­na­tion­al libraries, muse­ums and col­leges. Explore hosts “most linked to” and “most viewed pic­tures” and rep­re­sents an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of ran­dom work from around the world. I also enjoy a group called “Light Junkies”, a col­lec­tion of light draw­ing and long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy. Use the search engine at the top of the page to locate your inter­ests.

The Com­mons is here: http://www.flickr.com/commons/
Explore is here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/
Light Junkies is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/lightjunkies/
Here is one for the Gold­en Gate Bridge: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ggb/

Inter­act — You can com­ment or add over­lay notes on any pic­ture which the own­er allows com­ments. You can join groups, add your pho­tos, join in on dis­cus­sions in each group’s forums and receive feed­back on your pic­tures. Tag your pho­tos with key words to help you sort through your pho­tos and to help oth­ers dis­cov­er you too. Com­ment­ing and receiv­ing feed­back can enhance everyone’s expe­ri­ence and pro­vide valu­able insight.

Pro­tect Your­self – You knew it sound­ed too good to be true, but actu­al­ly, it’s not so bad. There are a few things you should con­sid­er when you post pic­tures online. Post­ed pic­tures can be copied. Every dig­i­tal pic­ture con­tains data such as when the pic­ture was tak­en and the cam­era set­tings. It can hold your name and con­tact infor­ma­tion to pro­tect your copy­right priv­i­leges. You should make sure that your con­tact infor­ma­tion is embed­ded in each pho­to you post. This gives you some form of copy­right pro­tec­tion and gives oth­ers the abil­i­ty to con­tact you if need­ed. The only way to com­plete­ly be sure your work is nev­er copied is to nev­er post it. So, you need a lev­el of trust to par­tic­i­pate in the fun.

Obey the rules – Be aware that Flickr main­tains the right to delete your account and all the pic­tures at any time for any rea­son. There have been a few com­plaints and dis­putes but there are usu­al­ly facts miss­ing from what I have read. These prob­lems are rare. The rules are not unrea­son­able. Stay in the bound­aries and keep copies of your pic­tures on your own com­put­er.

Spend time set­ting up your Flickr pro­file. There are some copy­right set­tings there too. That is where you deter­mine who can see your pic­tures and if they can com­ment on them.

Flickr makes it easy to view var­i­ous sizes of your pic­ture, embed them into web pages and share them via email. It goes on and on and new fea­tures are insti­tut­ed all the time. I use Flickr every­day, enjoy the inter­ac­tion, learn from oth­ers and (until I find some­thing gross­ly wrong) rec­om­mend it to every­one. Have Fun!

Ref­er­ence: Derek Sto­ry pro­duced a pod­cast (#175) on the Dig­i­tal­sto­ry web­site enti­tled “Top 10 Flickr tips”. Check it out.