Scott Stulberg Photography

Amazing Burma December 2012

I might be leading a 13 day photo workshop December 4-16th of 2012. Burma is without a doubt my favorite place to photograph on Earth.  Please email me for details as I am just planning it now with my guide as he needs to make reservations and arrangements a year in advance to get the best hotels and flights, etc.

The hidden jewel and land of enchantment of Southeast Asia is Myanmar, or what many of the locals still refer to as Burma. Bordered by Thailand, India, Bangladesh, China, & Laos, this country is my favorite place on earth for photography. From the awe inspiring monasteries & temples to the simplicity of the soft spoken people, Burma stands out from the rest of Southeast Asia. It might be the least visited & explored country in that part of the world & that is what makes it so special. The hospitality of the locals make you feel like you are the first foreigners they have ever seen. It is truly a feast for the eyes in every direction and a place that will stay in your heart forever.

This will be a trip for photographers who want to capture once in a lifetime images. My guide is one of the best guides in Burma and has guided many of the top photographers in the world. He is not only knoweledgable about every aspect of Burma but also highly respected and will go out of his way to please each and every one of us. We will be going to many unique locations for photography in all four of the cities that we will be visiting, often looking for monks, local villagers & children for our photos. Our trip will be about one thing and that is to be in the best light at the best time at the best locations. Photo opportunities are everywhere in Burma and we will all see why this country is the jewel of Southeast Asia. December through February is the perfect time of the year for the best weather and dramatic sunsets & our focus will to be at the right place at the right time as often as possible, day and night. This magical place called Burma is a photographers paradise.

Our itinerary includes the capital, Yangon with it’s many sights and sounds including the golden  Schwedagon Pagoda and colorful early morning fish markets. We will then visit the ancient religious city of Bagan, where the landscape is filled with thousands of temples and is one of the most special places on Earth. Next is Mandalay, where we will photograph monks and local children in and around local villages and many of the amazing temples and monasteries.  We will also be shooting the famous 1.2Km teak UBien Bridge at sunset, capturing monks and locals carrying their wares & goods atop their heads. In Inle Lake, we will photograph local fishermen in their traditional fishing boats, the Padaung long necked women, bustling local markets and a floating monastery.

Cost

The cost for the workshop is approx. $6,900 per person. It is based on double occupancy so if you do not want to share a room with someone else you can pay the single supplement to have your own room.  The price includes: lodging, all meals, domestic economy flights, ground-transportation, guide/translator, boat fares on scheduled rides, entrance and archaeological fees for scheduled visits, portage charges at airports and jetty, camera and video fees, and tips for local staff. A visa for your passport is required for Burma which can be easily obtained by Zierer Visa Service at www.zvs.com.   Single Room Supplement: approx.$600

Not included:  International airfare to and from Yangon, airport taxes, entry visa fees,  alcohol, soft drinks and personal shopping.

Workshop Limit

The workshop is limited to 6-8 participants.  I will be working with everyone individually and as a group to better their photography skills, throughout the entire trip.

Skill Level

Basic understanding of your camera operations including using f/stops and shutter speed is needed for this workshop. This workshop is for the intermediate to advanced photographer wanting to expand their knowledge of photography & capture one of a kind images in this special part of the world.

Registration

To register for The Burma 2013 Workshop, please email me at scott@asa100.com for a registration form & full itinerary.  For more information about reserving a space, deposits or anything else, please e-mail me anytime.

Making money with your photography

I have been shooting stock photography all around the world for many years and get asked by many people the same question. What is the best subject to focus on to make money when shooting stock. One of the things that I stress the most is the importance of finding people for your images.  The best selling photographs at just about any stock agency worldwide usually have people in the images. These are the most sought out images from so many advertisers all over and they need people of all ethnicities and looks for their images.  These images, although not always the easiest ones to capture, can produce some of the top money making images for anyone with a desire to make money from their photos.

Being able to shoot people with good compostion, backgrounds and finding the best light is essential for getting great images of people. But this is only the beginning and shooting people for stock you not only have to be great at capturing faces but be very creative at the same time.

Probably the top category for shooting people for stock is Lifestyles. Some examples of lifestyle images are of family, work, success, happiness, the future, reliability, trust, food, time, teamwork, winning, competition, money, culture, conceptual ideas, school, education, computers and so many more. It can cover so many aspects of normal everyday life and these are probably the most needed images for so many stock agencies worldwide. However, you need to think outside the box as well when shooting people and coming up with great ideas is key to shooting people for stock. There are endless categories and ideas but getting great faces to pose for you is the first step.

I love finding people that have the right look on the street locally or especially when I travel….and I ask them if they would want to model for me.  I let them know that I will pay them or give them photographs in exchange and most of the time they say they would like to.  Many of my students express to me how hard it is to get up the courage to ask strangers to pose for them… but in time it gets easier.

At first, it is a little intimidating to walk up to someone you do not know and ask them if you can photograph them but you will get better at it the more you do it. Having a business card with a good photograph on it will make you look more professional and help them know that you are probably pretty good at what you do and having a good looking website is also essential! Persistence does pay off and if they think that they might also get some great shots of the shoot, it might be worth all the effort. Don’t give up easily as getting the right people in your images will help you build a great image bank.

Below are four shots from a shoot I did on the campus of UCLA, where I also teach photography. I had met these two adorable Korean girls and their parents in a video store and fell in love with them. I gave them a business card and they looked at my website and then later called me to  set up a shoot. They were amazing to photograph and I ended up getting some great shots from the shoot that day. Many of the shots are just typical everyday kind of poses and these kinds of images do well for big and small stock agencies.  These are typical lifestyle situations and when you set them up…you try and make them look as realistic as possible and not too posed.  You will wind up with many winners if you think of good set ups and locations.

 Getting people in your viewfinder is the key to money making images if you ever want to pursue shooting stock. However, don’t forget to have them sign model releases or else those images will not be worth as much as they could. Model releases are the key to stock when shooting people and end up keeping you and your agencies safe from possible lawsuits that can occur. Shooting photos of people of every age and nationality is the key to making real money in stock and this is what I focus on here at home and when I travel abroad. I have to think of many ways to capture people and I end up making shot lists of my ideas and I make contact sheets with photos also for ideas that I take with me on locations and also show to my subjects.

 Creativity is the key for successful images and you have to be thinking all the time to create images that will make money.

I am constantly thinking of every aspect of getting the perfect image for stock and finding and using great subjects is probably what I focus on more than anything else. Trying to come up with fresh ideas and perfecting those ideas will get you noticed. Getting the right people for those images and photographing them in unique situations, in the right composition and with great light is the key to making money from your images in the stock world.

Watch the Eyes….

Many photographers know that the eyes are the key to a great image of people. They are the first thing most of us focus on when we view a photograph and they can also can set the mood and tone for the image in the way the eyes are captured. In my online class at PPSOP called Eye to Eye: Capturing the Face, I love to talk about how powerful the eyes can be in photographs of the face. One of the most important things to keep in mind is the focus……if the eyes are not critically sharp, then most viewers will not appreciate the image as much as they should. It is because our brain does not deal with soft focus very well.

Try to cross your eyes for more than a few seconds and you will see what I mean. Blurriness is not a nice feeling and that goes for photographs as well. When we are used to having things as sharp as possible in real life….then even in a two dimensional form as in a photograph, our mind wants that to be sharp too. So keep an eye on the eyes and make sure that you focus on them when photographing the face.

Whether I am shooting kids, adults or even animals, my number one priority is making sure that I get precise focus right on those eyes, especially if they were looking straight at me. I’m using a tripod more often than not and that helps me tremendously with making sure I can lock down my focus on my subjects eyes. But quite often, I’m not able to use a tripod or need the spontaneity of not having one and that is when I love having my image stabilization kick in. If there is one amazing invention that has changed photography so much in the past 10 years, it is definitely image stabilization or vibration dampening. This feature, which is coming out in more and more lenses from all kinds of manufacturers, is a godsend.  Whatever method you choose to use, make sure that your eyes are focusing on their eyes.

On the above image of the little monk boy, I was in Burma in two months ago, leading a workshop and trying to show everyone how to capture emotion in the faces of these little boys. After setting up the shot the way I had previsualized and with my 70-200 on my tripod, I made sure that I had precise focus on his eyes and made sure that he didn’t move at all. If his eyes had been even the slightest bit soft, this image would not have had the impact that it does. I am supercritical about making sure my focus is right on those eyeballs just about every time I am shooting a face. And a very important part of getting these images is making sure that the default setting on many cameras is changed as soon as you get the camera. Many cameras choose the focus points for you when you push the shutter, pretending that they know better than you where you want to focus. In trying to be helpful, they end up giving you a false sense of security, making you think that your images will be sharp. The first thing I show many of my students in all of my classes is to change the focus point to one focus point, which for me is usually in the center of the viewfinder.

Then you can focus on the eyes, if that is what you need to get sharp and then recompose and shoot, making sure you are still holding down the shutter button. An even better way is to use another button on the camera to get your focus. This is the preferred way to shoot and one I cannot live without. Some cameras have another button built in to let you set your focus and many cameras let you set certain buttons to be your main focus button, taking the ability to focus off of your main shutter button on top of your camera. Once you shoot like this, you will never go back to the old fashioned way.

With the shot of Judson & Deklin, my two buddies, getting critical focus as they were looking at me was essential in getting dramatic images. I was using the Ray Flash on my Canon 580 flash and this also helped with getting a super sharp image as the chance for camera or subject blur was decreased with the flash being the source of light. In the image of little Deklin alone on his back, I only used window light and made sure he did not move an inch. As I teach my students, shooting people or kids means that you are the director of it all, the same as if you were directing a movie. You have to be aware of everything and if things do not go as planned, then there is no pointing the finger at anyone else. Getting your subjects to be as still as possible will help insure critically sharp images.

Interaction is a huge part of what I do with shooting faces and when I am traveling, I love shooting in close with my 50mm macro lens. I get to be much more part of the experience being up close and personal with my subjects and this interaction helps me so often getting just what I want and also helps me get perfect focus.  With the Padaung ring necked girl in Burma, getting in close right next to her was the key for me because it let me help her pose exactly the way I wanted and also move some of the hair away from her face. It let me be very close to her so she saw the lens right in front of her, giving me the exact vantage point and perspective that I was seeking. I was also able to focus perfectly on those gorgeous eyes, which was essential in getting this image to pop!

One other thing to keep in mind is that your subject does not always have to be looking at the camera. Most of the time, it is preferred to have the eyes looking right into the lens…but many great shots can be created with your subject looking away from the lens or even having their eyes closed.  Shots like this can create a mood that otherwise cannot be conveyed with their eyes open and looking directly into the camera. In the following examples, I have some images with eyes closed and also looking away from the lens. I purposely tell my subjects to close their eyes or look away from the camera to create these images and I love the mood that it creates. Try this for yourself when you can and see what you come up with the next time you are photographing someone…..you might just surprise yourself!

On the black & white image of the girl looking down, I set this up last night while testing out a new light. I purposely had her look down while shooting from an angle above her, while using my Canon 100 macro IS. I focused right on her eyelashes, with my camera bolted on tightly on my Induro tripod.  I did not use the image stabilization since the tripod gave me a rock steady way to make those eyes perfectly sharp. I shot her first with her eyes open and felt that her beautiful eyelashes would be gorgeous with her eyes closed. You should always be thinking of alternative ways to capture your subjects and often just simply having them close their eyes or just look away from the camera can make all the difference in the world.

With the little Burmese girl with face paint, I posed her atop a temple and purposely had her look away instead of looking right at me. I felt that this would make a more powerful image and give me the feeling that I was looking for that morning in that magical place. I not only turned her head to look away but I made sure she did not smile, which gave a sense of place and the right mood to the image. I shot her with my 16-35 wide angle right up next to her and I call these kind of images, close focus, wide angle photographs and love shooting in foreign countries this way.

I love shooting faces with the eyes closed and in the photo below, I posed Gregory at sunset while I had him lean back against the pier by the ocean in Santa Monica. He had powerful eyes but I had a feeling that with his eyes closed and angling him to his right, that I might get an even more powerful shot. I shot in tight, once again with my 50mm macro lens, and got just what the doctor ordered.

With adorable  little Fernanda holding the flowers, I just went with my instincts and decided to have her look down at the flowers I had just picked and given to her. They matched her headband and I wanted to show some emotion from her. Having her look down and not into my lens gave  a sense of wonder with the image making the viewer a part of it, trying to guess what she is thinking about. Capturing emotions that we all see in others and do ourselves every day can be a very intriguing and powerful part of thinking outside of the box.

And remember, paying attention to the eyes goes for animals as well. Getting the eyes perfectly sharp of the lioness in Africa  was essential in making this image work. Using my 500mm lens atop our safari van on a sandbag is not always the most ideal way to get perfect focus but if you work hard, you can get critical focus. While she was scoping out her next meal. I focused right on her left eye, while I made sure everyone in the van was perfectly still. Using long lenses, you have to watch out for any movement at all as they are incredibly susceptible to blur from the slightest movement. Her eye in perfect focus made this image much more powerful and gave me just what I was looking for along with the beautiful f4 blur from the long telephoto.

Remember…….the eyes are the key to many images. Being as sharp as possible is going to make you look like a better photographer. Being creative with how you pose them and where you make them look will also set you apart and make your images stand out. Remember….. Your subjects don’t always need to be looking straight at you. Try new things and new ideas as often as you can and you will always surprise yourself!

Photographing Star trails

If there is one part of photography I absolutely love, it’s shooting after dark. Manipulating my shutter speeds and going after something that’s not so easily visible, is pretty yummy stuff. Watching the Perseid  meteor shower recently had me screaming into the night air as I saw some of the of most spectacular meteors of my whole life. Anything to do with the night sky gets my juices going and reminds me why I wanted to be an astronaut  since I was a little kid.

One of my favorite things to photograph with my longer shutter speeds, are star trails. Photographing stars trails is a whole different animal  compared to shooting stars as points of light. With my camera on the tripod, I can set my shutter speed from 15 to 30 seconds, and most of the time, get pretty sharp shots of the star as points of light. Although, I have to set my ISO extremely high, the added noise is worth it when it helps create pretty spectacular stars in the sky.

Getting the Milky Way in my images whenever possible is something I love to do because it adds so much impact to many shots of the stars, as points of light, as in the image above.  However, photographing stars as star trails across the sky is a whole different animal than stars as points of light.

In the old days of photographing star trails with film, you could leave your camera on a tripod with the shutter open pretty much all night long, and get amazing shots of star trails as the stars moved across the night sky. Back then, we didn’t have sensors in the camera that heated up and would over power our images with noise. But these days, shooting digitally, it’s a whole different ballgame. It’s possible to take longer exposures of the stars moving but the trade off of the added noise can be pretty intolerable. That’s why, usually, the longest exposure I take when doing star trails is about four minutes. But what I do, is shoot many exposures, which are a few minutes long, and then either stack them together or blend them together in Photoshop. That really is the key to doing powerful looking star trails when you’re shooting digitally.  To do it the right way, you need to shoot multiple exposures and assemble them in Photoshop.

There are other key things to remember to make powerful star trails including a good foreground element if possible and also deciding which lens to use for the image. A good foreground element, even if it is a silhouette, often gives the image a balancing point of interest to go along with the powerful stars on top of the image. Much of the time when I am alone or with friends scouting out locations for star trails, our biggest concern is what will be in the foreground. We hunt all over the place for the perfect night sky and a great foreground element. Many times we can’t find the perfect foreground so we do the best that we can and we concentrate on the night sky. That’s when we have to decide which lens would be ideal for that situation.

In the photo above, I was scouting in Death Valley  for an all night star trail shot and went to one of my favorite places around to shoot, the Stovepipe sand dunes. Although they are much better to shoot during the day, my friend Jennifer Wu and I wanted to try them as the foreground element for our all night shot.  As we looked up at the sky, with Las Vegas glowing in the distance on the bottom right, I saw that Polaris, the North Star, was directly in front of us. This was perfect as I decided to shoot directly into the Northstar and have the star trails form perfect circles, around Polaris, for the shot. Although Jennifer used the battery grip on her Canon 5D Mark 2, which gave her an additional battery which she really wanted for even more exposures during the night, I opted not to use the additional battery grip. I knew that my one battery would give me at least 3 to 4 hours and that it would probably do the trick. We set our exposures with our Canon Intervalomters, to four minutes with a 1 second interval and no set number of exposures, meaning that it would fire off four minute exposures until the batteries died. I decided for this image to have a very wide field of view so I opted for my Canon 16 to 35mm F2 .8. I set my lens  to 16mm and ISO 800 and a white balance of approx. 3700 degrees, after we both tested it out and found that this provided us with the best images to assemble later.

We left our cameras in the dark, clicking away, and went back to our hotels to go to sleep. When we returned in the dark, early in the morning, we realized we should have set a GPS point for our cameras because we could not find them for almost 40 minutes. That is something that will not happen again to us, that’s for sure. We went for breakfast, along with my girlfriend, and in the dining room while waiting to eat, I assembled the image in Photoshop, using the statistics script, which is in the Extended version of Photoshop. I could have used the blending modes on multiple layers in Photoshop, which would’ve done the same, but it would have taken much more time. The statistics script is like magic and takes all of your exposures at once and blends the stars together in one long exposure. It took my 64 four minute exposures, showing the stars moving a little bit in each shot and made it look like I had taken a four hour exposure.

I decided that the sand dunes was not the best graphical element for the foreground so I decided to use the plug-in, Flood, to create a surreal looking lake with reflections on the bottom of the image. I’m very happy with the way this image came out and locations like Death Valley are a dream for shooting star trails.

I know that many people would not want to leave their cameras outdoors for many hours while they are sleeping, so the next best thing would be to shoot anywhere from 10 to 14 exposures that are about 2 – 4 minutes long. The hour or so, long exposure images will not give you the same look as an all night exposure, but can give you some very striking images. It also depends on the focal length of your image and I am always deciding what kind of shot I’m going for and then which lens I will need for that image. The other factor is the location of the Northstar and what the star trails will look like in relationship to the Northstar with the lens that you are using.

In the photo above, I opted for my 70-200 f2.8 lens and shot it at 70 mm at f 2.8 and ISO 1000.  I set my intervalomter to 13 shots and picked out some boulders as my foreground element and did some test shots to see how the stars would move in the final image. We got back into the car and put on the heater, as it was freezing at the top of Aguerreberry Point in Death Valley. The resulting image that I processed in Photoshop, is a whole different feeling but one that I like very much because of the different focal length.  I also decided to do a super wide angle shot in the same spot and try a couple of exposures with my 14 mm Canon lens. I set the ISO to 800 at f2.8 for 4 minutes. The resulting image below produced a pretty awesome shot too, with a different feeling.

On our last night on this trip, we decided to do some time lapse photography star trails for Quicktime videos and we set our cameras to shoot star trails all night long using our intervalometers. We then decided, to also shoot star trails at the same location using the extra cameras and tripods that we had brought. I used  the Canon 24-70 f2.8 at 50 mm  and f 3.2 at ISO 500. I shot towards Las Vegas and might have changed my white balance to electronic flash, which is what I do sometimes to make the night lose the bluish look and look more golden. Since we did not have our intervalomters, we became human intervalometers, getting up from our blankets every four minutes to stop our cable releases and shoot another frame. We did this for about an hour and I just love the feeling of the resulting image below.

Sometimes, images of star trails look good even in black and white, and in the image below, I changed the color image to black and white and really like the feel of it.

Shooting star trails requires quite a few things including the right equipment, being able to deal with the cold, and having lots of patience. Having a little knowledge of Photoshop also helps and I love showing everyone how to shoot the stars and star trails in all of my workshops. It opens up a whole new Pandora’s box because the creative possibilities are endless. On my next workshop to Burma and Cambodia, I cannot wait to shoot the stars in the temples of Pagan and Angkor Wat. The night sky is out there just waiting to be captured so grab your headlamp and your tripod, but don’t forget the hot chocolate!

Shooting Silhouettes

One of the subjects I shoot more than anything at night are silhouettes. They are perfect to capture with little effort and all you need to do is get the right location and subject…then plan for the best light and volia!!!  you have your powerful silhouettes.  Shooting into the sunlight causes your cameras light meter to close down for the bright light. The result is a dark subject and beautiful background. With digital, all you need to do is check your LCD on the back of the camera and see if your background is exposed the way you want. If it is and the foreground subject is black, then you are all set.

There are so many great subjects that make a perfect silhouette and you can use the ambient light from daytime or nightime or set up lights yourself as I do many times with pregnant women. Studio silhouettes make pretty strong photographs and you can tailor the lights to get just the look and feel you need.

Whether you are indoors or outside, silhouettes can make for some incredibly dramatic photographs. From the camels walking along the sand dunes in India to a lone woman on the UBein Bridge in Burma at sunset to a model in the desert of Joshua Tree……silhouette possibilities are endless.  There is nothing else like a powerful silhouette!!

Afterglow: Shooting after dark

One of my favorite things to shoot are images after dark.  I love to venture out before the sun sets and get shots that are almost surreal and that are hard to perceive with the naked eye. With a little bit of effort, you can get the most beautiful cobalt blue skies, car trails and star trails, gorgeous motion blurs and have timeless images that have a completely different look from a daylight shot.

I love shooting stars at night and recently bought a book called Creative Night,  by Harold Davis, which has really peaked my curiosity and has made  me want to try more ideas. He is a great photographer and a master of shooting star trails, which is something that I want to try more of.    When you are shooting after dark, so many subjects can  take on a whole other look and feel and many times I can sense during the day, how they might look at night. Sometimes you need a 6th sense,  because you don’t always know if it is a waste of time or not. But more often than not, the creative possibilities at night and produce some of the most powerful pictures that you might ever take.

I love shooting car trails and look for great shot ops wherever I am,  whether I am in Los Angeles or abroad. Setting your camera in the right location on a sturdy tripod, with a cable release and exposure time anywhere from a few seconds to even 30 seconds, can produce dramatic results.

Many times I count how many seconds it takes for the car or cars to travel from one point of my viewfinder to the other and then I know how long to set my exposure for. When I was shooting  the Golden Gate bridge last week, I knew that I needed more than 30 seconds  for the cars to go across some of the bridge, but I chose around 15 seconds and that worked just fine for most of the shots.

When I shot the cars going down the amazing curves of Lombard Street, I  I did have the exposure at 30 seconds, which also often was not enough to capture the entire car from top to bottom. But when you shoot many images, you can use a layer mask in Photoshop, and paint in car trails wherever they are missing and finish your image perfectly. When shooting car trails at night, being a master with layer masks is the best tip I could give anyone.

I tried to get a different angle of Lombard Street on my last trip to San Francisco. Form several blocks away, I was able to find the view I wanted and it gave me this incredible zig zag look which was just what I wanted. Lombard Street is probably the most famous street in the city and capturing it at night is my favorite way to shoot it.

On the shot of the Oakland Bay Bridge from below, I knew in my head what I wanted to get but it was not the easiest shot to capture. It is illegal to climb down to shoot it from this vantage point but it is the only way to get this angle. Being a photographer often means having everyone tell you that you cannot take your photos. It’s pretty frustrating and it happens to me all over the world. From shooting at the Louvre in Paris to the Disney concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles,

all of the guards will for sure tell you to get rid of your tripod. Shooting after dark, almost always, requires a tripod so putting up with security guards is something we all have to deal with constantly.

At  Los Angeles international Airport, LAX,  my favorite view is from  the top of an office building overlooking the airport.  Being an instructor at UCLA, they gave me special permission to go to the roof with one of my students and I was able to capture time exposures of all of the cars just after sunset. I tried to get the cobalt blue sky, that appears for about 10 or 20 minutes, a little time after the sun goes down. After the sky went darker,  she and I continued to keep firing away and got many more great images. These kind of locations are not your typical places to shoot but they are iconic and to get good images for my stock photography collection and these are what I strive for.

One of the bonuses you get from long exposures is that you usually are shooting with a small aperture. The long exposure requires you to have a pretty small f/stop and in turn the bonus that gives you are the beautiful stars from your bright light sources. This means that most street lights and bright lights give you the multi shaped star patterns and add some zing to your images. It is just a nice little incentive to try and go shoot more at night. You can see this in many of my night shots including my image of the Blade Runner like pedestrian walkway in the middle of the freeways in Shanghai. I never get tired of shooting in Shanghai, especially at night because of the endless possibilities for shooting after dark.  Grab your tripod and go look for some incredible night locations because they might just be some of the best photos you could ever take!

The Super Wide View

Choosing the right lenses for your photo arsenal can be perplexing and expensive. After a basic lens, the most common lens that people usually buy is some sort of telephoto lens that often is a zoom telephoto.  I use these lenses all the time and the 70-200 f2,8 IS from Canon is my workhorse. But many people do not realize the importance of a wide angle view or even a super wide angle view. I love to shoot super wide shots and one of the benefits of having a digital camera with a full frame sensor is that you can shoot incredibly wide shots that are sometimes breathtaking. There are different focal lengths for wide angle lenses but if you want to try something different, shooting super wide can open up a whole new world.

The following three images were all shot with my 14mm Canon f2.8 lens, which was very expensive. Other manufacturers make similar lenses that cost much less but can give you similar results.  I travel with my 16-35 wide angle zoom and also with my 15mm f 2.8 fixed lens but many times also take my 14mm lens.  The 16-35 is another workhorse for me but the 15mm gives me an incredible amount of curvature and distortion in the images because it is not rectilinear. The 14mm lens is rectilinear and is about as wide as you can get with no distortion. For the ultimate in wide angle shots, you can always make a panorama shot with multiple images, but if you want to capture as much as possible in one frame, then super wide is your ticket. Super wide shots give you a totally different feeling than backing up with a normal wide angle lens.

The first image was of the Eiffel Tower and I wanted to get as much as possible of the tower in the image without shooting from too far away. I was on a tripod at twilight and was able to get a tremendous amount of the tower in my frame

The second image of the south tower of the Twin Towers in Los Angeles was shot vertical from the roof of the north tower. These buildings are the sisters of the Twin Towers in New York and were designed by the same architect. I wanted to get as much as possible in my frame and so the 14mm was what I needed.

The last image was in Burma when I had spent the day with seven amazing monks that I had “borrowed” from a local monastery. I had also asked for seven parasols, which I knew I would use somehow in some of my shots.  I decided for one of the shots to get down on my back near a temple and asked all of the monks to circle around me and look down. I had put on my 14mm lens knowing that I would need as wide as possible lens so as to not cut off any of their faces.  The 14mm was the perfect choice for the job…..and I was completely happy with the result.   Super wide angle shots are like nothing else……and well worth the investment!