3.13. Sunsets

3.12. Landscape and Nature

Unlike portraiture, where you have to arrange the lights and the models, landscape photography demands a different discipline: patience. Nature calls the shots here. Your job is to be prepared and in position.

UP TO SPEED
How to Really Get Rid of Red-Eye

For years now, camera manufacturers have been inflicting red-eye reduction mode on their customers. It's a series of bright, strobing flashes that's not only annoying to the people you're photographing , but it doesn't even work.

What causes red-eye? In a dimly lit room, the subject's pupil dilates, revealing more of the retina . On cameras where the flash is close to the camera lens (as it almost always is), the light from the flash shines through the dilated pupil, bounces off the retina, and reflects as a red circle directly back into the lens. (The same thing happens to animals, too, except that the color is sometimes green instead of red.)

The solution is to move the flash away from the camera lens. That way, the reflection from the retina doesn't bounce directly back at the camera. But on a camera that fits in your pocket, it's a little tough to achieve much separation of flash and lens.

Since camera makers couldn't move the flash away, they went to Plan B: firing the flash just before the shutter snaps , in theory contracting the subjects' pupils, thereby revealing less retina. Alas, it doesn't work very well, and you may wind up with red-eye anyway.

You have three ways out of red-eye. If you can turn up the lights, do it. If you have that rare camera that accepts an external, detachable flash, use it. And if none of that works, remember that iPhoto has its own red-eye-removal tool (page 155).

3.12.1. Shoot with Sweet Light

Photographers generally covet the first and last two hours of the day for shooting (which half explains why they're always getting up at five in the morning). The lower angle of the sun and the slightly denser atmosphere create rich, saturated tones, as well as what photographers call sweet light.

It's a far cry from the midday sun, which creates much harsher shadows and much more severe highlights. Landscape shooting is more difficult when the sun is high overhead on a bright, cloudless day.

3.12.2. Layer Your Lights and Darks

Ansel Adams, the most famous American landscape photographer, looked for scenes in sweet light that had alternating light and dark areas. As you view one of these pictures from the bottom of the frame to the top, you might see light falling on the foreground, then a shadow cast by a tree, then a pool of light behind the tree, followed by more shadows from a hill, and finally an illuminated sky at the top of the composition.

A lighting situation like this creates more depth in your pictures (and, yes, lets you "shoot like Ansel").

3.12.3. Highlight a Foreground Object with Flash

Sometimes you can lend nature a helping hand by turning on your flash to illuminate an object in the immediate foreground. Remember, just because your eyes can see detail in the dark area at the bottom of the frame doesn't mean that your camera can. Look for an interesting object ”a bush, perhaps. Move the camera close to it and zoom out. Then turn on the flash and shoot. The effect can be stunning.