I see a lot of photography every day, and every day I am reminded of the way Black and White, or B&W, can work so very effectively—and of the fact that this seems almost a forgotten art. Even in landscapes:

…or in storytelling Wall Art:

..or in so much else. Everywhere where colour is distracting. Where colour isn’t the story. Or where colour tells the wrong story.

So how do you do it? Well – set your picture style to B&W but shoot RAW. That way you can see a rough preview in B&W but do the actual conversion in post (Lightroom comes to mind as an excellent tool).

However you do it: When you shoot, try some B&W and see how powerful it can be.

You know—every photographer eventually starts doing portraits. Even landscape or bird photographers eventually take photos of people as well. And that’s important. People are everything to us in our lives.

That’s why I love to do portraits. Like this one, done in the michaelwillemsphoto.com studio last week, of Abraham, an excellent soccer player who just won a tournament with his team:

He clearly shows he is happy about the whole thing. And of course his parents have the picture on their mantlepiece, right now. And it will stay there forever.

Your pictures are better on your living room wall than on just our Facebook wall.

The Orléans, Ottawa store is up and running! See www.michaelwillemsphoto.com for more. And drop by when you have a moment!

“Mirrorless” is all the talk. Everyone, it seems, “is going mirrorless”.

But not me, and not many other photographers either: not quite yet.

Canon 1D Mark IV camera

Why not switch to the latest technology?

Well, while mirrorless offers advantages, like

• Preview information (eg histogram) through viewfinder.
• Post-shot view.
• Smaller, lighter! Especially if you get the new lenses.

…there are also good reasons for pros to hesitate and hold off. Here’s a few:

• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.Why mess with something that is proven to work?
• Mirrorless is unproven. Looks good, but it’s new. Why risk it?
• Battery life. Not as good, not nearly as good as the pro DSLRs
• Dust. The sensor is exposed and every lens change introduces dust.
• New lenses needed—and that’s a major investment. Or you use adapters and invest in those, and forego the “smaller” advantage. Adapters are always iffy anyway: another point of failure.

As you see, there are good reasons to not mess with something that ain’t broken.

Valley of fire, NV

I’ll give you a few landscape tips for beginners, today.

1. 1. Use the right lens. I recommend either the ultra wide lens (10-20 on a crop camera, 16-35 on a full frame camera), to show perspective and depth; or a telephoto lens, to bring backgrounds closer.
   2. Use a low ISO, like 100 or 200.
   3. Use a high f-number, like 11 or 16. Especially important if you use the telephoto lens above.
   4. If you can, use a tripod. The two settings above may well require it.
   5. Focus one third into your scene. That gives you the best sharp focus range.
   6. Just in case, carry a polarizer and an ND filter. The polarizer for removing reflections or to emphasize some blue skies, and the ND filter for slow shots of waterfalls or water surfaces.
   7. Consider shooting some panoramas. For those, use manual setting, so that all pictures are exposed equally. Avoid foreground objects. Turn the camera while on the tripod, overlapping successive images by, say, 30%.
   8. Don’t pack too much. Weight doubles hourly when carried!
   9. shoot at the best time of day. Often, that means 5pm or 5am, the “golden hour”.
   10. Consider bringing a flash. More than you’d expect, you’ll want to light up your foreground.
   11. Keep the image simple. Pay attention to detail.
   12. Look for attention points in the foreground, middle ground, or background. Like frames, reflections, s-curves, juxtapositions, etc.
   13. Prepare. Enter location coordinates, found on google, into your gps.
   14. take one iPhone picture so that you have the coordinates, and then copy them in Lightroom from that iPhone picture to your other photos. Unless, of course, your camera already has a gps built in.

These fifteen rules should get you going! For a little more detail, see my Landscape Photography book on http://Learning.photography .

Come to my April 27 workshop in Toronto, if you want flash techniques that work. See the previous post.

Today, I taught a Hamilton workshop. From that workshop, one photo that illustrates how you can take a photo with just one flash. Here’s student Paul.

This kind of chiaroscuro lighting is simple and very effective. And you don’t need much. One off camera flash.

Many more workshops coming up, starting with one in Toronto in under a month, where I’ll be teaching exactly that.

See here for details. Early bird pricing only until April 1!

"Flash Techniques for Quick Creative Success" – Toronto, April 27 2019