We are excited to announce our new upgrade to the Photocrati Supertheme, with Wordpress 3.0 Custom Menu Compatibility!!!

What this means, is that you can include the following in your navigation menus:

• External Links
• Hide pages
• Categories
• Regular pages

Also, never has organizing your pages been easier! Just drag and drop these pages to wherever you want them to appear in your navigation menu! Not only this, but you can easily add pages, external links and categories to your footer area of your site – all using our Supertheme.

These menu’s are easy to create, easy to manage and they look great!

If you’re not using Supertheme for your Photography Wordpress Theme, go get it today!

We’re just getting back into the swing of things here at Photocrati after an incredible weekend at the LookBetween Festival in White Hall, Virginia. What an amazing experience! Two full days of interacting with industry leaders and top-notch emerging photographers was just fantastic.

We’d like to extend a very special thanks to our three judges who are all committed to giving back to the photography community – Steve McCurry, Michael “Nick” Nichols and Art Wolfe.

We’d also like to thank the organizers and sponsors of the LookBetween Festival: Michael “Nick” Nichols, the LookBetween Board and staff, Jessica Nagel (host at Deep Rock Farm), National Geographic and BD, for including us in this year’s event. It really was an honor.

And now, the Photocrati Fund Board and staff are pleased to announce the results of the first-ever Photocrati Fund competition.

The 2010 Photocrati Fund Fellow: Mark J. Davis

Project Title: Fishing For Leftovers

Mark will receive a $5,000 grant to pursue his on-going, environmentally-focused project Fishing For Leftovers, which highlights the impact of commercial over-fishing on small-scale subsistence fishermen in Southern Chile.

About Mark’s project:

A 2006 study by an international group of ecologists and economists projected the collapse of the world’s fishing stocks by the year 2048—due mainly to overfishing. While consumers will be the last to feel the effects –there are tens of millions of people worldwide who live in small fishing communities that depend on the sea for subsistence who are already reaping the consequences.

This project documents life in one such community in Southern Chile where due to a lack of other opportunities, small-scale fishing operations are the main source of income. Recent increases in large-scale commercial fishing enterprises that use controversial fishing practices have led to both the depletion of the fishing stock and the destruction of much marine habitat. Mark hopes that this project highlights the disparity between the lives of the subsistence fishermen and those who operate large-scale fishing operations.

© Mark J. Davis

© Mark J. Davis

© Mark J. Davis

“I am honored and am extremely grateful that through this grant I will be able to continue to tell this important story,” Mark says.

Mark’s project was selected from a competitive pool of more than 400 applicants by our prestigious panel that included some of the world’s best-known environmental and cultural photographers. The judges had a very difficult task—we (happily) received a large number of outstanding and meaningful project proposals by some very talented emerging photographers.

To that end, we would like to recognize the top finalists.

Second Place: Bharat Choudhary

Title: IS THIS HOME?

Location: Mizoram, India

This project seeks to document the humanitarian concerns of Burmese Chin refugees and asylum seekers in India. Around 85,000 Burmese Chin refugees live in India, mainly in India’s northeastern state of Mizoram – at the India-Burma border. They live in cramped, unhygienic, unsafe neighborhoods, and earn as little as $35 (US) a month. They are reduced to scouring the garbage left at the night market for food. This project aims to strengthen the existing advocacy efforts for human rights of the Burmese Chin refugees.

Third Place: Anna Beeke

Title: UNTANGLING THREADS

Location: Morocco

The photojournalism project, Untangling Threads: Female Artisans in Morocco’s Rug Weaving Industry, seeks to document the environment and culture of female weavers who have recently begun to participate in local and global markets. The project also plans to track the rural-to-urban journey of the carpets that are produced. While the carpets are generally sold for high-dollar amounts, the female artisans receive a very small percentage of the profits – which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and child labor in rural Morocco. This project aims to highlight the faces behind the production and the market forces that bring these products to the world.

Fourth Place: Malin Fezehai

Title: VANISHING NATION

Location: Kiribati

Due to global climate change, the small, but highly-populated island – home to roughly 100,000 people – is in danger of disappearing beneath the rising waves of the sea levels. Mass evacuation is now in the initial stages. Malin’s project seeks to document how the rising sea levels are affecting daily life of these “climate refugees” – an entire nation forced to migrate.

Fifth Place: Anna Maria Barry-Jester

Title: BORN INTO A SAFE PLACE

Location: India

India has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, just behind war torn African countries like the Sudan. Two thirds of women do not give birth at a health facility; aside from the danger to the mother, there is a greatly increased risk of complications and mortality for the infant. Most home births are overseen by untrained birth attendants, with limited ability to recognize problems early enough to seek proper treatment or to get to a facility in time. This project seeks to raise awareness about the complications and dangers related to giving birth in unsanitary conditions and to improve access to services and outreach offered by the Indian government. Trained in both photography and Public Health, Anna Maria Barry-Jester uses her lens to help develop important health outreach and education campaigns.

Other top finishers:

Oliver Michael Edwards (sensory impairment), Laura El-Tantawy (suicide among male Indian farmers), Andrew Cullen (winter disaster in Mongolia), David Belluz (self immolation in Afghanistan), and Ryan Gauvin (depleted uranium/Balkan states).

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Mark J. Davis and to all of our finalists. We’re looking forward to following your work and we can’t wait to feature a photo essay from Mark’s project next summer.

Hey Photocrati Fans,

It’s been a little quiet on the blog front lately and we just wanted to let everyone know that we’re in the middle of some major re-organization. We’re looking forward to re-launching a more streamlined and focused Photocrati Blog soon. Stay tuned for details!

A contingent from Photocrati will traveling to Virginia this weekend to attend LookBetween, and awesome event for some of the world’s most promising emerging photographers.

We’ll be taking the occasion to announce the winner of the 2010 Photocrati Fund competition! We had over 400 applications for this year’s competition, the first ever. There were a lot of great photographers, amazing images, and innovative projects. We want to thank Steve McCurry, Nick Nichols, and Art Wolfe for their time reviewing and voting over the last two months. We’ll be announcing the winner on Saturday night at LookBetween, and we’ll post an announcement here early next week!

For those who have not heard of it, LookBetween promises to be an amazing event. It’s a spin-off of LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph. LOOK3 is hosting an experimental two night event to present the work of 90 innovative photographers on a farm 30 minutes west of Charlottesville. The 90 artists showing work were asked to participate by experts in this field such as PDN, Burn Magazine, Humble Arts, Getty Images, VII, and others. This initiative is designed to showcase early-career talent and engage the presenting artists with media professionals on practices and trends influencing the direction of photography today.

Each night will feature outdoor projections of work by the invited emerging photographers in attendance. Showcasing the work of these talented photographers is a main focus of the weekend. However, LOOKbetween is also designed to create networking opportunities and be a forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals and those early in their career. Saturday daytime will be devoted to discussion about important issues in photography. Thank you to BD and National Geographic for supporting LOOKbetween.

Jack Neubart discovers several options for networking at home

NAS stands for network-attached storage. It essentially describes network storage options for the home and office. There’s a lot of technical gobbledygook attached to this storage option, but suffice to say that you can use it to share data among computers, use the network drive as a media hub to stream movies and tunes, share printers (via onboard USB ports), and possibly use these drives for data backups as well. Those USB ports can also be used to attach other compatible devices, such as flash drives and even hard drives (for data transfer or backup to the attached hard drive, as applicable). However, be aware that the connected drive may need to be reformatted for this purpose, which means all data will be wiped out.

Network drives look more or less like typical external hard drives, with one exception: They do not connect to your host computer but instead, via Ethernet cable, connect to your wireless network. Any computer on your network can read from and write to these drives once you’ve logged on from that computer. The drive comes pre-configured with specific “shares”—one of which is your “private” or “admin” share.

A share is a shared folder, but that doesn’t mean everyone gets to share it. It could just be shared among computers in your local area network (LAN), specifically your home network. You can password-protect shares and grant limited access, all by setting up user accounts and groups. And you can add to these at any time and adjust other settings using a Web-based administration tool. When you turn the drive on, it may take a few minutes for all the protocols to fall into place. Much of it runs on autopilot. Initially you’ll need to set up a user name and password for login (don’t lose these, or you may have to reset the entire system, which may also erase all data). That’s it in a nutshell.

Network vs. Typical External Hard Drive

One of the advantages of a network drive is that it disregards your operating system. I can read from and write to my NAS drive from Windows or Mac, or the Great Cosmic Computer on Planet 9 (if it speaks the same computer language). With my earth-bound everyday drives, I can only exchange information effectively if that drive was formatted for the computer’s operating system (OS). I might be able to read from the drive, such as copy files, but not write to that drive if it has been formatted for another OS. For cross-compatibility I would need a drive formatted for DOS, which has some inherent limitations. However, sharing data with a network drive is nowhere as fast as with a conventional drive.

Unlike the typical hard drive, which is only accessible from the connected computer, a network drive is accessible from anywhere on the planet via the Internet. It may require setting up a special remote access account initially through the browser login site.

I’ve recently come across several options for creating a home network. These include the Western Digital My Book World Edition (at Amazon: WD My Book World Edition) and Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 (at Amazon: Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220) for increasingly more demanding work environments, and on a smaller scale, Verbatim’s 1 TB Network Storage Drive (at Amazon: Verbatim 1 TB Network Storage Drive), and SimpleTech’s SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle (At Amazon: SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle). That last one is a mouthful and an odd creature, to boot.

RAID Defined

Before we go any further, we need to define a basic term involved in computer storage: RAID. RAID stands for Random Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. A RAID drive is comprised of two or more disks configured to operate in tandem, within a housing with a central controller. You may be able to hot-swap disks in select RAID drives, but many require that the drives be replaced by an authorized service center, or at the very least, require complete shutdown before swapping out any drive. Normally, the drives in a RAID system must be matched by brand, model, and capacity. Of course, you can’t mix and match IDE with SATA drives, which use different controllers and pin configurations.

The basic two-drive RAID configuration can be set up so that one disk mimics the other, serving as a constant backup in case of failure. This is the “mirrored” drive, or RAID 1. RAID 0 has both drives operating together, but instead of backing each other up, they each hold pieces of information to provide faster throughput, forming a meandering stream of data. The problem is that if one of these “striped” drives goes down, the data may be totally corrupted and irretrievable. The down side to the mirrored drive is slower operation and half the storage capacity. In other words, if you buy a 2 TB RAID 1 drive you’re effectively only getting 1 TB of storage; with a 2 TB RAID 0 drive, you get 2 TB (minus what the system requires in each case).

RAID drives are usually configured one way or the other out of the box. The best way to reconfigure the drive is via a hardware switch. Using software to change the RAID configuration may slow the drive down.

Our Options

Western Digital (WD) has several NAS systems, beginning with this 2 TB RAID edition. It is Mac Time Machine-compatible, but may require that the drive’s firmware be updated (log in via your browser – on Mac, enter via Bonjour – and select the Advanced Mode, then System tab and Update). At least that’s in theory. I couldn’t get Time Machine to use the WD My Book World drive for backups for some inexplicable reason. So I’ll just continue to use it as a shared drive, without backups. After all, the drive is stylish and runs extremely quiet—and otherwise operates quite effortlessly, being readily accessible from any computer I own—PC, Intel Mac, and pre-Intel Mac. It’s also from the generation of WD green drives, so it’s more energy-efficient. This drive was configured out of the box and remains a RAID 1 drive.

Also a RAID 1 drive out of the box, the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 is metal and built like the proverbial tank. It consequently has less of an aesthetic than the WD drive, which is all white with rounded corners. The one thing this drive was not configured to do was work with Apple’s Time Machine. But since it is firmware-updatable, that may change in the future.

Both the WD and Seagate network drives are designed to remain on 24/7. That doesn’t necessarily apply to Verbatim’s Network Storage Drive, which is a compact 1 TB solution. This is a single disk drive, so there’s no option for any RAID configuration. This Verbatim drive is a very uncomplicated network solution that you may want to avail yourself of for a home network.

SimpleTech’s SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle essentially lets you turn any USB hard drive into a network drive. It features FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, and EXT3 (network sharing) file system support. With its two USB 2 ports, it can be used like other network devices, for any number of file-sharing purposes, and is compatible with all current operating systems.

Question

We’re getting a lot of rain and wet snow this spring, so I’m wondering how that will affect my new ultra high-tech digital SLR. Would the camera be damaged by moisture? If so, what should I do if it rains every weekend? I really want to get outside and start experimenting. K.W.

Answer

Well, that depends on the camera – as well as the lens – that you’re using. The vast majority of equipment does need protection from moisture, particularly rain. Some DSLRs and certain lenses are weather-resistant as discussed in the features chart for such products on the manufacturer’s web site. These include Nikon and Canon’s professional products, the high-end Pentax DSLRs and a few lenses of various brands. No flash unit (including a built-in flash) is weather resistant, however. Even the most hardy pro-equipment should not be used for extended periods in heavy rain, of course.

If you are primarily interested in experimenting with camera features, you might consider shooting from your car; open the window but make sure the camera/lens will not get wet. Dry off any dampness thoroughly with a clean, absorbent cotton cloth; for the lens use a large microfibre cloth. But if you’ll be shooting outdoors, you’ll need a rain cover accessory. Regardless of the one you buy, read the manufacturer’s instructions re: correct installation (and any warnings) to get the most effective protection.

You can find inexpensive products – similar to clear plastic bags – such as the Op/Tech or Ewa Marine Rainsleeve (about $22 from Amazon; about $17 from B&H).

These may be OK in drizzle but for longer outings in rain you’ll want at least a Kata Elements Cover such as the E-702 for a DSLR with short lens (about $60 from Amazon; about $60 from B&H).

Kata also makes accessories for protecting a longer lens and an external shoe-mounted flash unit. Visit B&H or Amazon for information on the Kata products.

Kata's Elements Covers, such as the E702, are the most popular among the affordable accessories. Two sleeves allow access to camera controls and a transparent back allows for viewing the LCD screen and viewfinder.

There are also two brands of high-grade rain covers that use a special eye-piece accessory available for many Nikon and Canon DSLRs. Even if the interior of the cover gets fogged up, you will be able to see through the viewfinder (a necessary extra cost option) (about $32 at Amazon; about $32 at B&H).

The Aqua Tech Sport Shield is available in five sizes to fit cameras with short and long lenses (starting at about $190) (at Amazon; at B&H). A clear waterproof Sport Shield can be added for protecting shoe-mounted electronic flash unit (about $65). For more information and user reviews, see B&H.

The Aqua Tech Sport Shields are well designed and rugged, made of a 3-ply breathable waterproof fabric that allows ventilation and a watertight seal with the lens hood. The flash accessory is also watertight.

The two new products from Think Tank Photo – intended for DSLRs with a 70-200mm f/2.8 or a slightly smaller lens – are more affordable but also quite impressive. The Hydrophobia 70-200 (about $139 at Amazon) and the Flash 70-200 (about $145) models are identical but the latter is equipped with a clear protector for a hot-shoe mounted flash unit.

There’s a larger model too, the Hydrophobia 300-600 (about $150 at Amazon) for much longer telephoto lenses.

The Hydrophobia Flash 70-200 cover is relatively affordable and includes protection for an accessory flash unit. Both models feature a clear back window for the LCD screen and controls, over-sized/adjustable sleeves and adequate access for changing memory cards with full protection from the elements.

For specifics visit Think Tank Photo or view the illustrative video on Rob Galbraith’s web site.

Note too, that the Hydrophobia covers include a built-in waterproof camera strap attachment so you don’t need to cut holes to insert the strap. Although they’re priced to attract serious photo enthusiasts, these covers were used in rain and snow by some of the pro’s during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

We’ve received a lot of questions lately about web hosting for websites, mostly from people interested in our photography WordPress themes. I’ve explained to a lot of people why I think Bluehost is the best option, and I’ve realized I feel strongly enough about it that I’d like to put my thoughts out there.

Why I Like Bluehost

Through my work on Photocrati, my personal photography sites, and a number of other websites I own and operate, I’ve personally tried at least 10 different hosting companies, big and small, including HostGator, GoDaddy, HostNexus, Rochen, Rackspace, Mosso, NameCheap and Media Temple.

We could easily choose to partner with any these companies, and all offer various kinds of strategic partnerships and financial incentives. We’ve chosen to partner with Bluehost. Many of the links from this site to Bluehost are affiliate links, which means if you follow them and ultimately decide to host with Bluehost, we receive a commission. That’s one of the ways in which we support this site. We don’t make such a recommendation lightly. We (and I personally) believe Bluehost offers the best hosting service available today.

Bluehost was the first hosting company I ever used and it’s the one I come back to time and time again. In fact, at this point, I don’t even try other hosting companies any more. All my personal sites, as well as sites I’ve created for clients, are on Bluehost. Photocrati is NOT on Bluehost, but that’s only because our traffic and bandwidth are too large (hundreds of thousands of page views) and so it demands a dedicated virtual server or some other large and costly solution. Bluehost doesn’t offer this kind of solution, so we host on Rackspace. I’ve repeatedly told Bluehost that if they ever did decide to offer large solutions, we would move. And although we pay 15 times more for Rackspace than for Bluehost, I think the reliability, service quality, ease-of-use, and just about everything else are actually better at Bluehost. I wish we could move Photocrati to Bluehost.

Seven Good Reasons

So here are the reasons you should stop looking and just host your site with Bluehost (or move your site to Bluehost if it’s already hosted elsewhere):

1) No down time. I’ve experienced less down time or other hosting problems on Bluehost than any other hosting company I’ve worked with, including large solution providers like Rackspace that charge way more and offer, but don’t actually meet, “no down time” guarantees.

2) Service. When I have a question or issue, I can pick up the phone and call the number on Bluehost’s homepage. I’ve called that number at least two dozen times. A real person has answered the phone every time within four rings. Never a message, automated voice, or holding period. Bluehost’s representatives stay on the line with me until the question is answered or the issue is resolved. Most web companies have live chat or support forums, which are fine, but there’s nothing like being able to grab the phone and talk to someone anytime, 24 hours a day.

3) Ease of Use. Bluehost has the simplest and most trouble free interface of any hosting company I’ve used. There are not a lot of distracting bells and whistles. There aren’t efforts to upsell me on new hosting plans. It’s the easiest hosting service to use, hands down.

4) WordPress-friendly. This is important if you have a WordPress-based site. And if you don’t, you should consider it. WordPress is the fastest growing web platform in the world today, and the standard for blogs, both big and small. Photocrati is based on WordPress, as are the the website templates we sell. One of the greatest things about Bluehost is its simple ONE CLICK INSTALLATION OF WORDPRESS. Many hosting companies do not offer this, and others offer a glitchy version that installs an out-of-date version of WordPress or installs it only in certain directories. Bluehost’s WordPress installation is fast, easy, up-to-date, and glitch-free. That’s why we recommend Bluehost to anyone purchasing our WordPress themes.

5) Unlimited domains, website, and space. I have one account on Bluehost for erickdanzer.com. But I actually host at least a dozen websites from that account. Bluehost allows you to add unlimited numbers of new domains. And they offer unlimited storage space. Now, I have no doubt that Bluehost would protest a truly massive website and that’s reasonable. It just wouldn’t work to host Photocrati, much less something like Engadget, on Bluehost, which keeps costs down by using a shared hosting environment. But within reason, their storage is unlimited. This is important for photographers who store a lot of images. At various times, I’ve had more than 3,000 images hosted on my website and on client sites that I host from the same account. Never a problem.

6) Popularity. Bluehost now hosts over 1,000,000 websites. One reason the company can keep prices low is that it serves so many customers. This also means that have the large-scale personnel and resources to keep things running smoothly.

7) Price. I don’t think price is the most important thing in choosing a hosting company. I’m much more concerned about quality, service, and ease of use. That said, Bluehost’s standard $6.95 hosting plan is equal to or less than almost anything else out there. Anything cheaper is scary. And as I’ve mentioned above, Bluehost provides more quality and service for that $6.95 than other hosting companies charging ten times that amount.

-

So in sum, there is just no way to make this an easier choice. I’m happy to be associated with Bluehost, and feel 100% comfortable standing behind their services. That’s why we’ve partnered with Bluehost. Whether you get there via our links or some other way, do yourself a favor and save yourself some trouble and just go with Bluehost.

Thanks and best wishes,

Erick Danzer
Editor, Photocrati

Last week I shot an engagement session that started earlier in the day than I prefer. Most photographers will try to shoot during the “golden hour” just before sunset because you generally get the best light then and maybe a great sunset to work with. For this session, we started about three hours before sunset with no clouds in sight. Fighting the sun can be a challenge sometimes but it also offers some great opportunities for unique shots.

I’m a wedding photographer in Tampa Bay, FL and these pictures were taken in Sawgrass Lake Park.

For this shot I used a 70-200mm zoom  and a Canon 580EX on  a tripod with a shoot-thru umbrella. The first thing I did was set up the camera for the husband in the back. Right away you have to figure that you’ll be shooting at the highest flash sync-speed possible all day, which for the Canon is 250/th of a sec. So, that’s my starting point. Then I bring the exposure up until I am getting a decent exposure of the husband (in this case, f4).

Now, he’s a little blown out, I know, but that’s what I wanted. I wanted the wife to be perfect and him to be a little sun-blasted. Once I had the exposure dialed in for the husband I set my flash power to match. On a bright day, the flash will be at full power most of the time. I fine tune the settings by moving the light closer or farther from the subject. Notice that both husband and bride are being lit from the same side? That’s the benefit of off-camera flash. It looks like they are both standing in the sun when in fact she is in shade and the flash is filling in for sunlight.

The thing to remember about bright days is that “the lighter the light, the darker the dark.” If you can find some shade it will open up dynamic possibilities because there will be such a huge contrast between the dark and light areas of the shot. Because the sky was so bright, I was able to set my camera to f6.3 and 250th of a sec and still have plenty of light in the sky. However, the shade got pitch black with those settings which allowed me to use a flash above the couple and create a cool “spotlight” effect. That’s not Photoshop, that’s the actual light halo from the umbrella.

We were walking towards a bridge for some close-ups when I noticed the setting sun coming through the bushes creating a nice pattern on the sidewalk. I quickly set my off-camera flash to camera-left so that it was on the same axis as the sun coming from behind my couple. Setting the flash directly opposite the sun in this way helps with the fall-off on the ground. The flash is going to cause some spill on the ground, but because it’s in line with the sun, it looks natural. If the flash were camera-right, the ground on the right would be lit. The sun is clearly shining from back-right to front-left. It’s like a big funnel of light coming out from the sun; placing your flash inside the funnel fools the eye into thinking the extra light on the ground is just more sun. Now, it only takes a minute of study to realize that the couple are obviously lit with some sort of light but that doesn’t mean it has to be completely obvious from the get-go.

Bright sun makes for great silhouettes.

The last thing I want to mention is that, although you are often trying to overpower the sun with your flash, it’s also nice to let the sun influence the shot. We moved around on the boardwalk about four times before I found the right spot. I wanted both the faces in shadow so that I could light them with the flash, but at the same time, I wanted the sun to be present in the shot so that it didn’t look too “studio.” Notice the sun on the legs of the couple? It creates some hot spots, sure, but that’s okay because that just furthers the “daylight” look of the shot. The tricky part was finding a spot where the trees blocked the sun from hitting the faces without casting the whole shot in shadow.

Don’t be afraid to shoot on a bright day with deep shadows. With a little thought you can create some great images!

Question

I read a blurb on the Internet about the new Class 10 SDXC cards in several brands. This type of memory card sounds perfect: super fast and tons of capacity at 64 gigabytes. Why would anyone want to use any other kind of SD card, except for the high price of the SDXC card? G.R.

Answer

That was certainly interesting news, and the first Extended Capacity cards will be available sometime this spring: Panasonic’s Gold SDXC and SanDisk’s Ultra SDXC. (Other brands, in various speed classes will follow.)

Do note, however, that the Panasonic cards boast a Class 10 speed rating while the SanDisk SDXC cards are Class 4 rated, or not as fast. The SanDisk  64GB card is less expensive however, approximately $350 versus $600 for the Panasonic product.

The new 64 gigabyte SDXC cards are impressive but the SDHC cards are available in Class 10 speed too (in several brands) and in capacities up to 32 GB, plenty for most photo and video enthusiasts.

Initially, SanDisk will primarily target owners of video camcorders with their SDXC card. Class 4 speed is all that’s required with most such cameras. Panasonic’s Class 10 SDXC product – like SanDisk’s conventional super fast Extreme SDHC Class 10 card – is more suitable for owners of high resolution DSLRs. It will allow for taking a greater number of shots in a very long sequence and the camera will be ready for more quite quickly afterward. Class 10 speed is fine for shooting video too, more than adequate even for the 1080p at 30 frames per second that’s possible with some DSLRs.

A 64 GB card may seem attractive since it will hold thousands of still images or over 60 hours of video. That may be necessary for some pros but you may not want to “put all your eggs in one basket”, so to speak. (And frankly, even SDHC cards are available in 32 GB capacity.)

If you were to lose a 64 GB card – or if it became corrupted – think of the number of images or the video clips that you would never get to use. That’s why it makes more sense to buy several 8 GB cards instead, to get all the capacity you need.

The first DSLR that is SDXC-compliant, the EOS T2i works equally well with SDHC cards. While very high capacity may have some benefits, I recommend using 4 GB or 8 GB cards instead, to minimize the number of images that will be lost in case of a problem.

More importantly, there’s the compatibility issue. An SDXC card looks identical to an SDHC card but it’s formatted to work only with SDXC-compliant cameras. At this time, that includes only the Canon and Panasonic digicams and camcorders announced since Jan. 1, 2010 and the Canon EOS T2i (EOS 550D  in some countries).

Eventually we’ll see a lot more SDXC-compliant equipment. But for the near future, SDHC will remain the card of choice for the vast majority of photo enthusiasts. (Of course some cameras use one of the other formats:  CompactFlash or    Memory Stick both available in high capacity versions.)

Aphid and Desert Sunflower. A ground up, rather than eye-level, perspective, was an essential part of making this image pop. © Joe Decker

The week before last we talked about moving: about what a difference moving a foot to the left or right, forward or back can make in a composition. Today we’ll continue along that theme, talking about what a difference moving higher or lower can make.

We often photograph from “eye-level.” It’s a fairly natural tendency, if we make photographs after seeing things that move us, we’ll typically end up finding compositions at eye level. This is a good choice for point of view, photographing from “eye level” often produces images that read very naturally to the viewer.

But “eye level” isn’t always your best choice.

Sometimes shooting from lower perspectives comes naturally. When photographing small desert sunflowers in Joshua Tree National Park a few years back, it never occured to me to photograph from eye level because in many cases the flowers were only a foot or less off the ground. It was and is natural (and effective) to get lower and closer to these flowers.

Aphid and Desert Sunflower, however,  took “getting lower” even farther, moving below the level of the flower in order to place it against an overcast sky. Not only does this make for a nice 70s color scheme, but perhaps more importantly, it helps us see from something closer to the aphid’s point of view, connect with the high aspirations that it’s easy to anthropormorphically project onto it.

Low points of view are often useful in creating dramatic near-far compositions-when we really want to emphasize the foreground in a wide-angle composition we’ll need to be close to that foreground, and often eye level is just too far away.

Higher perspectives are a different matter entirely. Sometimes they’ll come naturally, as we look down on a landscape from the top of a mountain or cliff. These very high perspectives can be quite interesting, and sometimes help convey a sense of vastness, as in MacDonald Valley and the Livingstone Range. Often these images end up being peaceful and perhaps a little bit detached, more like we’re flying over the landscape rather than immersing ourselves in it.

But there are other situations in which it is less natural to consider a higher perspective, and yet quite useful. Many photojournalists understand this from experience, if you have a big crowd of people it’s going to be difficult to make a photograph that communicates that from eye level. Instead, if you reach up with your camera and shoot with a wide angle from overhead, you’re more likely to be able to capture both some of the scale of the crowd but also still grab some action from the people surrounding you, this is a classic “show the crowd” shot.

Thule Tent Ring. (outtake) Camera position is probably about 8 feet in the air. Increasing the ISO and opening up to f/9 allowed a fast enough shutter speed to (barely) show some of the arrangement of rocks in the tent circle. © Joe Decker

Moving your camera up isn’t always so obvious, or, for that matter, easy. I received an excellent lesson on this point some years back when I had the opportunity to visit East Greenland, a trip that was in part a workshop with National Geographic legend Frans Lanting. We came across some ancient Thule rock circles a few miles inland in within  Scoresby Sund, and Lanting poised the question to me of how to bring out the sense that the rocks were in a large circle, most eye-level perspectives reduced the circle to a narrow line.

He pointed out that the circle would be a lot clearer from, say, ten feet above the ground, which left me thinking (and I was a bit slow here), how am I going to get my tripod that high? His answer was simple yet, at the time, completely unexpected. He demonstrated holding his tripod (camera well attached) way over his head, triggering the shutter through use of a 2-second timer), and achieving the right composition with a combination of repititive trial and error, and a little bit of horizon levelling and cropping in post.

Don’t let yourself be limited by the convienence of eye-level, when photographing, keep an eye on the ways in which raising or lowering your camera can bring new perspective and interest to your compositions.