Taking Your Photography to the Next Level

Bill Debley shares his top tips to help you become more creative behind the camera.

Article By Jennifer Gidman

Images by Bill Debley

Select the best lenses and equipment for your photographic needs.
Start your search on the Tamron website, with a selection of lenses that includes advice on how to select a lens and what to use it for. "I recommend that you have a 10-24mm super wide angle, a 90mm macro, and an 18-270 or 70-300mm all-in-one lens," says Debley. "If you're on a budget, put your money into the glass, not the camera body. You'll be much happier with your photographs."

Other gear Debley recommends investing in once you're ready to advance to the next level: macro filters or extension tubes (if you don't have a macro lens); a circular polarizer; a 4-stop neutral density filter and graduated neutral density filter; a cable release or wireless remote; a tripod; memory cards; extra batteries; a flash unit with an extension cord; a 5-in-1 reflector; and a white balance device.

Learn by looking at other people's work.
Join a photography club, head to the Web, and create a binder of tearsheets (pages from magazines, for example) to study composition, light, color, and exposure, says Debley. "Try to determine where the light is coming from and how many sources there are in an image you're viewing," he explains. "Using a light source (e.g., a work light from a local building-supply center), try to duplicate the light you're seeing using your main light with a piece of white foamboard or a silver dashboard protector as a reflector."

Experiment with different techniques.
Debley tells his photography students to become as familiar with their camera gear as they are with their cars. "If you're driving down the interstate at 70 mph in fifth gear with a stick shift, you won't even remember going through the other four gears or ever pushing in the clutch because it has become second nature to you," Debley says.

Some of his own favorite techniques include using mylar foil (shooting reflections in the mylar to create awesome abstracts); doing what he calls the "twist n' shoot" (using a slow shutter speed of less than 1/20th of a second, keeping the subject in the center of the lens, and rotating the camera almost a full turn); painting with light (using a strobe, flashlight, or 12v automotive spotlight to "paint the scene"); and playing around with high-key and low-key techniques.

Debley's 10-24mm lens is indispensable - for both landscapes and a variety of other applications. "I was in the ghost town of Bodie, California, for example, after the good light was gone but with a wealth of subjects I still wanted to photograph inside the buildings," Debley recalls. "I took the lens hood off of my Tamron 10-24mm lens, placed the lens against a window, and gently clamped the camera against the glass with a small amount of forward pressure, which stabilized the lens. I metered the scene and used a shutter speed that was between 1 to 3 seconds (depending on the depth-of-field I chose for each shot). I was amazed at the images I was able to get using this technique."

Choose your subject and eliminate everything else - and stay away from the frame line.
Get rid of all extraneous elements that might detract from your subject and give the objects in the image some space. "Keep what's inside from getting out, and what's outside from getting in," Debley explains. "The frame (or crop) line has strong meaning, creating a tension in regard to what's inside and outside the frame - where you cut the subject has great significance."

Learn to control your depth-of-field.
Selective focus can be used in a composition to tell the story and draw the viewer's eye to the point of interest - but, as Debley points out, you need to intuitively understand depth-of-field to master an 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 or a 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom lens.

"The three main elements that control depth-of-field are aperture (f-stop), focal length of the lens, and subject distance," he says. "Because focal length is an integral part of depth-of-field, when you zoom and don't change anything else, your depth-of-field can go from many feet to mere inches, resulting in ruined shots."

Debley recommends experimenting with these three parameters by using a row of fence posts, railroad tracks, or rural mailboxes, for example, selectively picking a point of interest that's in sharp focus and blurring the rest of the scene. Another suggestion: downloading a free DOF calculator from www.DOFmaster.com (the tool also comes as an iPod or iPhone app).

Use your histogram.
Don't focus on the image on the LCD: It's the histogram that should command your attention, according to Debley. "Remember to expose to the right (ETTR), because the last two sections contain 75 percent of all of the pixels in your image," he advises. "If you shoot underexposed and think you can lighten it up in post-processing, you'll end up with loss of detail and muddy colors."

Which leads to Debley's next rule of thumb: Don't rely on post-processing software to create your image. "You can use high-dynamic range (HDR) software to increase the dynamic range of an image, but with an HDR image, people often either really like it or don't because it's an HDR image, especially if you overdid it with the sliders," he says.

Instead, get the shot in-camera and don't depend on software to fix the photo. Employ such aids as reflectors, flash units, neutral density filters, and polarizing filters in more challenging lighting situations. "For example, if you're shooting midday and the shadows are harsh, a wink of fill flash or using a reflector disc on your subject softens or removes that harshness," Debley says.

Don't ignore white balance.
If you're reluctant to spend the money on a professional white-balance filter or card, two white coffee filters and a rubber band do the trick. "You can use them the same way you would use any professional device to measure incident light to set your 'custom' white balance for realistic skin tones and to get rid of the green cast caused by fluorescent light," Debley explains.

The white balance presets in your camera are also extremely useful. "For example, if it's later in the morning and that nice, warm early-morning light is gone, use the 'Cloudy' setting on your camera to warm up the scene," he says. "It makes the image look like it was taken an hour earlier." Try all settings while photographing the same subject to view all the different effects that are possible.

Tell the story.
Never take just one shot. "Memory is free, and sometimes your best shot is in your outtakes," says Debley. "Work the scene, shoot wide to establish the shot, move in and get the middle, and then shoot close, shoot up, shoot down."

Above all, Debley advises not to get discouraged, because your images will get better: "As Ansel Adams said, 'Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.'"

To see more of Bill Debley's work, go to www.fstopscameraclub.com or email him at billdebley@gmail.com.

QUICK-TIP CHEAT SHEET

Avoid camera shake when handholding your camera.
Set your shutter speed to 1/fl (focal length) of your lens or faster. So, if your focal length is 200mm, set your shutter speed to 1/250th of a second.

Get to the same level or below your subject for a pleasing perspective that aids composition.
It's surprising how few subjects are suited for the height of a human standing at their full 5 to 6 feet.

Make sure your image has balance.
Place an imaginary fulcrum at the bottom center of the image and ask yourself: Does the image seem to want to tip right or left or does it appear balanced?

Use more vertical crops.
If you go through your images, you'll invariably find a vertical within your horizontals that may be a better composition.

Control your background.
The viewer's eye goes straight to the lightest part of the image. That bright triangle of light coming through the trees, for example, may ruin your shot.