While Washington doesn’t have a stranglehold on the phrase “picture perfect,” it certainly offers many opportunities for photographers to score high on the Wow! scale.
Washington Trails Association offers a chance to match your best photographs against other entries in its annual photo contest, Northwest Exposure. Winners will be published in Washington Trails Magazine.
Kai Compagner of Lake Forest Park placed third in the last contest’s landscape category with a photograph of sunbeams burning off the morning fog on Shi Shi Beach on the Olympic Peninsula.
The excellent advice in James Martin’s “Digital Photography Outdoors: A Field Guide for Travel and Adventure Photographers” ($16.95, Mountaineers Books) will be good for many seasons to come.
Here are a few of Martin’s tips for capturing the moment.
* Motionless water adopts the blue of a clear sky or the leaden gray of a dark, cloudy sky. It mirrors the surrounding landscape, although less brightly. Use a graduated natural-density filter. Often, a low angle of view just above the waterline shows the reflection best. * Capturing the dynamism of a waterfall demands the correct selection of shutter speed. A little blurring augments the sense of movement. Too little blur results in a static, crystalline effect, whereas too much obscures shape and internal shadows. The correct shutter speed varies with distance. Shooting a cascade a few feet away could work with 1/250th second, but that shutter speed would turn a distant cascade to glass. Experiment to find the ratio of shutter speed to distance.
* Low-volume waterfalls and moving streams require a painterly effect with long exposures. They don’t turn into an undifferentiated white, the fate of a furious cascade shot at slow speed.
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For the software engineer, photography is a spare-time enjoyment.
“It’s a fascination with images and what makes a difference between an interesting one and a not-so-interesting one. It’s also a way to take home what you see,” Compagner said.
The shot, taken with a digital camera in a low-hanging fog on an otherwise clear day, was an obvious one, Compagner said, and a situation that he had seen before.
However, his friends hadn’t believed that he hadn’t digitally manipulated the final product.
On the day of this photograph, he had a friend along on the hike for verification.
“It’s even more amazing to see with your own eyes. You can move around and get like a 3-D effect of the sunbeams. It’s pretty cool,” he said.
Compagner shared what he called the most important tip for photographers.
“The single most important tip to improve your photography is to shoot many, many pictures, show only the best and throw the rest away.”
The trails association has provided tips as well as contest rules, including moving closer to the subject, experimenting with angles, shooting vertically, letting the subject fill the frame, considering that details may be more interesting than a wider view, and checking the edges of your shot before you click to make sure that something is not cut off or a distraction is in the view.
The annual contest has four categories: People in the Wild, Landscapes, Flora and Fauna, and Offbeat Outdoors.
The grand-prize winner will be on the cover of the January/February 2005 issue; the first three prizes in each category will also be published.
Submission deadline is Oct. 31. For information and entry forms, call 206-625-1367 or go to www.wta.org.
Fish and wildlife issues
If you’ve ever wanted to bend the ear of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife folks, circle Oct. 18 on your calendar.
Employees will answer questions and take comments about fishing, hunting, wildlife viewing, habitat protection, enforcement and related issues at 7 p.m., regional headquarters, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd., Mill Creek.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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