Karo`s photography: RESEARCH

PART 1 (Location Photography - Landscape)

Michael Freeman

In order to understand how to capture the beauty of the world around you have to take some advantage of professional photographer Michael Freeman, who with many years of experience can learn how to frame the perfect shot.

Michael Freeman - professional photographer and author, with more than 100 book titles to his credit, was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. He made the break from there in 1971 to travel up the Amazon with two second hand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures extensively in the Amazon volume of their World's Wild Places series, including the cover, they encouraged him to begin a full-time photographic career.

Capturing the scene before you - be it a natural landscape..a dramatic cityscape or a majestic wild animal, can be a daunting prospect. Unlike portraiture or still life, you have very little control over the scene before you so you need to draw on other skills to get a professional result.

M.Freeman in his works giving everyone tips and advice on all aspects of outdoor photography, from how to photograph shots of birds in flight to capturing the Atlantic Ocean crashing into a lighthouse. Because in order to photographing natural landscapes you need to know how to deal with various types of sunlight and weather and how to make them work with you in creating memorable results.

More or less all digital photography is based on after image manipulation, and very rare cases you can escape that…For me unfortunately is very painful as I am perfectionist, but well I have to give it a credit, as in various computer software’s can do something what cant be done just by capturing a scene.

A stormy sunrise over a bleak moorland scene in Cornwall

Evening in Porthelven (Cornwall)

Above you can see beautifully captured and created M.Freman`s photograph, what inspire me to try something similar. Well not on that kind of level as I can`t consider myself to be even close to that. Look at those clouds, perfect magic hour shot – intuitive done, showing peace of that calm, rising day.

Mine was taken and early evening when sun just about disappeared in clouds…scene is a bit boring, but added contrast touch and Vignette tool makes it little comforting – hopefully.

Also I try to work with Curves tool In Photo Shop – make the image look more underexposed as it originally was.

I get that idea from one tutorial site, when M.Freeman was describing techniques of low key.

LOW KEY - choosing a subject that lends itself to a dark treatment, followed by processing the file to favour the shadows and darker tones.

Quite often, the dark mood of low key is easier to achieve if you convert a digital colour image into black and white, what exactly I did — monochrome images usually withstand extreme processing or post-production more successfully than does colour and somehow they work better.

Also quite interesting for me was tutorial about The Appeal of Many.

The idea is to filling the frame with a large number of interesting and similar, or even identical, subjects massed together in some kind of pattern, That’s it in summary, a condensed description, but if we look at all the elements that go to make it up, there’s a surprising amount of camera work to achieve it.

And this is what I love the most…patterns…as you can see from my previous blogs and posts I adore that kind of photography- captivate all in one frame.

Mine two last images taken in Cornwall maybe are not the best examples, but its shows the similarity of ideas from M.Freman`s Marseille - Old port or Pearl harvest.

Getting new ideas from those tutorials, inspirations from M.Fremans work was very useful ... hope you -the reader find it too.

Below I listed his books and referenced sites what can help you.

Photography books:

Athens (Time-Life, 1978),
Guardians of the North-West Frontier: The Pathans (Time-Life), 1982, Wayfarers of the Thai Forest: The Akha(Time-Life, 1982,)
Angkor: The Hidden Glories (1990,)
The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos

UK (ILEX, 2007) US (2007,)

Michael Freeman's Perfect Exposure

UK (ILEX, 2009,) US (2009,)

The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos

UK (ILEX, 2010,) US ( 2010,)

Books on Asia

Ricelands: The World of South-east Asian Food (Reaktion Books, 2008)
The Spirit of Asia: Journeys to the Sacred Places of the East (Thames & Hudson, 2000,)
"New Zen, The tea-ceremony room in modern Japanese architecture" (Eight Books, 2007,) and many others

Books on Africa

Sudan: The Land and the People (Thames & Hudson, 2005). This book was accompanied by a 70-print exhibition, mounted by, Washington DC, a non-profit public diplomacy institution, which organised the exhibit to tour the US for three years.

Books on Interiors