A brown bear pins a salmon against a rock at Anan Creek in this photograph by Robert E. Johnson, who put on a photography workshop for Bearfest last week.
Robert Johnson has made a living as a professional photographer for about 20 years, and found time again this year to share tips at a workshop as part of Wrangell's annual Bearfest.
He advised people not to worry too much about the equipment they are using and to just find what they are comfortable with and what complements their creative process. Modern cellphones take amazing pictures, he said. It isn't necessary to have an expensive setup to get a good photo.
Another piece of advice was to just keep practicing and learning. Take a lot of photos and see what the camera's automatic settings are at when taking the photos. From there, it's more practice, learning and experimenting, said Johnson, a frequent participant in Bearfest.
Johnson, who splits his time between Yakutat and Wrangell, showed his photographs that ranged from Southeast to the Aleutian Islands before moving to the workshop advice.
"Photography has a lot of different aspects to it," he said. "Don't let your camera, your tool, be your limiting factor when you do it."
One question from the audience was how to better capture photos that have a lot of dark colors, but some bright spots, without the photo coming out either too dark or too bright. To get a photo like that to come out better, the photographer needs to play around with their camera's exposure, Johnson said.
Photographers should underexpose for pictures with a lot of dark area but some brightness.
The reverse is also useful for photos with a lot of brightness but also some dark spots. In that case, he said the photographer should overexpose.
"The head and the tail of the eagle is all blown out and everything else is kind of light," Johnson said. "That's because your light meter sees a big dark area, so it processes that to its (the camera's) brain and says, 'Better get more light in there because it's really dark.' Well sometimes it really is dark, and your meter isn't that smart."
He followed with some technical advice. "When you have a highlight that's important, like a salmon that a bear's picked up or the head of an eagle, you have to override your camera's instinct to make everything 20% brighter. You got to expose for that dot and let the shadows do whatever they want to do. ... I will set my aperture to underexpose by two stops."
Johnson also covered how to take better action shots, and to get the camera to only focus on one object in the foreground while blurring the background. This, like a lot of things in photography, comes down to practice.
He suggested that people use a tape measure, or a fence post with a lot of slats, and just stand at one end and practice focusing the camera on objects at different distances. To focus on one subject and blur out the rest, you need to narrow the depth of field by limiting the camera's aperture, or the opening in the lens that light comes through.
"Landscape photographers like to have everything from the foreground to the near foreground, to infinity, all in focus," he said. "Journalists, when they're focusing on a story or a subject, generally they want to have the subject in focus as the center of attention for that image."
At the end of the day, Johnson said, a camera is just a tool. It is the photographer that makes a good photo what it is.
"You can make the darkest room completely light without any detail whatsoever," he said. "Conversely, you can take the brightest, sunniest day and make it pitch black. You have that capability with your camera. What you're looking for is that point of light that emphasizes and shows exactly what you want to show as a photographer."
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