Go big or go home…!

In the quest to help people improve their photography, I’ve written various blog posts, including one on the rules of composition and another on how to stand out from the herd.

Today, I’m going to try a different approach - what I call ‘extreme photography’.

The basic idea is this: if you want an extreme reaction to an image, you need to use extreme settings.

Wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein often says that the reaction he hates the most is the word ‘nice’!

He doesn’t want ‘nice’. He wants an extreme reaction: he wants you either to love it or to hate it.

To that end, he goes to extremes in the way he takes his shots, either using very fast or very slow shutter speeds, for example.

As Paul would put it, “If you’re going to go for a s**t, you’d better lock the door!”

So how does this apply to most situations?

Well, there are opportunities to go to extremes in a number of different areas:

Shutter speed
Aperture
ISO
Focal length
Colour vs black and white

Shutter speed (or time value)

When it comes to shutter speed, most amateur photographers probably stay in a ‘comfort zone’ of 1/500 to 1/1000 of a second, but why should that be?

Wildlife photography is a specialist genre that makes huge demands on photographers and their equipment and settings, so it pays to adopt a ‘horses for courses’ approach.

If you want to freeze the action, then make absolutely sure by choosing a really fast shutter speed.

If you’re photographing a small bird such as a hummingbird that flaps its wings very fast, that might mean using 1/8000 of a second, which is the fastest my Nikon D850 can manage.

I don’t do much bird in flight photography, but when I take pictures of a lilac-breasted roller taking off, I usually use a shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second (see below).

On a Wing and a Prayer (at 1/2000 of a second)

Another reason for choosing a fast shutter speed might be when you use exposure compensation.

I often shoot what I call ‘sunny silhouettes’ by underexposing by two or three stops.

Given that I shoot in manual with Auto ISO by default, that normally means that the automatic exposure compensation will simply reduce the ISO, but what if it’s already as low as it will go?

In that case, you’re left with changing either the shutter speed or the aperture.

Choosing a narrower aperture is possible, but it might increase the depth of field more than you want, whereas a faster shutter speed will have no effect on the image apart from the exposure.

Something similar happened when I took the shot below. I was shooting giraffes but not liking what I was getting, so I decided to try a ‘sunny silhouette’.

It was about two in the afternoon, and I changed my shutter speed from 1/1000 to 1/4000 of a second to get two stops of negative exposure compensation.

After a bit of work in Lightroom, this is what I got.

"Who turned out the lights?" (at 1/4000 of a second)

On the other hand, if you’re doing a slow pan shot of a slow-moving animal like an elephant, say, then you need to give yourself the maximum chance of background blur by using 1/4 of a second.

Slow pans are always tricky, but you need to use the slowest possible shutter speed to get the best bokeh.

Yes, it’s a risk, but without taking the risk, you won’t get the reward!

Most people think there is a ‘right’ shutter speed for a particular type of shot, but it’s sometimes better to think about the minimum or maximum shutter speed you need.

If you’re trying to freeze the action, then the minimum might be 1/3200 in the case of birds in flight.
If you’re taking a slow pan, then the maximum might be 1/30 of a second in the case of a galloping wildebeest.

If you look at it this way, then you’ll probably end up taking more shots at either very fast or very slow shutter speeds, which is one way of getting better pictures!

Think of it like this: you’re setting your sights higher.

You’re no longer content to get so-so shots and accept what you see as your limitations.

As I always tell my clients, you don’t need to be a professional photographer to take professional photographs!

Try to visualise the perfect shot and then choose the appropriate settings.

Yes, there’s always a trade-off in photography involving the exposure triangle, but let’s think about what might go wrong - even with the right settings.

If the shutter speed is very high, then the ISO will be correspondingly higher, and you’ll get extra noise in the shot.

However, you’d rather have noise than motion blur.

DSLR cameras are capable of far better image quality at high ISOs than they used to be, and noise is far easier to remove these days with products such as Topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI.

Let’s do a thought experiment.

Imagine that you’re in the Caribbean, and you think you’ve seen the rarest bird in the world - the Bahama nuthatch - perched on a tree.

You want to get a picture of it taking off, but it’s late in the afternoon, just before sunset, and the light is fading, so you’re worried about your steadily rising ISO.

Do you guarantee the shot by setting your shutter speed to 1/4000 of a second, or do you worry about the noise you’ll get if you print it out at six feet by four feet for your living room wall and choose 1/500 instead?

I think you know the answer to that one…

Take the other case now, the slow pan shot.

The slower the animal is moving, the slower the shutter speed has to be, but what if it’s an elephant dawdling along at walking pace?

You know you should be using 1/4 of a second, but are you confident you can hold the camera steady at that shutter speed?

Are you worried that you’ll end up with a blurry mess?

Well, of course you are!

Slow pans are incredibly difficult to pull off, and your hit rate might be only one in 10 or one in 20, but so what?

You only need one good one, so you just have to be brave.

Choose the ‘extreme’ shutter speed and then focus on making sure every aspect of your technique is correct to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

Again, you should be trying to produce great wildlife shots, not ho-hum snaps to show granny when you get home!

One final example of the maximum shutter speed is when you’re taking portraits.

It doesn’t have to be of animals, of course, but the basic trade-off is again between shutter speed and ISO: the higher the shutter speed, the higher the ISO will be, and that means more noise.

People are often told the rule-of-thumb that you should set your shutter speed to the inverse of the focal length of your lens.

The idea is that longer lenses magnify any camera shake, so you need to use a faster shutter speed with longer lenses.

However, it doesn’t take into account two important things:

the rapid and unpredictable movement of animals and birds
the advanced performance of Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR) and Canon’s Image Stabilisation (IS) systems

Personally, I tend to take a few shots at 1/1000 of a second - which is my default shutter speed when I’m shooting in the wild - and then, if the animal or bird is going to be there for a while, I’ll take a few more shots at slower and slower shutter speeds.

This guarantees that I get a shot at the lowest possible ISO, which means with the lowest possible amount of noise.

One formulation of this that I came across recently is the so-called ‘Rule of Doubles’.

I was watching a Tony Northrup video about wildlife photography, and he happened to mention the rule, so I watched another of his videos, in which he explained how it worked.

The basic idea is that you first take a shot at the inverse of the focal length of your lens, ie 1/500 of a second if you’re shooting with a 500mm lens on a full-frame camera.

You then double the length of the exposure and take double the number of shots, which in this case means two at 1/250, four at 1/125 and eight at 1/60 of a second and so on.

When reviewing your pictures later on your computer, you’ll have a lot to look through, but you only need one.

The simplest way to save time and guarantee the minimum amount of noise in the shot is to sort your images by reverse capture time (easily done in Lightroom, for example) and then pick the first one that is sharp.

Given the impact of VR and IS technology, you’ll be amazed how low your shutter speeds can go without introducing motion blur - and that means a big benefit in terms of noise reduction.

Aperture

When it comes to ‘extreme photography’, what works with your choice of shutter speed also works with your choice of aperture.

‘The Law of the Excluded Middle’, if you like, works just as well.

Wildlife photographers usually try to buy fast lenses and shoot wide open in order to separate the subject from the background.

That’s an ‘extreme’ that most amateurs already know, but it doesn’t mean that you should just set your aperture to f/4 or f/5.6 and forget about it!

There are quite a few situations when you might want greater depth of field and should therefore use a narrower aperture - from f/8 all the way up to f/36 in some cases:

The subject is small and nearby, but you still want every part of it to be in focus.

You’re taking an environmental portrait, and you want both the subject and the background to be in focus.

You’re shooting a giraffe standing next to her baby, and you want the patterns on their coats to match each other.

There is more than one subject, and you want them all to be in focus.

You are doing a slow pan (probably in Shutter Priority or Manual shooting mode with Auto ISO), and it’s very bright sunlight.

In all these cases, you need a narrower aperture to give you the depth of field or the shutter speed you need, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Again, the extreme is your friend:

If you go for the ‘extreme’ of shooting wide open, then you’ll get the benefit of the maximum separation between subject and background, plus some gorgeous, creamy-smooth bokeh - if your lens is up to it!
If you go for the extreme of f/36, say, then you get the shutter speed you need for your slow pan.
If you choose f/16, say, then you’ll pretty much guarantee that the cheetah and her cub are both in focus.

When it comes to depth of field, in particular, remember that stopping down from f/5.6 to f/8 won’t really do much if you’re using a long lens at a distance of only a few yards from your subject.

You can use the depth of field preview button on your camera to check, but that will darken the image in the viewfinder quite noticeably sometimes, depending on your chosen f-stop.

Another way to do it is to download an app such as Set My Camera or Field Tools from Google Play or the App Store.

All you need to do is enter your camera, the focal length of your lens and the distance away from the subject, and you’ll be shown everything you need to know about the depth of field.

For example, if you’re shooting something with my 800mm lens from 10 metres away, here’s what happens:

Near focus: 9.98m
Focus distance: 10m
Far focus: 10.02m
Depth of field: 0.05m

The depth of field is only 5cm, which doesn’t leave you much wiggle room at all!

If you change your aperture to f/8, all you’ll get is an extra 2cm of depth of field.

If you really want to be sure to get both animals ‘acceptably sharp’, you’ll have to use f/22, but even that will only give you 18cm of leeway!

If that’s not enough, you’ll probably have to consider focus stacking…

ISO

"Is this close enough...?" (at 3200 ISO!)

I’ve already mentioned ISO and the trade-offs involved, but it’s worth emphasising again that the extreme is your friend.

Most photographers want to get their ISO as low as possible to maximise image quality.

The native ISO of most DSLRs is either 100 or 64 (in the case of my Nikon D850), and that setting will provide the smoothest tone, the highest contrast, the truest colour and the least noise.

That’s the obvious ‘extreme’ that most photographers try to aim for, but, of course, it’s not always possible.

The Exposure Triangle consists of three elements - aperture, shutter speed and ISO - and there’s usually just not enough light to use all the ideal settings.

That means trading off one against one or two of the others, and it’s never easy!

What I would say, though, is that aperture and shutter speed have far more ‘artistic’ impact than the ISO.

Just think about the difference between a shot taken at 1/1000 of a second and one taken at 10 seconds, or a shot taken at f/4 and one taken at f/40.

Those differences are mind-bendingly vast, and they dwarf the difference between 64 ISO and 6400 ISO, say.

Yes, there might be a bit more noise, and the colour and contrast might be a bit different on close inspection, but so what?

You got the shot, right? That’s the main thing.

Again, motion blur is almost always more damaging than noise, and noise can almost always be fixed in post.

That’s why you should never put artificial limits on your ISO.

If you do, all you’re saying is that you’d rather have no shot at all than a noisy one, and that’s just crazy!

And even if you do end up with a shot with a really high ISO, you still have a few options:

Use noise reduction software such as Topaz DeNoise AI.
Switch to black and white.
Add artificial grain to hide the noise.

At the end of the day, it’s more important to get the shot than to worry about a high ISO, so the extreme is again your friend.

Focal length

Paul Goldstein often says he gets his best pictures when he’s using his longest or his shortest lenses.

I have a Nikon 800mm lens with a 1.25x teleconverter that effectively makes it 1000mm long, and it’s certainly a head-turner.

I was on a game drive in Africa once, and we pulled up beside another vehicle at a leopard sighting.

When I put my ‘big dog’ on the roof of the jeep, a woman in the next vehicle along turned to look at it.

I caught her eye and said, “Size isn’t everything, you know…”

She laughed, and her husband called out, “That’s what I’ve been telling her for 20 years!”

I love the sharpness and reach I get with that lens, and I take around two-thirds of all my shots using it, including the lion portrait at the top of this article.

However, I’m not so good with using wide-angle lenses.

I turned up without one at Kicheche in January 2021, and Paul Goldstein wasn’t very impressed!

It was almost the end of a beautiful friendship…

Admittedly, I was trying to pack light (as I always do), but I had to admit that it had been a mistake.

There are always opportunities to take wide-angle shots as a wildlife photographer: just because I don’t often do it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t bring the right lens just in case.

As it happened, I didn’t lose out much on that particular trip, and I got away with taking the shot of the cheetah with her cub (see above) with my 80-400mm lens set at 83mm.

Colour vs black and white

"Who's the bird with the long neck?" (0% saturation)

One way of looking at the difference between colour and black and white photography is to see them as the ‘extremes’ of saturation.

Black and white images are obviously devoid of colour, but colour images often benefit from having areas of totally saturated colour, warm hues and a relatively simple palette.

Eagle Eye (with high saturation, simplicity and warm tones)

The Chilean flamingo at the top of this section is in black and white because I think the monochrome palette best suits the simplicity of the image.

By contrast, the African fish eagle is in colour because of the warmth of the light and the perfect beauty of the blue sky.

It’s no coincidence that I took this in Chobe National Park because Botswana produces a seemingly endless succession of perfect blue skies, and they’re ideal for this type of shot.

So when should saturation be low, and when should it be high? In other words, when should you shoot in black and white and when in colour?

Well, using black and white tends to emphasise shapes, textures and patterns, and it also helps to simplify the composition by removing any distracting, colourful elements in the background.

By contrast, the best colour photographs tend to take advantage of great light, which usually (though not always) means they’re taken during the golden hour either just after sunrise or just before sunset.

Some photographers work almost entirely in colour, and some work almost entirely in black and white.

It just depends on their individual preferences.

Personally, I love colour, and I very rarely turn my images into black and white except if it’s obvious that the image would benefit.

However, I do make a point of creating black and white and sepia versions of my best work, and I upload them to all the stock agencies as well as the colour versions.

So far, the colour ones are winning hands down…!

Exposure

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright…" (highly saturated, warm colours)

The final set of extremes I’d like to talk about is to do with exposure, in other words low key and high key portraits.

Most cameras and most photographers attempt to get the ‘correct’ exposure, mirroring the situation in real life, but why?

Obviously, we all want the image to look good and to be fairly realistic, but, again, why stick to the boring, normal way of doing things?

Why not explore the extremes?

By using positive and negative exposure compensation, you can put a ‘twist’ on the composition and create something thought-provoking, original and often abstract.

Imagine a print that’s entirely black except for the eyes of a black panther or a print that’s entirely white except for the eyes of a polar bear!

Both would look great, but the only way to get the shots would be to use negative and positive exposure compensation.

This low key portrait of a tiger is an example of a low key portrait, and that’s one of the things that makes it so striking.

I took it around 12 o’clock on a blistering hot, sunny day, but the subject looked rather dull, so I deliberately underexposed by one stop to intensify the colours and make it look like the tiger is in a cave, illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight.

It’s also possible, of course, to go the other way.

One trick that works quite well on sunny days with animals on a grassy plain is to overexpose the image and turn it into black and white in order to produce a clean, white background.

Just think about the tone of your subject and decide what would work best.

Conclusion

I hope this article on ‘extreme photography’ has given you a few ideas for taking better pictures.

Most people don’t like things that are ‘boring’ or ‘middle-of-the-road’, so why accept second-best when there are so many easy ways to push the envelope and explore the extremes?

Good luck…!

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.

Capture the Moment!

Extreme photography