“Would we not just be
better off shooting
handheld?” quizzed
Steven. “After all there’s
still plenty of light in the
sky, so camera shake
isn’t going to be an issue.”
“The tripod serves two
purposes,” explained Jordan.
“And stabilization is just one of them,
the other is composition. I use a tripod,
even on the brightest days, because it
allows me to carefully consider my
composition. Once I’ve set up my shot,
I know that I won’t get so much as amillimetre of movement between frames,
so I can wait for the right light or I can wait
10 minutes for the clouds to clear.”TAKE ME TO THE BRIDGE
Heading down the river to Millennium
Bridge, the pair had planned to shoot down
central span, from one end to the other,
with the imposing dome of St Paul’s
Cathedral in the background. On arrival,
however, they discovered ugly construction
barriers along one side of the bridge due
to maintenance work.
“Cities are constantly changing, with
building sites springing up, cranes
appearing overnight, and works being
carried out – all conspiring to spoil the
shot,” explained an exasperated Jordan.
“So you have to be adaptable, and come
up with compositions to exclude these
unwanted intrusions.”
Heading back down to the riverside,
Steven set up a composition shooting
under the bridge instead, so that the span
acted as a leading line from the top-right of
the image to the cathedral,
Even with a six-stop ND filter fitted to the
lens, and shooting at a narrow aperture of
f/22, the shutter speed wasn’t quite slow
enough to blur the water, and it still looked
a little bit choppy...
“As a rule I normally wouldn’t go any
lower than the ‘base ‘ ISO – that’s ISO
on the D750,” said Jordan, “but rules are
made to be broken! We have t wo choices
here, Add an additional filter, such as a
polarizer, to slow the shutter speed, or
go ‘below’ the standard ISO range intoJordan explains why he shoots several
compositions of each scene.EXPERT INSIGHT
CROP OPTIONS
Jordan says... I shoot everything in both
portrait and landscape orientations. One
may clearly seem better, but I’m looking
at what picture editors will be looking for
in an image: I don’t want to lose out on a
sale – or the book cover – because I didn’t
shoot a portrait-orientation version! In
addition to this, I will shoot both ‘correct’
and then ‘wrong’ compositions that look
too wide, but this is to allow for copy
space. I do a lot of work for guide books
and publications like National Geographic,
and they often want a lot more sky than
you would naturally compose for, to place
text and the like.
CITYSCAPES