On the cover: Wild jaguar in the Pantanal region of Brazil; This page: A model in Vietnam.
Many of my trips to Africa have been to South Africa. I've led quite a few tours there, and on every trip my clients and I have taken wonderful pictures and had a fabulous time. In 2000, a friend and I rented a car and we drove all over the country shooting landscapes, birds, wildlife, and several colorful tribes.
Unfortunately, in the last few years things have radically changed in South Africa. Crime has skyrocketed, infrastructure like roads and electrical grids have suffered, rolling blackouts are daily events, sanitation has declined, and government sponsored violence against white farmers has, as President Trump noted recently in the White House to South Africa's president Mr. Ramaphosa, left large cemeteries full of white victims. Ramaphosa has a Soviet-communist background, and combined with virulent anti-white and anti-Indian racism, this is no longer a place for Americans, Europeans or Indians. The country is imploding. Even South African Airways, the state owned airline and at one time the best airline in Africa, is bankrupt due to mismanagement and corruption.
I'm writing about this because I have now taken South Africa off the list of countries I will visit. Like Iran, Yemen, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, and Venezuela, I feel it is too dangerous to go there. I know many of the subscribers to this eMagazine travel, and many of you love Africa. I do, too, and I'm strongly suggeseting to you that you avoid South Africa in favor of the other countries on the continent known for great wildlife -- Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Uganda, Zambia, etc.
Remember the slogan during Covid, 'Better safe than sorry?' Don't forget it when it comes to traveling to Africa.
Jim Zuckerman photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com
WHAT'S THE BEST WHITE BALANCE?
Probably 80 to 90% of the people who travel with me on my photography tours have their cameras set on auto white balace virtually all the time. They assume, incorrectly, that the auto aspect of AWB will choose the best colors in pretty much all situations. It doesn't.
Take for example the landscape shot below I took in the Alabama Hills in central California. This color balance is exactly what I saw. The sunrise colors are golden, i.e. red and yellow, and this resulted from setting the camera
to daylight white balance. Some camera systems refer to this setting as direct sunlight or sunny.
The same composition on the next page shows the color scheme when using auto white balance. The rich golden tones that photographers love when shooting early and late in the day were lost. This is not what I saw. The auto white balance feature tried to 'correct' the golden light to be white. In other words, it tries to make the scene look like it was taken during the middle of the day, notwithstanding the shadows. Virtually no photographer wants this.
Sure, you can adjust the colors in post-precessing to recover the original rich golden tones, but why do this with dozens or even hundreds of pictures?
This is why I set my camera to daylight white balance for all of my outdoor shooting. At midday, the colors are exactly as I see them, and at sunrise and sunset, the golden tones are reproduced, again, exactly as I saw them.
Can some shots appear too red and yellow when using daylight white balance? Yes. The cheetah I photographed at sunset, right, is too warm for my taste. But had I used AWB, the colors would have looked unattractive to my eye. In this case, I simply desaturate the red and the yellow in the hue/saturation dialog box in Photoshop, or sometimes I'll adjust colors in Adobe Camera Raw using the color mixer.
Some photographers think if you leave the white balance on daylight all the time, as I do, the pictures will turn out bluish when shooting in overcast conditions and at dusk and dawn. That does happen, of course. You can see in the shot of the Grand Canyon, below, that an approaching storm darkened the sky significantly and raised the Kelvin temperature (the higher the temperature in degrees Kelvin, the bluer is the picture). In this situation, you can either use cloudy white balance, which will remove much of the blue tone, or continue to use daylight WB and accept the blue coloration. Sometimes you'll like it and sometimes you will want to remove the bluish cast in post-processing. Personally, I find often the blue color adds mood and atmosphere so I keep it.
The daylight white balance setting allows you
to see and capture the full color spectrum from golden tones at sunrise and sunset to the 'moody blues' of a cloud cover and scenes with reduced illumination.
Kelvin temperatures are highest -- in other words, the pictures are more blue -- at dawn and twilight. The picture of a foggy forest in Italy on the next page shows this. I simply used daylight WB, and picture turned completely blue. This was 6am, well before the winter sunrise, and the mood of the scene was enhanced simply because I didn't use cloudy WB. If this kind of blue is not what you want, the best way to change it to a normal color palette is to use the color temperature slider in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom or to simply desaturate the blue color using the color mixer. In the image at upper right on page 7, you can see the original colors in the scene.
The only time I change the white balance is when I'm shooting under tungsten (incandescent) lighting when phtographing an interior. Using daylight white balance in this situation turns the images to supersaturated yellow, and it's not attractive at all.
One of the reasons I use the daylight white balance setting for most of my shooting is because this is one less thing to think about. Everytime we take a picture, there are so many things to consider at the same time -exposure, depth of field, focus, composition, lighting, shutter speed, the subject, the background, shadows, and more -- that removing one thing from the equation helps a little in allowing me to focus on the more important things. If you use the wrong shutter speed, you can't correct that in post-processing. But if the white balance is too warm or too cool,
this is something that can be corrected perfectly if you shoot in RAW mode. Jpeg images can be corrected to a certain extent, but one of the advantages of shooting in RAW is that the color temperature can be tweaked in any direction without any hint of post-processing manipulation. §
Shooting from
HELICOPTERS
With the advent of drones, the need to shoot from helicopters or small planes to get that incredible aerial perspective has been reduced. Still, sometimes it's illegal to fly a drone, other times it might not be safe, and sometimes the subject you want to photograph is simply too far away. Or, flying the drone over large bodies of water or near an erupting volcano -- or if the wind is too strong -- could very well put your drone in jeopardy. Helicopters are expensive and not always availalbe even if you are willing to spend the money. I've taken a lot of wonder-
ful images from them, though, and I wanted to share with you the techniques I use.
Mitigating movement
The first consideration when shooting from a helicopter is shutter speed. There are two kinds of movement that will cause blurred pictures if your shutter isn't fast enough: turbulence and vibration from the aircraft itself. If you are shooting with a telephoto lens as I did in the shot below of an erupting volcano in Iceland, the movement is magnified. This requires an even faster shutter speed. You can probably
Iceland Drone Tour
August 24 - September 2, 2026
get away with between 1/500 and 1/1000th of a second, but since you've paid a lot of money for the helicopter and since your subject matter is fantastic, don't take a chance. I used 1/2000 for the volcano because there was no way I wanted 'almost' sharp images. And, in this particular case, not only was there turbulence and vibration but the spewing columns of lava were also moving.
Remember, depth of field is not relevant when you are photographing distant subjects. A landscape or cityscape will be sharp at any lens aperture when shooting from a significant distance. That means you can choose a large lens aperture to gather as much light as possible, and that in turn permits a fast shutter in conjunction with a low ISO.
If turbulence is at a minimum, I would feel
comfortable using a shutter speed of 1/500. That's what I used for the picture of Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, below. I took this years ago when we were forced to use low ISO settings due to excessive noise.
Mitigating reflections
If you are sitting in the back seat of the helicopter, the windows are flat. Usually, the pilot will let you open them so you can shoot without degradating the quality of the pictures due to optically interior glass. Even if you do have to shoot through the glass, though, there shouldn't be any reflections back into the lens.
However, if you are sitting in the front of the aircraft, the Plexiglass bubble that forms the windscreen is curved. Taking pictures straight forward means there is a good chance you'll
have to contend with reflections or glare. The easiest solution is to ask the pilot to turn the helicopter so you can shoot out a side window. But if you have to photograph through the Plexiglass bubble, lean forward put the lens up against the Plexiglass itself. Bring a rubber lens hood just for this possibility because the hood will protect the Plexiglass as well as your lens. Even slight turbulence will cause the lens to bump against the bubble. To prevent scratches on all the surfaces involved, the rubber lens hood is what you need to use.
Lens choice
Don't shoot with any lens wider than 24mm. Wide lenses encompass so much that the rotors on top of the helicopter will be in your pictures. Even angling the camera down toward the ground, which you will do for virtu-
ally all the pictures, won't be able to eliminate the rotors. When they are spinning at a high RPM rate during flight, you may not be able to see them. They appear as a faint blur. Using a fast shutter, though, will freeze them. Each picture you take will have a rotor blade in the frame.
Most of my shots from helicopters are done with focal lengths between 28mm and 200mm. This depends on the altitude of the flight and how large an area you're photographing, of course. But you don't need to burden yourself with a wide range of lenses.
Both the volcano eruption in Iceland and Iguazu Falls in Argentina, below, were captured with a 200mm focal length, and both were exposed at 1/2000th of a second. §
Switzerland Photo Tour
Sept. 23 - Oct. 2, 2025
ITo Polarize or Not to Polarize
That is the question
used to travel with a polarizing filter all the time. Back in the day when we shot film, all photographers wanted to increase the color saturation in their images, and a polarizer was the way to do it. It is particularly effective with the sky as you can see in the picture below. This is the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado I shot with medium format film (6x7cm transparency) and a polarizing filter. I loved the effect at the time and still do.
Today, though, I no longer carry one of these filters. With the advent of Photoshop, it is so easy to embellish photographs in post-processing. The vibrance slider in Lightroom or
Adobe Camera Raw does what a polarizing filter does and more. Plus, you don't have to shoot through another piece of glass.
Polarizing filters reduce the light entering the camera by two full f/stops, and that has always been a disadvantage. When using a polarizer on a wide angle lens with a large front element, the filters get quite expensive.
Some photographers like polarizers because they eliminate reflections on glass and surfaces of water. That is a valid appliction, especially if your main interest in photography is landscapes. For my own work, though, I haven't felt a need for a polarizer in years. §
Exotic Birds of Colombia
Sept. 23 to Oct. 3, 2026
Pantanal Photo Tour, Brazil
Jaguars in the wild, birds in flight, caiman, otters and more
Dec. 1 - 9, 2025
Photography Quiz
1. If you see unwanted vignetting in the corners of an image, the likely cause is:
a. A wide angle lens used with a filter and a small f/stop
b. A flaw in the manufacture of the lens
c. A small lens aperture used on a telephoto in conjunction with a lens hood
d. A slow shutter speed used in conjunction with a small lens aperture
2. The Inverse Square Law refers to the fact that when a light source doubles its distance to a subject, the light falloff is exactly double.
a. True
b. False
3. If you use flash with a sync speed that's too fast, what happens?
a. The flash won't fire
b. Part of the image will be black
c. The flash batteries deplete too quickly
d. The pictures will be underexposed
4. Noise shows up most prominently in:
a. The shadows
b. The highlights
c. The mid-tones
5. The best way to eliminate lens flare in Photoshop is with:
a. The clone tool
b. The spot removal tool
c Generative fill
d. Generative expand
6. Blown highlights can only be repaired in Photoshop by:
a. Reducing the exposure of the image
b. Reducing the exposure of the highlights in the image
c. Using a layer mask
d. Cloning from correctly exposed areas of the image into the blown out portion
7. A lightning trigger only works to capture bolts of lightning at night.
a. True
b. False
8. When shooting flat art like a mural, you will have complete depth of field over the surface of the artwork, even at f/2.8, if the back of the camera is parallel with the art.
a. True
b. False
9. Which of the following colors are considered 'complementary' in photography?
a. Blue and magenta
b. Green and yellow
c. Red and orange
d Red and cyan
e. All of the above
10. A 25mm extension tube causes a one f/stop loss of light on a 300mm lens.
a. True
b False
UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS
FROG & REPTILE WORKSHOP in Kansas City
This is an exciting macro workshop in which you will be able to photograph about 40 species of colorful dart frogs and exotic reptiles. Held in a hotel conference room, Jim sets up natural backgrounds for outstanding photos. The photo at left shows a Jackson chameleon with the background replaced in Photoshop.
June 14 - 15, 2025
CARNIVAL in VENICE
Photograph amazing costumes in a Medieval environment. We shoot inside a 16th century palace, in an iconic gondola, in a stunning bedroom with traditional Venetian decor, and at other great locations. The photography as well as the experience is phenomenal.
February 7 - 13, 2026
TEXAS BIRDS
Photograph amazing costumes in a Medieval environment. We shoot inside a 16th century palace, in an iconic gondola, in a stunning bedroom with traditional Venetian decor, and at other great locations. The photography as well as the experience is phenomenal.
May 12 -15, 2027
India Tiger Safari
May 20 - 30, 2026
What's Wrong with this Picture?
At first glance, it's easy to see the problem with this picture of a crested caracara. The bird had flown too close to my shooting position given the focal length I was using, and the wing tips were cropped out. At second glance, I thought maybe this isn't that bad because the compelling face of the raptor and the spread of the tail feathers is the real focus, and the missing tips of the wings don't really matter.
In almost all cases of birds in flight, I think it's important to include the entire spread of the wings. For a moment, I was trying to think outside the box and convince myself this worked. In the end, though, I decided it didn't. With the new capability of 'generative expand' in Photoshop, it was easy to see why it was important to include the extremities of the wings.
Generative expand allows you to expand the original area of an image. It also makes it possible to add to and extend the subject. If parts of a subject are missing -- wing tips, feet, a tail, the rear end of a car, part of building or a tree, etc. -- the AI aspect of Photoshop intelligently fills it in. And, you are given three choices. If you don't like the first three possibilities, you can ask for three more, and so on, until you are happy with the results. I used this ability to complete the wings of the caracara and then instantly I knew this was the better image.
Birds fly very quickly. When we zoom in tightly for full-frame closeups, it's easy to forget about how much space extended wings take up when birds fly. I have to constantly remind myself to zoom back and allow room in the frame for forward movement as well as space above the bird and to the right and left as well. If you've allowed too much space around the bird, simply crop the image later. §
On Safari: Kenya
March 22 - 31, 2026
SHORT AND SWEET
1. You can never go wrong with diffused light from an overcast sky. While sunrise and sunset lighting are beautiful, sometimes contrasty shadows are a problem. Diffused light is perfect for every type of subject from people to wildlife, and from architecture to macro work.
3. If you like doing super creative things in AI, you can then bring the images into Photoshop for further manipulation. I created this cat-like being with a blend of three of my photographs using Midjourney, and then I mirrored it in Photoshop. AI is simply an amazing tool for creativity.
2. Patterns in nature are everywhere, and they make great pictures. This is eucalyptus bark, for example. Rock faces, leaf designs, feathers, wood grain, frost and so many other types of patterns are all arund you Just make sure you use enough depth of field so the images are sharp from edge to edge.
4. Don't be afraid to place a subject in the middle of the frame even though that violates the Rule of Thirds. Actually, this is not a rule at all, but a suggestion. Sometimes a central placement is exactly what's needed to underscore the beauty and symmetry of the subject. I shot this tree in the Palouse region of Washington. §
Vietnam Photo Tour
October 13 - 23, 2025
ASK JIM
Every month, Jim answers a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.
Q: Jim . . . I took this shot on the coast of California at sunset. I like the lighting a lot and the color, and even the composition. Do you think it's a problem that the entire background isn't sharp. I used f/8, and I'm thinking it might have been better with f/22 for complete depth of field.
Angela Bissel, Tallahassee,
Florida
A: I agree you needed more DOF. In my opinion, all landscapes need to be sharp from the immediate foreground to the distant background. There may be exceptions, but this is not one of them. §
Oct 2026 AUTUMN in JAPAN Nov 2025 INDIA TIGER SAFARI May 2026
INDONESIA WILDLIFE
ICELAND DRONE TOUR Aug/Sept 2026
ARMENIA & GEORGIA Oct/Nov 2026
Armenia & Georgia
October 26 - November 8, 2026
STUDENT SHOWCASE
Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same places. Everyone takes great photographs on Jim’s trips.
Jim Myers, Altoona, Pennsylvania Holland/Belgium photo tour, England/Scotland photo tour.
1. a 2. b 3. b 4. a 5. c 6. d 7. b 8. a 9. c 10. d Your score 90% - 100%: You could have been a pro 80% - 89%: Your glasses probably need a new prescription 70% - 79%: Just don’t quit your day job < 70%: You should really be using an iPhone
