National geographic ultimate field guide to travel photography

the magic hours of dawn and dusk. "Noon can be a great time, too, if the light is right. If you're in the tropics, for example, noon is when you get those incredible transparent blue Caribbean waters. Shooting in early morning or late afternoon, the water is going to be much more opaque. If you're at the Grand Canyon under a cloudless blue sky, your light is going to be harsh, and possibly the only time you can shoot would be early morning or late afternoon. But if you're there at midday with white, puffy clouds or storm clouds rolling in, the light will be much more interesting:' Don't obsess over sunsets. Amateur photographers tend to shoot sunrises and sunsets, but rarely do such photographs appear in Traveler, nor do Traveler photographers spend much time shooting them. "I don't purposely shoot the moment of the sun hitting the horizon:' says Huey. "It's just overdone. But the moments before the sun comes up or the moments just after it goes downthat's when I'm shooting. The light is really even then.

The color is interesting. Objects are illuminated without the harshness of direct light:' Shoot into the sun. Sometimes Huey will shoot into the late afternoon sun, however. While shooting "Shifting Gears:' an article about a mother-and-son bike trip in Italy, he got a shot of the valley of Assisi while the sun was still above the horizon, breaking through clouds. He exposed for the foreground, using a graduated neutral-density filter to keep the sky from burning out. In the mid-ground was the often photographed Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, the TIP true subject of his composition. "Having that church kept this from being a generic counA still body of water may let you shoot a reflection, but that alone tryside shot:' he says. The picture showed won't make a good picture. "Don't the basilica in the context of its surrounding landscape, with olive trees and a twisty lose sight of what the entire composition should look Iike," says road, making the shot more evocative of the region than a tight shot of the building alone Macduff Everton. Reflections are darker than the objects being would have been.

Use silhouettes. When Catherine Karnow reflected. Use a graduated neutral-density filter to balance the was shooting "The Other Napa" for Traveler, she also shot into a late afternoon sun, exposure above and below the using backlight on a partially wooded hillreflection line, reducing the bright side where a mountain biker was riding on area by one or two stops. a trail. She asked the cyclist to ride back and Discover the Countryside 131