They're just like dinosaurs, aren't they?
Is everything right there? Yep.
[Robert] Well, we've come into the Southeast Asia section of the zoo.
We are in the red panda enclosure photographing Ravi,
and this is going to be a lesson in lighting.
At the moment, we've got that nice late afternoon sun.
Something I hear people say a lot is, you know, backlighting.
It's usually the bane of everyone's existence.
No one really seems to like it.
But here I want to try and change the perception on that.
So with the sun, as you can see, it's glaring down onto my face
pointing that way.
So I'm going to wait for Ravi to be positioned facing me.
I'll get nice and low and position the sun right behind him.
We'll see how it goes.
And so I'm actually using some of the foliage there
to block the main rays of the sunlight, so I don't have that really, really
harsh sun coming in, but I'm still able to maintain
that lovely backlight there and it casts a really beautiful golden hue.
I'm using manual settings here, so I can actually make that image
a little bit brighter than it should be.
So I'm picking up all the detail in Ravi's face
here and by positioning the sun directly behind him,
it's not overexposed.
Perfect.
Oh, he's such a good subject, he's just gorgeous.
Now we're going to be
talking all about composition and to help us out.
We are going to be utilising two of Australia Zoo's polar opposites:
rhinos and kangaroos.
This big guy here
is DJ, and we're going to go see some of his mates out
on the African savannah and help explain composition, which is basically
where you need to put your subject.
We're in the middle of the African savannah
on our way to photograph these rhinos.
They're all out there in the paddock.
Got the camera ready to go.
Should be fun.
We've got rhinos that are out in a nice open paddock,
and this is a great spot to really demonstrate the rule of thirds.
Now when you're taking an image, you can sometimes imagine that you've sort of
got a cross section and there are these sort
of little points that you might want to put a subject on.
If you've got an animal in a nice, wide open space, often,
you actually offset that subject.
This guy here I focus and then I offset.
If he's just off to one side, that will often draw your eye even better
to the subject.
This guy's having a little look.
Perfect.
See, there's a tree that comes down here
and a tree that's on the other side of them there.
And so that actually creates that nice sort of natural leading lines,
some really good framing.
Since there is so much texture in the sky
and you've got that beautiful tree line and a lot happening above the rhinos,
I'm actually setting the rhinos right down at the very bottom of the frame.
Everyone's still in shot, but you can get a lot more above them as well.
So it's all about kind of telling the whole story through your composition.
Composition is something that is quite individual.
There's no one way of doing it.
These are just a couple of techniques that I like to use.
Something to sort of get you started, but you've got to find your own way with it.
That's the beauty of photography.
Okay. Welcome in to the macropod paddock.
Now we've got the whole mob just over there.
We've got a lot of kangaroos in one spot.
Now there's a few ways of approaching this.
If you had a nice wide lens, it'd be pretty good to kind of compose
all of these guys in one shot and find that nice, darker background.
But what I'm going to be doing is using a longer telephoto lens
to really showcase some great natural framing.
Is everything right there? Yep.
I have got aperture at f2.8. Yep.
All right.
We're happy, now we can shoot.
If you can match eye level with your subject,
that's a really nice frame.
There's a lot of kangaroos,
and I might want to single one in particular out.
Let's say there's one roo in the middle and two on either side.
It actually naturally draws your eye into the center.
One roo on that side -
- so I'm going to kind of position myself in just the right spot.
Here we go.
And spend some time moving around, back and forth,
and putting yourself in the right spot.
All right, so welcome into the editing room.
Here we are going to be taking a look at a few of the shots that we've gotten
and give you an idea of how they ended up turning out.
So one of the things that we've been talking about quite a lot,
of course, is natural framing and using the rule of thirds.
So you can see here -
- that's that sort of cross-section that I was talking about.
And now you'll notice the little baby, even though that is the focus
of the image, doesn't necessarily mean his head has to be right
square in the middle.
He's actually positioned down there on that lower line.
I'm actually using the mum's legs to frame the little baby.
You can see here what I was
talking about with using other kangaroos to help frame your image.
There's the kangaroo in focus there.
And you've got two either side. These two sort of
balance out the shot and draw your eye straight into the center there.
We've got this nice kind of bokeh effect in here. By pushing that f stop
to a lower number, it makes the background really nice and soft.
This is one of my favourites.
Look at his little face, his little T-Rex hands.
Adorable.
You can see there's some nice layers.
So we've got this strip of green here,
which pretty much falls in the lower third.
The central third is where most of the action is happening.
And then up here, you've got the nice kind of dark, out-of-focus background.
We'll talk a little bit about lighting.
In this sort of scenario,
it is absolutely everything, and here I really wanted to stress
how backlight can be your friend. Whenever you've got that nice sunset light,
I would recommend trying to put that subject directly in front of it.
That beautiful golden light really makes Ravi pop.
And in this last shot,
once again, that nice backlight really highlights him.
And you can see a little bit of light
coming in on his tail and showing those beautiful stripes.
I'll leave you with one last shot here with Ravi.
With his little mouth open, ready for some food.
So that's lighting and composition.
Those are our first two principles that we've learnt about.
And in the next video, part two, I'm going to be talking
more about the behaviour of animals, understanding your subject
and also knowing how to tell a story. Just as important.
So we'll see you soon for the next episode.