RSPB Guide to Digital Wildlife Photography

If you are shooting digitally, it is likely that you will want to print your own pictures at home on the desktop. You may also have photos originally taken on film that you would now like to digitise. Inkjet printers and good desk-top scanners are relatively cheap to buy and, although you spend money keeping the machine in ink and paper, they offer superb quality. Moreover, you can take control of the whole process rather than handing your images to your local lab.

With so many printers now on the market, how do you choose the right one for you? The following points should help you with this process.

1 Narrowing down a manufacturer helps to focus the search for a printer. Epson and Canon lead the field. Any of their machines will deliver high-quality prints, and a range of inks and papers is available to match a variety of uses.

2 Size is both a cost and space issue. The bigger the printer, the more expensive it is likely to be. Some printers come with their own stands and roll-fed paper, and take up a large desk, but a decent desktop printer is adequate for most people’s needs. The small models will produce prints up to A4, the medium-sized machines will produce A3 prints, and these are the most popular among photographers. The larger printers can produce large, impressive prints, but are normally the domain of those who regularly exhibit and sell their work.

3 Some machines have just one ink cartridge to serve all the colours, while others have individual colour cartridges. The latter are best if you do a lot of printing as you can replace each colour as it is used, which works out cheaper in the long run. If you intend doing a lot of printing, it might pay to invest in a Continuous Ink flow System (CIS). This is a special cartridge in place of the usual cartridges, which links to separate ink reservoirs. The reservoirs feed a continuous flow of ink to the printer head.

4 The number of colours that a printer can produce is important. Lower priced models have fewer colours, normally four, while more expensive machines can provide nine colours or so. The more colours, the better tonal gradations there will be in your print.

5 Photo quality is determined by many factors, but one of the more important is ink droplet size. Smaller droplets sprayed on to the paper will give smoother tones.

6 Almost all colour printers have excellent resolution. To a point, the higher the resolution, the better the print will be for rendering fine detail. Nonetheless, once you pass a certain threshold, the time taken in printing and the differences that are actually visible to the eye can negate any advantage. Excellent photo quality can be achieved with 1440 x 720 dpi (dots per inch).

A common experience when printing for the first time is to find that your printer is producing prints with colours that do not resemble those on your screen. To make sure that you can produce prints with colours that match your monitor, you need to calibrate your printer. But, and this is a big but, don’t get too hung up on producing prints which accurately match your monitor. You should be aiming for consistency in producing prints which look good to you, and which reproduce satisfactorily. Printmaking is more art than science. However, taking the guesswork out of the equation will waste less of those valuable commodities of ink, paper and time.

I discussed ICC profiles when discussing colour management in Chapter 5 . Your printer needs to be able to correctly interpret the colours sent to it, and to do this it needs an ICC profile. Printers come with generic profiles which may be adequate for your needs – if you do a match using your eyes and the results look fine, there is no need to worry. Yet the chances are that generic profiles will not give consistent results, and they may be way off. Printer profiles you can buy from the internet that match printers with specific paper combinations are more accurate.

If you are producing high-quality prints regularly to sell or exhibit, or indeed for your own use, and you desire the most consistent results possible, it will pay to either spend the time creating a custom profile yourself for the paper and ink you use, or to get professional help. To create a custom profile yourself, you need an objective measuring device. You can buy reasonably priced packages for both monitor and printer calibration which will do the job adequately. For exacting accuracy, you need to use a device called a spectrophotometer, which are expensive. An alternative, less expensive, option is a colorimeter. Or a profiling service will do this for you if you prefer. Thomas Holm at www.pxl.dk is one of the best.

Once your printer is profiled with the paper and inks you use, you should get regular consistent results, with your monitor and printer talking the same colour language. We call this the ‘closed-loop system’.

Below are the three simple steps you should take when colour managing your print production.

2 The software you use must have the appropriate colour space set to the colour workspace in which you wish to work. Adobe RGB (1998)™ is the most convenient colour space to work in from digital capture right through to making a print.

3 Use a profile from your printer manufacturer that matches the paper you intend using, or create this profile yourself, and enter this in your image processing software.

Inkjet printers use either dye-based or pigmented inks. For a long time, dyes were the only inks used; but the drawback of dyes has always been their lack of longevity, with fading noticeable often after a short period of time. Pigment-based inks are now commonly used and give excellent archival results. How long a print lasts depends on all sorts of factors, not least the environment in which it is displayed. Yet, if all things are equal, a long print life is dependent on using pigmented inks with the right paper. With some ink and paper combinations, a life in excess of 100 years with no noticeable fading is now claimed for some products.

To produce the best results possible, you do need to use good-quality photo paper designed for inkjet printers. Choosing a paper is personal; some prefer matt, while others like the glossy look. The weight of paper also adds to the conundrum. I favour using various fine art papers, and sometimes canvas, for the pictures I exhibit as I feel I achieve a more painterly rather than photographic effect with the print. This is, of course, just my preference, and I urge you to experiment with different papers; this is all part of the fun of printing.

When talking about printer resolution and image resolution, confusion can quickly set in. They are not the same. Printer resolution refers to how the printer puts down the ink on the paper. Generally, if you print at a DPI of 720 you will get excellent results.

It is important to understand image resolution and to get it right. You set this in ‘Image size’ in Adobe Photoshop™. Typically, when printing, a resolution of between 200 and 300 ppi (pixels per inch), is required for optimum results. This refers to actual pixels in the photograph. By changing resolution in image size, the dimensions of the photograph will change, but not the overall file size. You should set the document size to fit with the size of print you wish to produce, and if the file size is too small for the size of print contemplated, you will need to interpolate. If, however, the file size is too big, say a 50Mb file to produce a 25 x 20 cm / 10 x 8 inch print which would normally need a 20Mb file, then the file should be resized.

Many wildlife photographers come to digital photography from film. Having hundreds, perhaps thousands, of transparencies that you wish to digitise means having to scan them. Very good desk-top scanners can be bought very reasonably, and most will give excellent results – ideal for both producing inkjet prints from and for publishing.

The expression ‘desktop scanner’ can refer to dedicated film scanners that are used for scanning transparencies (film), and also to flatbed scanners that can scan film as well as prints but which usually offer a much lower dynamic range than film scanners (i.e. they capture less information from film than a dedicated film scanner is able to). Most flatbed scanners are much more reasonably priced than dedicated film scanners and they offer better utility. For the best results when scanning transparencies, however, a dedicated film scanner is best as they are able to scan both mounted and unmounted transparencies. Some flatbed scanners have built-in transparency units, which tend to be machine-specific, so you may not be able to buy one if your machine did not come with one originally.

When selecting a scanner, check for the resolution – this is the figure that tells you how much detail the scanner can resolve without the need for interpolation. At the lower end good machines start at around 2,700 DPI (dots per inch). When discussing scanner resolution DPI is used instead of PPI as the scanner is effectively reading a print or piece of film as a series of dots. Some of the best machines offer 4–5,000 DPI. At 4,000 DPI an image file will print to 30 x 50cm / 12 x 19in without the need for interpolation. If you will only be scanning prints then resolution is much less of an issue; since a print is much larger than a piece of film less resolution is required to scan it.

You should also check the speed per scan. The speed will depend on the resolution you scan at, but machines vary and it is worth comparing – if you have a lot of scans to make, sitting waiting for a scan for 10 seconds is very different to waiting 30 seconds.

I scan my images in 16 bit as this retains the maximum amount of colour information in the image. Once scanned, I take the image into Adobe Photoshop™ and work on it, making minor adjustments to optimise the image before converting to 8 bit and filing the image within my system.

CASE STUDY

Shooting for reproduction in black and white

Black and white photography is thriving; the medium retains a timeless quality and is popular with for those who like to hang photography on their walls as pieces of art. The general public is becoming increasingly visually literate and the use of photography in a commercial context has continued to increase in both quantity and sophistication. This helps to increase interest in the medium and in turn enhances the idea that photography can be appreciated as an art form on terms equal to any other medium. I produce black and white prints of my work for purely artistic reasons, to hang on the wall and sell to the public.

With a little practice, choosing which pictures will work well in black and white is not too difficult. They tend to be those that in colour appear quite monochromatic. I never shoot purely in black and white mode – something you can do with many digital cameras – instead I shoot in colour then convert to black and white using Photoshop™. There are many different ways of converting from colour to black and white; some are highly complex involving many steps. I always opt for the simplest method. In Photoshop™ you do this by going into Image then Adjustments and click on to Black and white. You are then presented with a filter menu which is the crucial element for rendering your image the way you want. Play around with these until you find the effect you want. When printing try adding a thin black border which can give the image an artistic touch that helps lift it a little.

This image of several Avocets lifting off from one of the scrapes at Norfolk’s Cley Reserve was taken on a dull day. In colour the image was OK but lacked much sparkle. So I opted to convert to black and white for drama and added contrast.

300mm lens with 1.7 x teleconverter, ISO 250, 1/1000 sec at f6.7

In a scene that is rarely photographed, each evening in summer tens of thousands of Manx Shearwaters stream from the ocean to breeding colonies on offshore islands. On this particular evening the light had just about gone, I was shooting at a very high ISO so the resulting pictures were very noisy and most of the colour in the landscape had been sapped away by the fading light. As I edited the pictures on the computer I experimented in black and white and this image with the moored tanker in the background I felt suited the medium well; as a picture it looked more effective than the original colour shot. There was a lot of extraneous sky that was dead space and because it was brighter than much of the picture, the sky kept drawing my eye away so I opted to crop into a panoramic view so the viewer is kept focused on the action of the birds.

70–180mm zoom lens at 100, ISO 800, 1/60 sec at f5.6

This Grey Seal was taken late in the day, and I chose to shoot into the light as the sun was low, casting a golden wash across the sand. Normally this style of image would work well in colour but the whiskers, one of the key components in the shot, did not stand out as well as I had hoped. When viewed in black and white they appear just as I had envisaged. I also like the simplicity of this image, a silhouette that is easily identifiable and the beach; it has a graphic quality that I strive for in many of my pictures.

300mm lens, ISO 100, 1/500 sec at f8

CASE STUDY

Displaying your images

Allowing others the pleasure of viewing your pictures is one of the joys of photography. Whether you hang a few on the walls of your home, share them on the internet or even perhaps have a dedicated exhibition, there are a number of ways in which pictures can be presented.

SHARING YOUR IMAGES ONLINE

Displaying pictures on a website on the internet is very popular and there are some excellent online forums dedicated to nature photography where members can post their latest images and receive comments from their peers. These forums can provide ideas for trying different techniques and indeed subjects, they can also help improve your photography by receiving feedback from other photographers. There are also social networking sites dedicated to photography; the biggest of these is Flickr. Here you can upload thousands of images to share and meet like-minded photographers too.

Many photographers have their own websites. The most successful are usually those that don’t rely on the loading of strings of pictures to view. If navigation through a site is slow, or worse, actually entering through the home page is slow, then many potential viewers will click away from the site and go on to something else. One survey found that 53 per cent of picture buyers visiting photographers’ websites will click onto the next site on their list if the homepage does not load within 10 seconds.

GETTING PICTURES ONTO THE INTERNET

When uploading pictures to a website, forum or any other site you need to keep the size of the file low, I typically load pictures to my website at 600 pixels across the longest side, and at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch. To do this go to Image in Photoshop™, then Image size: the image size box shows the pixel dimensions in the top box so then type in 600 in either the width or height and 72 in the ‘Resolution’ box under ‘Document size.’

Most images will look better displayed if sharpened a little. Once your image is re-sized, try this tip, which was passed to me by a photographer friend. Go to ‘Unsharp Mask’ and under ‘Sharpening’ set the amount at 100 per cent and Radius at 0.2. Leave the Threshold at zero and sharpen the image under these settings between two and four times.

Finally when preparing images for the web you need to decide whether to add a watermark. Some photographers place a watermark in the middle of the image to deter copyright infringement. This type of theft is sadly rife on the internet so you always run the risk of someone coming along and lifting the image for their own use and watermarks help deter this. I took the decision not to watermark my pictures and I have regularly found perpetrators of copyright infringement whom I pursue, but I would rather suffer this than take away the impact of the image by adding a watermark. It is a trade-off and personal preference.

Depending on the subject, some pictures work better printed on certain media rather than others. These fighting Pheasants look good when printed and framed but the image does not work so well as an acrylic or canvas. It can be difficult to quantify why such anomalies exist but when selecting pictures for display it is worth giving a lot of thought as to how to display for optimum impact.

500mm lens, ISO 320, 1/1250 sec at f6.3

WALL DISPLAY

The most creative way of displaying an image is to print it to hang on a wall. I sell my pictures through a gallery in my home town and present them in four different kinds of media. These are: as framed prints, as stretched canvases, attached to aluminum and as acrylics. The latter two formats are becoming very popular and have a modern look; the drawback is that they are far more expensive to produce than either a canvas or print. When printing to display as an acrylic, avoid pictures with a lot of black in them as this produces too much reflection. Acrylics particularly excel at presenting images of wildlife or landscapes in snow or ice.

Framed prints are a popular way of showing off pictures but one of the most common failings is a lack of care over the detail. The print quality may be wonderful but if you then put it in a sloppily cut mount or choose a mount colour or frame that does not show the picture off properly – or even distracts from it – then the impact of the picture is lost.

EXHIBITING YOUR WORK

Exhibitions are a great way to show off your work and to build a reputation. There are lots of potential venues too: while there are few photographic galleries that can offer exhibition space, most towns have a library and many of these are open to approaches. In some parts of the country, Open Studios allows artists to show off their work to the public at home. I have had a number of very successful exhibitions in village halls. But wherever the exhibition is located its success is down to making sure that it gets plenty of publicity. Presenting an exhibition is hard work and comes at a cost that you may not recoup if selling your work, but the feedback from those who come to view can be very rewarding. If you decide to put a price on your work then value it realistically. Don’t price it too cheaply – after all you are selling art!

Wildlife photography is now steadily gaining acceptance as art fit to hang on a wall. It has taken time for this acceptance to grow and indeed in Europe we lag behind North America where selling wildlife photographs to the public for home decor is now big business. This Bearded Tit, which was shot in a reed-bed close to my home on the North Norfolk coast, has enjoyed strong sales as a framed print.

500mm lens plus 1.4 x teleconverter, ISO 400, 1/1000 sec at f6.3