Photographer's Corner...
Interview
With Stephen Eastop...
Interviewer from the Digital Secrets Team
DPS: Thank you very much for your time today Stephen. Firstly I’d like to start off with saying how impressed I was with your photo. Can you tell me where the photo was taken?”
Stephen: The photo was taken from the top of Cook’s Look, the highest point on Lizard Island, off the north east coast of Australia near Cooktown. Amy – great choice, a Lizard beach scene I shot just while waiting for the plane off the island gets heaps of downloads – its really pretty ordinary, this is in my opinion a lovely pic and it prints beautifully. Soon as I saw you were referring to this one I decided to do the interview - with pleasure!
DPS: What camera and lenses did you use?
Stephen: The camera is a Nikon D200 and the lens was a Sigma EX10-20mm, F4-5.6
DPS: What were the shutter speed/aperture settings? Its okay if you don’t remember! I know it’s a big ask.
Stephen: Shutter speed was 1/50, I try never to hand hold with such a slow speed but I was obviously trying to get as much depth of field as possible whilst giving not risking too much camera shake. I imagine the aperture was about f11 to f16, ISO at 100.
DPS: Did you use a tripod for this shot?
Stephen: The photo is hand held. Travelling to Lizard Island where I stay camping for 10 nights at a time requires you to carry everything in – tent, food, snorkelling gear etc so weight becomes an issue and it is impractical to take a tripod.
DPS: What time of day was it taken?
Stephen: Taken about 10am.
DPS: What kinds of conditions did you work with on the day? (ie cold, windy, hot.)
Stephen: Lizard Island is also known as ‘blizzard island’ because during Australia’s winter from August through to December strong south westerly winds never seem to stop blowing, usually at about 20 knots. It’s hot at the top after a sweaty exposed climb.
DPS: Did you use a filter for the shot? If so what kind?
Stephen: Standard UV filter although I would have loved to have had a circular polariser with me.
DPS: It’s a brilliant shot from a compositional point of view as well as technically; I mean, there is a really beautiful angle with the clouds and the rocks. It’s a great effect. Did you mean to set it up that way?
Stephen: Absolutely, I tripped over many rocks and took a few falls on the way to the position the photo was taken from. There are lots of angles as the landscape suggests but to get the sun, clouds and foreground just right meant that this was the best location I could find. I stood on a rock to get some height so that the sea could also feature in the frame, without it the impact would have been lessened. Obviously the wind was in my back.
DPS: What has been your best experience with landscape photography?
Stephen: There are very many ‘best’ experiences from managing to get home after being lost in Mootwingee National Park, to managing to get down after climbing in Mt Kaputar National Park to many experiences with eagles rising up cliffs beneath me. Too many ‘bests’. And many ‘worsts’ where the scenes were dramatic and the lack of film in the F4 equally so!
DPS: How did you start out in photography?
Stephen: I asked my parents to buy me a SLR when they went overseas. I was 21. They came back with a Pentax ME, aperture priority camera. I was at first disappointed as I wanted a fully manual camera but it became my best friend, a beautiful camera to hold and for a beginner aperture priority allowed me to focus on just one aspect of things. Later I progressed to a Nikon F4, lens collection grew and then followed with a trip to New York to buy a quality black and white enlarger with cold head. Still have the ME and although its never used it still feels like gold.
DPS: What types of photography do you find easy/hard to work with?
Stephen: Landscape I can do all day from the slow set ups to the quick grabs. Flash photography I am dreadful at. I take many thousands of photographs of children each year as I run a children’s camp. Some amazing images have come from that, both grabs and set ups. The easiest photography I find is when I am alone, time to relax and really search out the absolutely ideal spot.
DPS: Do you find that photography and a sense of adventure go together? Do you find that a successful photographer needs this to get good shots?
Stephen: No, my children’s photos need a sense of fun. Landscapes are often what you make them. Best to have your camera with you at all times I believe. I can’t imagine not having a love of our world and managing to take good landscape photographs. Intimacy with the subject is as important to a landscape photographer as it is to someone doing portraiture.
DPS: What’s been your most significant memory in your life as a photographer?
Stephen: Dismantling a whopping big enlarger and getting it through customs. The first print it produced. Making up my own chemistry. These were great moments. But the best – the moment I started telling people I am a photographer; letting that aspect of me come first or that journey down Swanston St in Melbourne on a tram when I realised I had stopped just looking at the world and started to see (read) it instead.
DPS: What started your interest in photography? How did you get into it?
Stephen: My father had a passing interest. I recall him as a child coming down from the hole in my bedroom roof or out of a tiny linen cupboard where he had developed photos of my mother.
DPS: Is there any good tips/advice you can give to my subscribers about how to improve their landscape photography?
Stephen:
- You can’t take a pic with your eyes – you just have to have the camera with you whenever possible.
- If conditions aren’t right take a pic anyway but return later
- Tripod whenever possible and get that depth of field happening with small apertures and slow speeds
- No tripod – follow the 3 b’s = brace, be patient (let the wind die down), and breathe out just before taking the pic.
- Don’t overdo the polarising.
- Take one good photograph, not 50 bad ones.
- Take a book of John Berger’s with you, perhaps ‘Ways of Seeing’ for when conditions just aren’t great.
DPS: Thank you very much for your time Stephen.
You can contact Stephen at his blog at:
