• Why can’t I see the depth of field in the viewfinder?
• Problems with using a wide aperture (focusing and lens softness)
• Problems with using a small aperture (diffraction and shutter speed)

Why can’t I see the depth of field in the viewfinder?

This is a question that I am asked a lot!

Let’s imagine that you are using aperture priority mode and you change the aperture from f4 to f11. If you look through the viewfinder as you change the aperture you see absolutely no change in depth of field (DOF). However, when you take a photograph there is a big difference in DOF between the f4 photo and the f11 photo.

So why, when the camera is set to f11 do you see the DOF for f4 in the viewfinder and not the DOF for f11?

The reason is that when you mount a lens on to the camera, the camera automatically sets the lens to the widest aperture. This is to give you the brightest possible image in the viewfinder for composition and focusing. It is only when you press the shutter release that the camera sets the lens to your chosen aperture.

If you do want to see the depth of field before you take a photograph then many digital SLR’s have a ‘depth of field preview’ button. Pressing the button sets the selected aperture and you can see the depth of field, the viewfinder image also goes very dark!

Problems with using a wide aperture

This photograph of my daughter Erin was taken with a 50mm f1.4 lens at f1.4. Only her left eye is really sharp. Using a smaller aperture such as f4 would allow me to get her face in focus but maintain the blurry background.

From last week’s blog you will remember that a very wide aperture will produce a shallow depth of field. If the depth of field is too shallow then your focusing needs to be very accurate. This can be very difficult to achieve if your subject is moving!

Another problem is that not all of your subject will be in focus. E.g. If your subject is not looking directly at you, then one eye may be in focus but the other eye is soft.

Another problem with using a wide aperture is that many lenses are only sharp in the centre of the frame when they are used at their widest apertures.

If you have plenty of light to work with, then trying using a smaller aperture to overcome focusing problems and lens softness. E.g. if you are taking a portrait with a 50mm f1.8 lens, then try the shot at f2.8 or f4. You will still see a blurry background but your subject will be sharper and you will have fewer problems focusing.

If you don’t have plenty of light to work with then try one of these solutions:

1. Increase your ISO and use a smaller aperture.

2. Move further back.

3. Prefocus on a point that you expect your subject to pass and take multiple frames as the subject passes that point.

Problems with using a small aperture

Probably the biggest problem with using a small aperture is the slow shutter speed you will get when taking a photograph in low light conditions. The easiest solution is to mount the camera on a tripod and use a remote shutter release. If using a tripod is not possible then increase the ISO but beware of noise!

The second major problem with using a small aperture is diffraction. When rays of light pass through a small aperture they diverge and interfere with another and create a diffraction pattern. In simple terms; if the diameter of the diffraction pattern is larger than your camera’s pixel size (pixel pitch) then the resolution of your photograph will be reduced.

When is diffraction really a problem? To be honest you will only notice diffraction when you are producing large prints.

There are four ways to solve diffraction problems:

1. If you are using a small aperture to get a slow shutter speed then use a neutral density filter instead of small aperture. E.g. use f8 and a 3 stop ND filter instead of f22.
2. If you are using a small aperture to get a large depth of field then focus at different distances and use either Photoshop or Helicon Focus to combine the different photographs and increase depth of field.
3. Alternatively, if you are using a small aperture to get a large depth of field then use a tilt-shift lens and tilt the lens to move the plane of sharpest focus. I will explain in a separate blog post in the very near future!
4. Perhaps the easiest alternative, if you are using a small aperture to get a large depth of field is to use a wider angle lens.

Below are two photographs which show diffraction. These are cropped photographs from a Nikon D3x with a 105mm macro lens. The lens was manually focused.

In the first photograph, the Nikon D3x sensor has resolved a fine hair in the centre of the photograph, in the second photograph there is greater depth of field but the fine hair has almost disappeared because the diffraction pattern at f32 is much bigger than the D3x’s pixel pitch and therefore the sensor can no longer resolve the detail.

Macro photo of a paint brush at f11. Notice the fine hair near the centre.

Macro photo of a paint brush at f32. Compare the fine hair near the centre with the previous photograph.

This week we’ll start with the basics. What is depth of field and how is it controlled?

Depth of field (DOF) is essentially how much of an image is in focus. Shallow DOF means that only the distance you have focused on will be in focus. A large DOF means that most of the photograph is in focus.

The combination of a telephoto lens (600mm), wide aperture (f4) and large, full frame sensor give this photograph a very shallow depth of field.

Depth of field is controlled by the following:

1. The size of the aperture in the lens: Small or shallow DOF = wide aperture = low f number (e.g. f2.8). Large DOF = small aperture = large f number (e.g. f16)

2. The focal length of the lens: Wide angle lenses give a much greater depth of field than a telephoto lens.

3. How close you are to the subject: Close = shallow depth of field. Far away = greater depth of field.

4. The size of the sensor: Small sensors = large depth of field (e.g. compact cameras), large sensors = shallower depth of field (e.g. medium format cameras)

The combination of a long focal length (105mm) and close distance to this flower means that it is very difficult to get a large depth of field despite using an aperture of f11.

Why use a shallow depth of field?

The advantage of using a shallow depth of field is that you can turn a distracting foreground and background in to a complete blur. This makes your subject really jump out, such as the photograph on the left. Therefore, a shallow depth of field is very useful when taking portraits and photographing animals.

A wide angle lens (20mm) and small aperture (f32) give this photograph a large depth of field.

Why use a large depth of field?

A large depth of field is used when you want both the foreground and background of the photograph to be sharp. This is traditionally the case in landscape and architectural photographs. This is typically achieved by using a combination of a wide angle lens and small aperture.

It is important to note that when you use a small aperture, the only area of the photograph that is truly ‘in focus’ is the part of the photograph that you have actually focused on. E.g. if you have focused on a point 10 feet away, then everything at 10 feet is critically sharp.

With digital cameras using a small aperture (usually smaller than f11 on dSLR’s) can cause a problem called diffraction. Diffraction can be a considerable problem if you create large prints. I will look at what diffraction is and to solve the problem in a future blog posting.

The night sky from our camp in Botswana. The camera is pointing toward the Southern Cross and the trees are lit by the campfire. 15 minute exposure.

Night photography can be fun and rewarding and with digital photography it can also be easy to achieve great results.

You will need a tripod and a remote release, preferably one with a timer and a fully charged battery in your camera. A fast lens such as 50mm f1.8 would be useful but not essential.

The first thing to do is to find a suitable location, somewhere with a wide view of the sky and with  a strong foreground element such as a tree would be perfect.

Next, plan when to go. When the moon is full, it will light up your foreground but the stars will be dim. During the new moon, the stars will appear brighter but you may need to light up your foreground element with flash or a flashlight.

Next, plan which direction to take the photograph. If you are pointing North or South then the stars will create concentric circles around a point.

For focusing, use Liveview if you have it and focus manually. If you don’t have Liveview then manually focus the lens to infinity and make sure that you are far enough away from the foreground element so that it is in focus. This will be easy to achieve with a wide angle lens.

Turn off any vibration reduction or image stabilization.

The Northern Lights above Watchee Lodge. 30 seconds at f4, ISO 320.

Now for the tricky part, working out the exposure. I strongly recommend doing a test shot with a fast lens and high ISO first and then calculating the actual exposure.

The reason for doing this is to save time later. Assuming that you have ‘long exposure noise reduction’ switched on, then after your long exposure, your camera will be busy doing a black point calibration and this can take 50% to 100% of the time that was taken for the photograph.

E.g. If you do a 20 minute exposure, the black point calibration (long exposure noise reduction) will take 10 to 20 minutes. This means that your camera will be busy for 30 to 40 minutes. If you didn’t have the correct exposure then you’ve wasted a lot of time!

Lets assume that our goal is to have short star streaks. This will take a 15 minute exposure. We also assume that we want an aperture of f4 and 200 ISO.

Most digital SLRs have a long exposure of 30 seconds. In manual mode, set 30 seconds and f4 for the exposure.

The difference between a 15 minute exposure and a 30 second exposure is 5 stops: (8 minutes, 4 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds) i.e. halving or doubling the time is 1 stop.

Therefore in order to have the same exposure at 30 seconds we need to increase the ISO by 5 stops (400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400).

Now take a photograph at 6400 ISO, f4 and 30 seconds. If the photograph is too bright then try again at f5.6 or f8. If it is too dark then try f2.8 or increase the ISO.

Assuming that the best exposure was 6400 ISO, f5.6 and 30 seconds. All you need to do know is set 200 ISO, f5.6 and bulb.

Wait a minute, what on earth is ‘bulb’? Bulb is a shutter speed setting that is used for shutter speeds longer than 30 seconds. You usually need to be in manual mode to set the shutter speed to ‘bulb’. The shutter will open when you press the shutter release and it will close when you take your finger off the shutter release.

Due to camera shake and finger fatigue, you probably don’t want to hold the shutter release down for 15 minutes! This where the remote release comes in useful. If you have a remote with a timer then set the timer to 15 minutes and take the photograph. It will close the shutter once the timer has counted down. Otherwise, press the remote release and lock the switch. Use a watch and after 15 minutes unlock the remote.

You should now have a great night photograph! Good luck and let me know how you got on.

Geopic II on Nikon D3s, it works on any Nikon with a 10 pin plug

A new piece of equipment that I first tried in Scotland and which was very successful was the Geopic II GPS for Nikon SLR’s. The aim of using a GPS with a digital camera is to embed the location from where the photograph was taken in to the photograph’s metadata.

I have tried other GPS solutions in the past but the problem has always been synchronizing the GPS with the photos.

The Geopic II is connected to the camera’s 10pin remote socket and the GPS information is written into the photo immediately, therefore, there is no need to synchronize devices later.

The Geopic II isn’t the only solution for Nikon SLR’s but it had great reviews and is an excellent price. It also incorporates the heading information so that you know in which direction you were pointing for each photo, in my opinion heading is a very useful piece of information that is missing from many camera GPS options.

Also, this unit unlike many others includes a remote socket which allows you to record GPS information and fire the camera remotely when taking long exposures.

In Africa the Geopic II was again invaluable for logging the location of each photograph.

You won’t find the second useful accessory in camera stores, in fact you can only find it at MEC in Canada. The MEC Aegir 20 pack is a completely waterproof pack that uses a zipper to seal it. I have used similar packs in the past but always found their zippers to be hard to close. This pack is lightweight, a great price and saved my very expensive 300mm f2.8 lens when I was capsized by a hippo.

Large Aquatech Soft Hood on Nikon's 600mm f4 lens

The third and final piece of equipment that I also found useful was a folding lens hood for my Nikon 600mm f4 lens. The 600mm f4 will actually fit inside a large number of camera bags, but it’s huge 7.5 inch x 5 inch (19cm x 13cm) hood will not! Using this lens without a hood is not an option, the best solution that I have found is the Aquatech Softhood. The hood is not cheap and it is not much lighter than the original hood but it is very strong, waterproof and folds flat or folds in half. It is available in two sizes, depending upon which telephoto lens you use.

Cheetah relaxes at sunset

Now that I’m home, it is time to share some thoughts on the equipment that I used in Africa.

I always find it interesting to write down what worked, what didn’t and what I’d do next time.

In the first instalment I will look at the big stuff; cameras and lenses. Next week I’ll discuss the smaller accessories which can often make a big difference.

Video

The photo tour to Africa was the first time that I planned to do a serious amount of videography. Unfortunately, my Panasonic TM700 camcorder was stolen at Johannesburg. I was left with my Panasonic TS3 compact camera and Nikon D3S to record video. I primarily used the D3S and despite lacking the autofocus sophistication of the TM700, it was a great tool. When combined with the 70-200mm f2.8 lens that I borrowed from Nikon, I was able to get some great pan and zoom videos of the wildlife. For distant subjects I even used my 600mm lens for video! Once I edit the video I should be able to produce some exciting multimedia presentations about the trip. Sound is still something of an issue and I haven’t yet discovered the perfect solution for recording high quality sound in the field. As soon as I do, I will share it with you!

Lens Choice

Lens choice was obviously important for this trip. The two lenses that I used the most were my 300mm f2.8 VR (1005 photos) and the 600mm f4 VR2 (792). It should be noted that I use two full frame cameras, Nikon D3x and D3s. If you have a DSLR with a smaller sensor (e.g. D7000 or D300s) then probably the best option would be Nikon’s 200-400mm f4 lens. Using the 200-400mm zoom would allow a photographer to create some stunning video footage and save a lot of weight but the advantage of having two big telephoto lenses was that I was able to take stills with one and shoot video with the other.

I am a big fan of prime lenses and do not own a 70-200mm lens. However, Nikon Professional Services (NPS) in Canada kindly loaned me a 70-200mm f2.8 VR2 lens for the trip. It was very versatile and ideal for using from a vehicle or canoe, I used it for video and produced some great pan and zoom video segments with it. No matter which camera system you use (Canon, Nikon, Sony etc) if you are serious about wildlife photography then a 70-200mm f2.8 lens is an incredible tool that will last you years. If you couple a 70-200mm with a tele-convertor such as Nikon’s TC17EII, then you can end up with a 120mm-340mm f4.8 lens.

We didn’t really use wide angle lenses. Next time I’ll take a 28mm f2.8 instead of my heavy 17-35mm f2.8 lens.

The high speed Nikon D3s is ideal for capturing fast action such as this impala

Camera Choice

I took five cameras on this trip; Nikons D3x and D3s (full frame DSLRs), Panasonic’s TS3 (waterproof compact) and TM700 (camcorder) and my Fuji GX617 panoramic camera.

I primarily used the D3x and used the D3s when I expected the action to be fast and furious, or the light was getting low or when I wanted to shoot video. Both are full frame but the D3x’s 24 mega-pixels can give you a 1.5x crop and you’ll end up with a high quality 10 mega-pixel photo.

The slim nature of the TS3 made it great for grabbing documentary shots, especially as it has a built in GPS to log the location.

The idea of using my GX617 was to photograph wildlife at sunset or sunrise, especially if they were moving through a scene. Something which would be very difficult by stitching. I was also able to use it from the canoe on bright days. Unfortunately, my TM700 was stolen in Johannesburg which was a big loss as it’s autofocus makes it incredibly useful and easy to use.

In future I would contemplate taking a Nikon APS-C camera such as the D7000 or D300S and use the Nikon 200-400mm f4 lens but I’m not sure that they can replace my D3x or D3s. If Nikon comes out with a new professional quality APS-C camera then that would probably be the camera to use with the 200-400mm lens.

Next week….

In my blog next week I will look at the accessories that made an important difference to the Africa photo tour

Nick paddles whilst Steve looks for wildlife on the Zambezi river

Our photo tour to Zimbabwe was not just about canoeing and getting up close and personal with hippos.

In the mornings we went on game drives and if Nick found any interesting tracks, then we would go on a walk so that we could get some great photographs.

On the last two days we had two very exciting walks. Nick noticed that a group of impala were very agitated, we stopped driving and searched the landscape with our binoculars. Nick’s trained eye noticed a pride of ten lions moving in the grass. They didn’t seem to be hunting and the impala were fully aware of them so we decided to follow the lions.

Nick was obviously armed and we set off with our cameras across a plain and in to the  grass.

Part of a pride of lions that we were following on foot.

The lions seemed to be strolling casually but they were hard to keep up with. They headed in to some thick brush and we continued to follow.

At this point, Nick told us to keep close together and reminded us what to do if a lion charged – DON’T RUN!

Following lions in thick brush with limited visibility is very exciting, at least I think so but unfortunately we never caught up with them. They probably lay down, watched us, rolled their eyes and thought “more tourists!”.

African wild dog alpha female outside her den

The following morning was even more exciting. Nick knew of an African wild dog den that was near our camp, after breakfast we headed there by landrover and walked the last kilometre.

It is unusual for African wild dogs to reuse old den sites, the exception is when a new pack is formed and the inexperienced alpha female will use a den she is familiar with for her first litter.

Nick was delighted to find that this was the case at this old den. About nine dogs were lying in the open in front of the hidden den site. They were a long way off and difficult to photograph. After they became used to our presence we slowly shuffled forward on our bums, with our cameras on our laps.

Slowly but surely we got closer and the dogs seemed comfortable with us. We took some great photographs and just enjoyed being these magnificent but now, very rare predators.

It's hard to get away from hippos on the Zambezi river

After my capsize on the previous day, we were a little apprehensive when the hippos seemed to be too close. Fortunately, they behaved themselves and we had no more incidents.

The last couple of hours of the last day were particularly good because the terrain wasn’t suitable for hippos. In the warm glow of the afternoon light we drifted alongside a vertical sandy bank and saw African fish eagles, a python, monitor lizards and birds that nested in the sandy bank.

It was a great end to four days on the Zambezi.

Monitor lizard poses as we drift past

Will I go back to Africa? Definitely, especially to Botswana. In fact, on the way home we were throwing ideas around for another trip.

Whether I organize another photo tour to Botswana is not certain. This year’s tour took a huge amount of planning but had very low attendance and I tempted to return with family and a few friends on a private trip.

However, if you are interested in Africa then use my website contact form and drop me an email as I can always be persuaded to change my mind!

In the end the four of us had incredible experiences and have many breathtaking photos, that I’ve not yet shared on my blog.

A hippo did this!

For the second year running I had an exciting few days on the Zambezi river, canoeing through the beautiful Mana Pools National Park.

For those of you that have been following the blog, you’ll remember that last year a hippo decided to bite the canoe that was ahead of me.

This year it was my turn to be hit!

Before I tell you the story, let me give you some background…..

A bee-eater, one of the many birds that we saw on the Zambezi river

Mana Pools National Park is a World Heritage Site and has excellent populations of elephant and hippopotamus, there are also around four denning sites of the elusive African wild dog.

Our goal was to canoe through the national park for four days. In the mornings we went on game drives and also headed in to the bush with Nick, our guide (who was armed). In the afternoons we travelled around 25km down the Zambezi. For the first two nights we stayed at the Vundu Camp lodge and for the second two nights we camped at two different campsites.

Canoeing is a great way to see birds, crocs, monitor lizards, elephants and of course hippos.

Two bull hippos deciding which one is the most dominant.

Each canoe has a guide who paddles and we sat at the front enjoying the scenery and taking photos. There are times when we followed narrow channels and sometimes these channels would have pods of hippos that had to be negotiated. Hippos are nervous of people and their instinct is to enter the water, dive and hide. Personally, I would be happier if they stayed on the land where we could see them! Hippos also sleep in the water and many hippo accidents have happened when a hippo rises from the bottom underneath an unsuspecting canoe. To prevent this, our guides bang their paddles loudly on the side of the canoe so that the hippos know where we are.

On our third day we where paddling down the main river and we were about 100 metres from the shore. My guide for the day was Danni, a 22 year old who was spending her first year as a guide. It was a holiday weekend and her parents were visiting the camp from Harare. They were driving along the river and witnessed the hippo capsize us.

A close up of the damage by the hippo

As we floated down the river in the last canoe we discussing how tame the Zambezi would be if it wasn’t for the excitement of dodging hippos. Suddenly, the canoe was capsized by a bull hippo that had deliberately swum the 100m from it’s pod! In an instant I was under the water. I had been holding my Nikon D3S with 70-200mm lens on my lap. My instinctive  reaction was to thrust the camera up and hope for the best.

I swam to the surface where I saw Danni calmly hanging on to our overturned canoe and she told me to hang on to it and stay still (because of the crocs) whilst the others paddled back to us. I looked at my D3S and it still worked! A few minutes later I was in another canoe and we rafted ours to the shore. I was obviously shocked but after a cup of tea and changing in to my fleece I was happy to carry on.

The hippo had put a hole in it so we had to call the base and get another sent to us. The rest of my group couldn’t believe what had happened and for the next 2 days everyone was on edge whenever we came to close to hippos.

Nick, the main guide simply could not believe that I had kept my camera dry and shook my hand. I’m sure I couldn’t repeat that feat again!

A male Cheetah on the lookout for his next meal

Without a doubt, Botswana has completely surpassed my expectations.

On the drive from the airstrip to our camp we saw; lion, cheetah, elephants, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest and a huge number of birds.

It very quickly became apparent that our guide, Brian had a great deal of skill in getting us very close to the animals and I was soon wondering if I was going to need my 600mm lens!

An Impala jumping through the grass at Moremi.

On the first evening we rescued another vehicle at a river crossing and photographed two male cheetah at sunset. It was an incredible birthday and the week just got better.

Throughout our stay in Botswana, Brian was superb. He has guided several photography safaris for Andy Biggs and Theo Allofs, so he knew exactly what our needs and expectations were and always had us on the correct side of the animals.

During our 3 days at Moremi we saw wild dogs (the rarest predator in Africa), cheetah on several locations, ostrich, eagle owls, crocodiles, a huge variety of birds, a python, a variety of antelopes and probably a bunch of things that I’ve already forgotten!

A very upset Vervet monkey makes an alarm as one of his buddies is stalked by a leopard.

We had the camp and Brian exclusively to ourselves and as I promised, we had plenty of room in the vehicle as we had a complete row to ourselves and we could quickly move from one side to the other depending on where the action was and action was plentiful!

Following our fabulous 3 nights in Moremi, we moved to the Khwai Concession. During the move we came incredibly close to a leopard. We heard and saw a vervet monkey making alarm calls and he kept looking at a nearby tree so we went to investigate. We searched the trees but could not see the leopard.

We then concentrated on photographing the upset vervet monkeys when suddenly a vervet monkey fell about 3 metres behind us. It had obviously just been slain by the leopard! We looked and looked but still we couldn’t see the leopard.

We backed away and kept watching but to no avail. Brian was really frustrated as he loves leopards and really wanted us to get some close up photos but this one got away.

We continued on our way to Khwai and stopped at Khwai village and were shown some of the houses that have walls built from empty beer and pop cans. We then headed in to the Khwai concession and the first thing that Brian showed us was a hyena den and outside were two very young hyenas playing!

Two young hyenas playing in front of their den.

At Khwai we saw a lot more lions than we had at Moremi and these included two very young cubs that were still nursing. On one evening we had the pleasure of watching them being moved by their mom.

At Khwai we also saw a large number of elephants plus honey badgers, a variety of eagles and vultures, different antelopes, two types of mongoose but still no leopards!

I paid for my own spot on this photo tour but despite the expense it has been very worthwhile and we still have five days to go!

Tonight we watched the total eclipse of the moon and tomorrow we’ll be exploring Victoria Falls town before heading to Mana Pools National Park on Friday. The next blog update will be on June 23rd, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here are a few more photos.

A young male lion watches us through the grass

A lioness moves one of her cubs to a new hiding spot.

A giraffe, just after sunset at Moremi.

Downtown Johannesburg

After two overnight flights (Calgary – London and London – Johannesburg) I’m finally in Africa at the start of our photo safari. The flight arrived very early but fortunately the hotel had our rooms ready and we were relaxing by 8am.

As we had the whole day here we decided to catch up with some sleep and in the afternoon and had a fascinating tour of Soweto with Modeno who was a fun and informative guide.

Our first stop was downtown Jo’burg and we visited a traditional medicine shop. Dried roots filled shelves; drums, spears and other ceremonial regalia were around the walls and lots of animal products such as hooves hung from the ceilings.

Modeno told us how many of the products were used, including a rather graphic description as to how to use a spear; I’ll save you the details!

A sign of the times. An old apartheid sign in downtown Johannesburg.

Before arriving in Soweto we drove past the ‘Kalabash’ soccer stadium that was used for the main events in the 2010 soccer world cup and then went to the cooling towers at the old Orlando power station in Soweto.

The cooling towers have incredible art painted all around them which was done by scaffold, as you can imagine the middle was difficult due to the concave shape of the towers. The towers are connected by cables with a bungy jumping platform in between them.

One of the two painted Soweto cooling towers

A family lives here. No electricity, running water or sanitation.

I was expecting Soweto to be full of depressing shanty houses. It certainly has many of those but some areas are surprisingly affluent. Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other prominent South Africans still live in Soweto. There are still a lot of shanty areas that have incredibly small houses made of corrugated steel with no electricity, running water or sanitation. The government is slowly rebuilding Soweto but it is taking a very long time, which must be frustrating for the inhabitants when they see the infrastructure improvements that were made for the soccer world cup.

Our final stop was to the Hector Pieterson museum in Soweto. Hector was killed when black children protested against being educated in the Afrikaans language on June 16th, 1976. It was the police’s reaction to this protest that drew condemnation from around the world. Although Hector was not the only child killed, he became an icon of the struggle against apartheid due to a photograph of him being carried from the scene. It shows the power that photography has as a medium.

Tomorrow we head to Botswana and start our safari in the Okavango delta. Look out for the next blog post on June 16th which will be from Victoria Falls.

Photography is very diverse and offers different ways to make a living. I started my business six years ago and in that time I’ve done commercial, stock, travel and fine art photography, I’ve even done some portrait work.

It is difficult to focus when you have to make enough money to pay the bills and you’re offered a huge variety of ways to do so.

I find that it is difficult to achieve long term goals when I juggling many, unrelated projects at the same time.

A few months ago I decided to sit down and think about what was important, what was preventing me from doing those important activities and create a way so that I could concentrate on what I really wanted to do, yet pay the bills!

To solve the problem I come up with three goals and a road map to achieve those goals.

It took me a surprisingly long time to solve a balancing act of creating a new and steady revenue source, having quality time at home and enjoying my photography. However, with a road map in place I am suddenly more productive, more focused and enjoying myself.

I’ll not be announcing what changes are coming just yet but I will be concentrating my business on teaching photography and taking more nature photographs. It will probably take me one to three years to achieve two of the three goals but what I’ll be doing in that time promises to be a lot of fun and spiritually rewarding.

If you’re lacking focus and keep getting distracted, then spend some time creating goals and decide how you’ll achieve those goals. Read the goals often and you’ll be surprised at how productive you become.

Hopefully, they’ll be few detours on the way!