From Josh Anon/DPA instructor in San Francisco, this shot is a great example of why understanding light is fundamental to photography.

To find out more information on Josh please check out: http://digitalphotoacademy.com/portfolio/josh-anon/

“It’s from a desert in China, and we paid the farmer to walk his camels through the dunes.  Except we had to pick where he was going to walk for an afternoon shoot in the morning!  By thinking about how the sun would move and what shadows we would see, we gave him a rough path, and the light exceeded our guess by having the bright area between the two dunes.  When we saw the scene, we had him walk between the two dunes so that the shadows framed the camels.  The backlight created a great shadow for the camels along with a rim light around each animal, separating it from the background.  I made sure my exposure captured the detail in the shadows, though, so the camels weren’t too dark.  A long lens (35mm equivalent around 180mm) let me limit my field of view so that there’s nothing extraneous in the shot.  Canon EOS 1D MkIV with Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L on a tripod at 120mm.  f/8, 1/200 sec, ISO 400”