Photo Safaris - Slicker Slide Shows

By Wayne Lynch & Aubrey Lang



				Ultimate Antarctica February 2–March 1, 2006
				Spring Fever in Galapagos April 29–May 15, 2006
				Polar Bears & Wildlife of Spitsbergen June 26–July 8, 2006
				Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 8–22, 2006
				Emperor Penguins of Snow Hill Island, Antarctica October 19–November 3, 2006 and October 31–November 15, 2006

Every photographer who shoots 35mm slide film eventually assembles a collection of images, arranges them into an un-edited sequence, invites family or friends over for dinner, and then tortures the guests with the obligatory slide show. When we were first courting, we spent countless evenings in the family basement, screening and critiquing "The Living Landscape" (Catchy title eh?). It was Wayne's first slide show, a story about the natural wonders of a small beaver pond in southern Ontario, but it was a real "snoozer." Probably the best part of the whole program was the title slide.

Twenty-five years later, we still believe every slide program should begin with a strong title slide. In the beginning, our titles were pretty basic. Sometimes we used photographs of road signs, or the entrance markers to parks and natural areas. From there we moved up to small plastic letters arranged on colored construction paper (now you're talking). At times, we used sticks to scratch a title in wet mud or sand, or arranged pebbles or seashells into words. Once we unrolled an entire spool of toilet paper on the tundra to write the title for a 200-mile canoe trip we were making along the Thomsen River, in the Canadian High Arctic. Considering the usual value that campers place on toilet paper in such remote wilderness locations, you can now appreciate the great importance we place on a title slide. In the end, we survived the sacrifice, and the audience loved the opening shot with the toilet paper. Our take-home message then is a simple one. Even the most painfully dull slide program (and we have all seen plenty of those) can be spiced up if you begin with a slick title slide. Here's one way to do it.

There are seven ingredients you will need to cook up a title slide that sizzles:



	1.	A table lamp with a 100-watt bulb.

	2.	A piece of frosted glass, 1/8-inch thick and roughly 7"x7".

	3.	A computer and laser printer OR Letraset instant lettering available in stationary or artists' supplies stores.

	4.	A macro lens that focuses down to lifesize, i.e. 1:1. A 50mm macro is best because of its short working distance.

	5.	An 80A filter that can be screwed to the front of your macro lens.

	6.	A camera body that has a double exposure feature.

	7.	A tripod.

The first step is to generate the text of the title. At first, we used Letraset instant lettering to do this. The letters come in different colors and are transferred to paper simply by rubbing them with a special metal-tipped transfer pen. Letraset produces very professional results, but it is sometimes hard to find and is rapidly becoming obsolete because most people now own a computer. A sheet of black lettering (don't use any other color) costs about $20.00, and you can usually make a dozen titles or more, from a single sheet. Our favorite Letraset font was called Caslon Italic, but we also liked Berling Bold. We used both fonts in the 20-point size.

Nowadays, we simply use our computer and laser printer to get clean black lettering on a white piece of 8" x 11" typing paper. We suggest you use a simple font style, something equivalent to Courier, Futurist or Garnet, all of which work well. The font should be easy to read. Ornate stylish fonts usually yield messy illegible titles. When you finally print your title onto paper use a large font size, at least 18 or 24-point. Since you are eventually going to photograph the lettering with your camera and reduce it to the size of a 35mm slide, using large letters makes the edges on the lettering cleaner and sharper.

With the first step done, you have a piece of white typing paper with your title inscribed in large black letters. Let's say the name of your slide show is "Aubrey and Wayne's Sizzling Slide Show Series." This is too many words for a nice clean title. Try to limit yourself to titles that contain no more than four words. Your next step is to photograph the title with high-contrast black-and-white negative film. We use Kodalith Ortho Film Type 3, simply known as Kodalith. Unfortunately, Kodalith only comes in 100-foot rolls which means you must load the film into canisters yourself (18 of them, in fact) which is as much fun as weeding your garden in the rain. What do Lynch and Lang do? Let someone else do the work while they sip on a cappuccino. Most custom labs will photograph the artwork on Kodalith and process the film, all for under $10.00. All you need to do beforehand is to draw a border around the lettering so that the lab technician knows how you want the title composed in the frame. What you get back from the lab is a piece of processed, black-and-white negative film. Since it is a negative, the colors are reversed from the original artwork, and you now have a slide with stark white letters on a black background.

In this instance, we used three different font sizes, but reserved the largest size for the most important word in the title.

Some of the letters in this font style, called Nevision Casual, can be difficult to read. Since the title Ice Bear is simple and short, it still produced a clean legible title.

We used a black felt-tipped pen to draw a thin line around the title. A border sometimes can enhance the look of a title slide, but always keep it simple and clean.

Step three is to pick a background slide for your title. Avoid busy landscapes with lots of details; they only compete for attention with the title. We keep a selection of colorful sky photographs in our files just for this purpose.

Next, you must combine the black-and-white title slide with the color background slide, in a double exposure. To do this, you need a macro lens that focuses down to life size, that is 1:1. As a film choice we originally used Kodak Duplicating Film 5071, but we now find it more convenient to use whichever ISO 50 or 100 film that happens to be in our cameras at the time. Since conventional films are designed to be exposed with daylight you will need to attach an 80A (dark blue) filter to your macro lens to color-balance the light because you will use a standard lightbulb as your light source. Place your table lamp, with the 100-watt bulb, on the floor, and lay the piece of frosted glass over the top of the lamp shade. The frosted glass diffuses the light from the bulb. Now straddle a tripod over the lamp and you are ready to burn some celluloid — not literally we hope.

Finally, place the background slide on the glass. It's not necessary to take the slide out of its cardboard or plastic mount as long as you use a small aperture, f/11 or f/16, which usually yields enough depth of field to keep the edges of the mounted slide in focus. Use your in-camera light meter to determine the shutter speed, and then fire away. Exposures are usually several seconds long. Don't forget to activate the double exposure feature beforehand so that, at the end of the exposure, the shutter advances but the film does not. Now you are going to make a second exposure on the same piece of film, this time using the black-and-white title slide. On this second exposure, disregard your light meter and simply repeat the same aperture and shutter speed combination you used for the background slide. We usually make multiple title slides, varying the exposure of the background slide and then decide later which looks best. That's all there is to it. Have fun, and get ready to wow your friends.

In this background shot of Antarctica, we underexposed the original slide by one stop. The darker background makes the title stand out.

Often we choose the background slide before we make a Kodalith slide of the title. In this case, we knew we wanted the lettering to run across the sky and not through the center of the image, so we framed the title higher when we made the Kodalith, anticipating the final composition.

The dark band of clouds running through the center of the background slide was the obvious location to place the title to make it most visible.

When we made the shot of the sun rising through the morning fog, we made many different compositions, and placed the sun in different positions in the frame. This later gave us more options, and we have used this background slide in a number of different titles, including this credit slide which Wayne sometimes uses to end a slide program.

Dr. Wayne Lynch and Aubrey Lang

Canadian photographers, Dr. Wayne Lynch and Aubrey Lang have been married for 24 years and the couple have been photographing together since the first month they met at the the

Eastern Ontario Children's Hospital. Four years after they were married, emergency physician Lynch and pediatric nurse Lang left their respective careers in medicine to experience the joys of fulltime freelance photography and their new life in poverty.

Today, Aubrey and Wayne are an inseparable team of field photographers who thrive on wilderness, and specialize in capturing wildlife in wild places. The couple spend at least six months of every year in the field working on book projects, photo assignments, stock photography and leading photographic tours. Together, they have studied and photographed wildlife on every continent, and in over 50 countries.

Wayne is also a popular guest lecturer and an award-winning science writer who has authored 13 books covering a wide range of subjects from the biology and behavior of penguins and northern bears, to arctic and grassland ecology, and the lives of prairie birds and mountain wildlife. Aubrey, who readily admits that she prefers the rewards of rollerblading and weight lifting over those of writing, has four books to her credit. The couple's impressive photo credits include hundreds of magazine covers, thousands of calendar shots and tens of thousands of images published in over two dozen countries.

Wayne and Aubrey are veterans in the tour business, having led over 100 tours worldwide. Wayne began working for Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris in 1986 and the couple now leads for them exclusively.



	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383 Fax: (206) 463-5484 Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.