How-to

Getty Images photographer Streeter Lecka puts it best: “The Olympics are unlike anything you will ever shoot in sports,” he says. “For professional shooters, it’s our Super Bowl. The competitive spirit that the athletes feel, we feel. We’re all going for that iconic picture that will forever go down in Olympic history. We’re there to capture it in real time, under nerve-racking pressure, because in competitive sports shooting, there’s never a ‘do over’.” Preach it, brother.

Living on the island of Maui in Hawaii, commercial and portrait photographer Eric Rolph (rolphphoto.com) has the rare luxury of choosing sea-swept sunrises or sunsets to use as backdrops. As you might imagine, he’s perfected the somewhat tricky art of balancing fore- and background lighting, where, without the aid of a little artificial fill light, his subjects would typically be much darker than the bright sun beyond.His suggestions for how you can best strike this balance:

With firework displays happening all over the country this week, we’ve done the leg work for you and gathered all the best tips we’ve given you in the past about how to capture the pyrotechnics.1) How to Photograph Fireworks (8 tips)— (stand out tip: Saturate Color: If shooting film, use a super-saturated slide film such as Fujifilm's Velvia or Kodak's E100VS. If digital, use the High Color Saturation setting, usually found in the camera's setup menu.