N-Photo: the Nikon magazine January 2022

Laurie Campbell PAGE 6 Acclaimed wildlife photographer Laurie shows his apprentice how to shoot seals and seagulls in a Scottish fishing harbour. Dave Williams PAGE 26 It’s a winter-wonderlandscape special as Dave demonstrates shooting snowy scenes, winter wildlife and the Northern Lights. Paul Wilkinson PAGE 38 It’s no more Mr Nice Guy as Paul demands to be known for the quality of his photography, not how affable a chap he is… Steve Schapiro PAGE 64 Steve recalls a remarkable career shooting everything from the ’60s US civil rights movement to hellraising Hollywood film stars. Peter Lindbergh PAGE 72 The story behind how the renowned photographer of supermodels curated his final photography exhibition. Matthew Richards PAGE 86, 100 & 103 Matthew reflects on a year of wonderful camera kit, with the best buys for beginners, enthusiasts and pros……

This issue hits the newsstands just as we all take a well-deserved festive break. It’s a time for reflection as we look back on the year past, and various levels of lockdown aside, it’s been a pretty good one when it comes to kit. We bring you the best that 2021 has brought us in our annual Gear of the Year roundup. Also in our Gear section, we test the svelte Z 40mm f/2 and explain radio flash triggers, with our pick of five of the best. With winter well and truly upon us, we enlist the advice of explorer and travel photographer Dave Williams, who shares his tips for shooting snowy scenes, winter wildlife and, if you’re lucky, capturing the majesty of nature’s most amazing spectacle, the Northern Lights. Our Apprentice…

THE PRO NAME: Laurie Campbell CAMERA: Nikon D5 Laurie has spent his career documenting Scotland’s wildlife almost exclusively. He hails from Berwick-upon-Tweed and was bit by the wildlife photography bug in 1972. In 1985 he turned pro, having studied photography at Edinburgh’s Napier University, and has since amassed a picture library of close to 200,000 images. He’s authored and illustrated a variety of books, and has won a plethora of awards. Neil is learning from one of the very best: www.lauriecampbell.com THE APPRENTICE NAME: Neil Wallace CAMERA: Nikon D7200 Scotland-based Neil comes from a farming background, but it was driving HGVs on the continent that prompted him to delve seriously into photography. He wanted an excuse to work among nature again and was curious about the digital revolution, so he picked up his first Nikon DSLR and…

1 CAMERA SETTINGS Laurie says… My go-to settings are Manual mode, Raw, Centre-weighted metering and the desired white balance preset. I’ll use manual focus if the subject is still or Single-point AF and AF-C if it’s moving. Continuous-high is useful for sudden bursts of action and I’m not afraid to boost ISO, if needed. 2 BALANCING ACT Laurie says… I work hard to get my images right in-camera to minimize editing, and that means setting the white balance manually. Today Neil used presets such as Cloudy and Direct Sunlight, but I will even go so far as to dial in the Kelvin value myself to get the exact colour temperature that I require. 3 ACCURATE EXPOSURE Laurie says… I always enable RGB Histogram and Highlights via Playback Display Options in the Playback menu. Not only…

1 SLOW IT DOWN Laurie says… The motion blur will depend on both the length of your exposure and the speed your subject is moving, so it’s not an exact science. I like to start very slowly by attaching a polarizer to remove a couple stops of light, shooting at ISO100 and dialling in a super-narrow aperture. 2 FIND A FOCUS MARKER Laurie says… Using a dark filter on a dark day can confuse your AF system and cause it to hunt. You can get over this by finding a marker on the same focal plane as your subject and focusing on that either completely manually or via AF first and then switching to manual. 3 EXPERIMENTATION Laurie says… Slowly increase your shutter speed as you shoot and pay attention to what you’re capturing. Once…

GOLDEN EAGLE Golden eagles are always challenging subjects and whilst working on a large-format book in the 1990s, I shot this image from an igloo-shaped rock hide I had constructed up a Scottish mountain. Equally challenging was obtaining a red deer carcass to attract the birds, in this case a road casualty. ORDINARY MOSS I shoot a lot of macro images and love sharing details of everyday subjects from the natural world. Curiously, the correct name for this moss is ‘ordinary moss’. For me, this plant is anything but ordinary! It was photographed with a Nikon 1 V3 camera and 200mm f/4 Micro lens. PUMA Photographed almost 25 years ago in Chilean Patagonia, this puma was the subject of a film that a wildlife film-maker friend of mine, Hugh Miles, was shooting. I was commissioned…