Master the Modes: HERO10 Photography Tips with Travis Burke

Photographer Travis Burke has an eye for capturing and sharing the outdoors. Whether its freediving, eclipse chasing or tiny-home-building, Travis's knack for photography helps share his experiences, and the world, from amazing perspectives. And were lucky that GoPro has been a part of his creative endeavors since the original HERO camera. Most recently, we caught up with Travis to learn what he likes about our newest flagship camera, HERO10 Black.

The following tips about how to master photography on HERO10 Black are from Travis himself. Take it away!

As a photographer and athlete, I've had a GoPro camera in my bag since the original HERO came out in 2005. Obviously, the photo and video quality has come leaps and bounds over the last 16+ years, but I love that, as a company, GoPro's ethos and vision of enabling people around the world to easily capture and share their lives has continued to shine through after all these years!

I've had the newHERO10 Black for the last few months and wanted to take you along on some of my adventures as I share how and why I chose certain photography settings. I'll share a few helpful tips and tricks that I've found for getting the most out of this impressive new camera, too.

1. Shooting in RAW

When my girlfriend, Laysea, and I decided to go on an overnight backpacking trip with our dog, Koda, I decided instead of trying to lug my big camera and all of its lenses and accessories along, it would be so much more enjoyable to just have the HERO10 to capture any moments of the trip.

I shot almost everything in RAW, and I was absolutely blown away by the quality and crisp detail of the 23 megapixel RAW photos, especially once I got back and saw them on my computer. Koda is getting older and we knew this was probably going to be one of her last backpacking trips where she has to hike such a far distance, so having these high quality photos of the two of them in their happy place definitely meant a lot!

RAW photos give you the highest quality but can sometimes require a little editing afterward to get the color and contrast to be just right.

PRO TIP: You can use the GoPro Quik app to edit color and contrast of RAW photos or apply preset filters based on the environment you we're shooting in, like snow, forest, underwater, beach and more.

Camera Settings:

Mode: RAW

Lens: Wide

Shutter: Auto

EV Comp: +.5

White Balance: Auto

ISO: 100

Sharpness: Low

2. Using Frame Grabs

While we were in Hawaii, I decided to swim out and capture some BTS moments of Laysea and our friend Kristy doing a photoshoot in the water.

When there is a lot going on, or if I dont have as much control of the scene, one of my favorite things to do is to shoot in video mode 5.3K 30 fps. With the frame grab feature within the Quik app, I can basically pause any moment of the video and grab a really high-resolution 15.8 megapixel photo of it. That way, I know that I wont end up missing anything.

Opting for another setting, like Burst Photo mode for example, can take a few seconds to process the images after the burst is captured, so I might end up missing a moment. By opting for vide, I can decide or let the people who are in front of the camera decide if they want photos or videos of the experience, which is a pretty cool feature!

3. SuperPhoto

SuperPhoto was my go-to choice for this scene. The lighting in the photo was extremely challenging with bright sunlight hitting the cliffs and deep shadows down along the river and getting the right exposure and having enough detail in the scene was crucial. SuperPhoto takes the guesswork out of choosing what settings to use and the camera actually analyzes the scene and is able to make those choices for you. I was quite impressed at how well the HERO10 balanced everything out naturally to match the way it looked to my eye while I was sitting there!

Plus, the detail and resolution of the 23 megapixel image are hard to believe-everything from the rock I was sitting on, to the snow-covered peaks way off in the distance had an incredible amount of detail in them.

SuperPhoto is great if you don't have a lot of camera experience but still want incredible photos, or if you just want to pull out your camera and capture a moment without fumbling with different settings, this will definitely get the job done.

4. Playing with ISO + Shutter Speed

Here is an instance where I wanted as much control of the camera settings as possible. With waterfalls, it is great if you can keep your shutter speed relatively low so you end up getting the water to blur, which creates motion and has a more unique look to it. By setting my ISO to its lowest setting, it allowed my shutter speed to be lower as well without overexposing the image.

PRO TIP: I always use the rule of thirds grid to constantly remind myself to focus on composition as well. You can turn the grid on from the main settings menu by swiping top-to-bottom on the back touch display.

In this case, I ended up finding some plants to add to the foreground to create a sense of depth and switched the lens to Narrow to zoom in a bit more and create a different look. There are always small things you can change that end up making a big difference in the final product of what you're capturing.

Camera Settings:

Mode: Standard

Lens: Narrow

Shutter: Auto

EV Comp: -.5

White Balance: 6500K

ISO: 100

Sharpness: Low

5. Night Photography

It still blows me away that you can take a legit night photo on a GoPro, and the low-light performance keeps getting better and better!

We just finished building a tiny house from the ground up, and with my passion for night photography, I thought it would be fun to get a star trails shot looking north towards Polaris (the north star) with our new home below.

For this photo, I utilized the Night Lapse feature

LINK:	https://gopro.com/en/gb/news/h10-photography-tips-with-travis-burke...
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