One thing that many viewers point out about my pictures is that generally the photographs are free of pedestrians. It's true that I will go through great pains to photograph landscapes and architectural scenes that don't include people, particularly tourists, in the scene. This is usually quite a challenge, but I use some different techniques to try to accomplish this.

I visited the Ava Maria Oratory in Florida on a Sunday afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised that there was so little auto and pedestrian traffic around the church. So, I simply waited until the scene was clear before pressing the shutter!

Ave Maria panoramic I used the same approach while shooting the Our Lady of La Leche Chapel in St. Augustine, Florida. There was nearly an endless stream of people streaming in and out of this chapel. Finally, just one woman remained as she sat praying in one of the pews for several minutes. I started shooting (this is a multiple exposure HDR) the second she left the chapel as another large group was approaching the chapel from the walkway.

Our Lady of La Leche Chapel

Sometimes, it isn't practical to wait until everyone leaves a scene before releasing the shutter. While visiting Fort Jefferson at the Dry Tortugas National Park off the coast of Florida, I wanted to capture a photograph of the repeating arches within the fort. However, two people continued to linger in the back of the scene. Later, I simply removed them by using the cloning tool within Photoshop. This is my most common method of dealing with stray pedestrians in a scene.

Arches to the ocean Another method that can be effective in removing people who are moving through a scene is to use a long shutter speed. The longer the shutter speed, the more the people will blur. If there is enough blur, the people will begin to ghost out of the scene entirely. I used this technique (with a three second exposure) to remove most pedestrians from the Venice Fishing Pier in Florida. A few stationary people remained in the frame, so I took care of them with the cloning tool.

Venice Fishing Pier