Archive for the ‘Work Flow’ Category

Creating depth in your photos

Posted: December 28, 2010 in General Info, Lighting, Tips and Tricks, Work Flow
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Creating the “you can walk into this picture” feel is mostly about technique, a nice DSLR and some nice lenses help but aren’t necessary. 95% of creating the look that you can walk into a photo is creating depth; you have to create layers in the shot. You have to have fore, middle, and background layers that are distinct. You create the layers with light and the elements in each layer.

This don’t mean you have to set up a bunch of lights, you can work with the available light.  The easiest way to do it is to use light and shadow or sun and shade.  Use the shadows and highlights to create texture in the scene, the texture gives the appearance of separation between objects.  If there is no texture, no apparent separation of the objects in the scene it will look flat.

Another way to create depth is with perspective, think of rail road tracks that appear to converge or how a distant mountain only looks as tall as a tree.  Compose you shots so that the elements within the frame create the same kind of effect.  Also use your depth of field, the human eye can not focus over a great distance, it can however refocus much faster than any camera.  As your eyes scan a scene in the real world they are constantly adjusting making every thing seem to be in focus.  Pick an object in the middle of the room to look at, and without moving your eye notice that everything around that object starts to more out of focus the farther from the center you get.  Focus on your subject and let the focus in the rest of the scene trail off as you move farther away from your subject.

There are a lot of different ways to create depth in your photos and these are just a couple.  The biggest thing is practice, practice and more practice.

Here are a couple of example of the techniques I mentioned above.

Quick tips for photographing fireworks.

Posted: July 2, 2010 in General Info, Work Flow
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If you do a Google search you can find a lot of in-depth how-to’s on shooting fire works so I’m just going to give you a quick list of down and dirty tips.

  1. Get there early.  If the show starts and 9:30, don’t think you can show up at 9 and get a good spot to shoot from.  You want to get there at least 90 minutes before the show starts so you have time to park and go scout out a good shooting location.
  2. Shoot from a tripod with a remote shutter release or self timer if you don’t have a remote.  It’s dark and you’re going to be taking long exposures at a small aperture, you’re going to get a whole lot of fuzzy images if you try to handhold the camera.
  3. Use a small aperture and a long slow shutter speed.  f/8 at 3 seconds is a good starting point, then adjust to taste.  After you went to the trouble of setting up the tripod the last thing you want is out of focus pictures of fireworks because you shot at f/2.8 and go a shallow depth of field.  You also want to get as much of the “explosion” as you can so shooting at 1/1000th isn’t going to work.
  4. Choose your background.  After you have gone to all of the trouble to do the stuff above it would be a shame to have a bunch of clutter and unwanted distractions in the background of your shots.  They don’t all have to be against a black night sky, but just be aware of what is in the frame that you might not want to see in the final product.

And the most important tip, have fun and enjoy the show.

Thanks, stay tuned for more.

“I’ll fix it in Post”

Posted: May 14, 2010 in General Info, Work Flow
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This is quite possibly on of the most annoying things I hear photographers say.  To me this is sort of old say “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”  That’s really what you are doing when you “fix it” in post, if you can fix it post you could probably, most likely could have “fixed it” in camera while you were at the location shooting it.  It probably wouldn’t even have taken that long to fix it while you were shooting, probably less time that it will take to fix it in post.

Why do you want to spend 20 minutes in post processing to fix something that would have taken a whole extra 5 minutes to get right in camera.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather be shooting that processing anytime.  I would rather shoot for an extra 30 minutes and get a few more usable shots right out of the camera than hurry up and get done then have to spend a couple of extra hours doing post processing to get usable shots.

There is a difference between fixing something in post that you could have shot in camera and adding thing that could not.  If you want a fashion model in from a full moon that takes up the entire background, you are probably going to have to do that in post, unless the local planetarium will let you shoot there.  What I mean by fixing it in post is removing unwanted objects, straightening horizons, or other things that are easily with in your control.

Next time you go out shooting here are  5 simple things you can do to save you self some time in post processing.

  1. Create a shot list, even if you don’t write it down at least stop and think about what kind of shots you want to get and how to get them.  Then while your shooting get these shots first.
  2. If you can, scout the location first.  This way you know what you will be dealing with when you get there to shoot.
  3. Before you start shooting put the camera down and look at the scene, see if there are any elements you don’t want to see in the final shot.  If there are things you don’t want in the shot, if you can just move them out-of-the-way and then put them back when your done.  If you can’t move them try simply moving a few feet away  or changing the angle you will shoot from and see if they are still there.
  4. Now look through the view finder, through the lens and see if the scene still looks the way you want it to.  If not then repeat step 3 until it does.
  5. Shoot.

These are simple things you can do and none of them matter what kind of gear you are using.  Taking a few minutes to do these 5 easy steps can save you hours in post processing later.

Thanks, stay tuned for more.

Diggin Lightroom3 beta

Posted: March 1, 2010 in General Info, Software, Work Flow
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Finally got everything imported into Lightroom 3 Beta over the weekend and used it to do some edits on the shots from last thursdays SMAD at Lookout Joe’s. So for I’m liking the key wording and sorting. I did about 30 edits with it and they look pretty good. I am going to run the same shots thru CS4 and compare them. After I get both sets done I’ll post them up here for side by side comparison.

Testing out Lightroom 3 Beta

Posted: February 23, 2010 in General Info, Software, Work Flow
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The last time I tried out Lightroom was version 1.X. It was a 30 day trial of the full version. At the time I couldn’t figure out how to integrate it into my work flow with Photoshop CS. Since then they have made some pretty good improvements to Lightroom, so I think its worth another look.
I downloaded and installed it last night which went pretty easily. However I think the first mistake I made was to import every thing from my current file system that I use with Bridge all in one shot. I think I am going to delete the library I created last night and import in stages so that I can take advantage of the key wording and meta data on import feature.
There is definitely going to be a learning curve with it, but from what little I played with it last night I think I may like it.
As I go through it I will keep you updated on what I like, don’t like or what I think could use improvement before/in the final release.

Thanks, stay tuned for more.

Joe

Topaz Detail V2 released

Posted: February 3, 2010 in Plugins, Software, Work Flow
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Topaz Labs just relased v2 of Topaz Detail.  If you already have Topaz Detail v1 you can upgrade for FREE.  If you not already using any of the Topaz plugins for Photshop you can use the coupon code DET2FAST to get 25% off of Topaz Detail v2 or the whole Photoshop bundle (available for both PC and MAC). 

If your  already using Photoshop and you don’t have any of the Topaz plugins I suggest you download then and give them a try.  All of the plugins and the bundel come with a 30 day free trail, so you can try before you buy.  You just put in your email and they send you a trail key, if you like them all you have to do is go back and pay for the full version and enter the new key.

Stay tuned for more

Joe