So, the weekend was spent on lots of photography stuff – we had the February edition of our Creativty Workshop Series here with the Denver Photo Meetup group and that was a lot of fun. The theme for this outing was contrast, and the group came up with a lot of great examples. For a peek at some of the member shots, be sure to stop over there and look at the photo gallery: Denver Photowalk Creativity Workshop Series Continue reading “Traveling and Photography – Episode #40”
Tag: tricks
5 Tips to Better Landscapes
The most common questions I get here on the blog center around the idea of how to take better pictures. Whether those “better pictures” are better landscapes, or portraits, wildlife or events, everyone wants suggestions on how to approach the practice of taking pictures better. Esoteric and creative considerations aside, there are some fundamental “tricks of the trade” that, by and large, will almost always improve your craft in pretty much any genre. So, today, I thought I would take a moment to share 5 “tricks” I’ve learned that always lead to better landscapes: Continue reading “5 Tips to Better Landscapes”
The Un-review Software
This week I am going to talk about the lack of software in the weekly software review. That’s right – the lack of it! You may be sitting there wondering which software item I am going to talk about, promote, or diss in some way shape or form, but instead of that, I actually want to talk about the general trending of software, hardware, and system resources. Why? Because we demand a lot from our computers these days. Think about it – we want our computers to do many things from surfing the internet, to designing graphics, office functions, building websites, and yes, processing ever-increasing image file sizes. At what point do we say we are asking enough of our computers?
Lately my main desktop computer had been getting slower and slower and slower, and it seemed no matter what I did whether it was beefing up the RAM, adding a faster hard drive, processor, or the like, and even re-installing the OS every 6 months – it was just getting pathetic. At one point, I clocked abut 5 minutes for Firefox to start – on a fresh boot! The culprit? I am asking my computer to do too much. I finally said enough is enough – and am re-purposing the computers in the house. We have a grand total of five computers and each has a unique function: from Office to web, to image processing, and podcasting. And that’s just it – each computer has a task. Yet I have not been disciplined about asking the computer to only perform its assigned task. I revert to the one desktop and the one laptop. The end result: the systems s……l……o……w…… d……o……w……n…….
With a grand total of 78 programs at last count, it’s no wonder my cmputer was screaming “Mercy!”. So, enough is enough. I vowed to make each computer perform only one set of tasks, as explained above. The end result: removing about 50 applications from the main computer. It took the better part of an evening (4 or 5 hours) but at the end, the computer is now screamingly fast again – and Firefox loads in seconds, not minutes. The reason – purposing your computer for a specific software function.
So, instead of looking at adding new software all the time to your computers, you may want to take a look at the computer itself – is it doing the job you want, or are you asking too much? Think about purposing your resources more efficiently. Do you really need that HP 3600 printer driver on there from 4 years ago? What about that trial version of Elements you downloaded a few months ago? And the 4 instances of Tweetdeck you have there? Really? Clean out your software and watch your computer performance increase a notch or two as a result. It’s just like us humans – we can get more done when we’re asked to do less all the time! We’re faster, more productive, and yes, more focused on the task at hand.
So, check that installed software list and try cleaning things out from time to time – your computer will thank you!
Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
A video short on HDR and bracketing
One of the more popular posts here on the blog has been two that consisted of explanations on how to bracket multiple exposures in camera in order to capture a wider range of exposure values than is typically permitted in a single frame. Typically, these various exposures are then seamed together in some editor like Photoshop, Photomatix or other that is available to produce an effect called HDR – high dynamic range. You can get some impressive results with various techniques that appeal to different subjective perspectives.
Here at the blog though, rather than take sides on such post processing methods, it’s more fun to show people how to do things, and then let you all take your own liberties either with the approach or with your processing afterward, or both to get results that appeal to you! With that in mind, the feedback I’ve received from the previous discussions included a large number of people that asked for visuals of the process (I guess they are all visual learners).
Well, rather than take several dozens of images showing all the various settings and then explaining how I got toeach, a video seemed a more appropriate approach. So, here’s the video short for those of you that requested visual aids. It’s not the most professional but you should be able to get the gist.
This would also be a good time to remind everyone that we are in the dwindling days of the Adobe Lightroom contest. You can win your own free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, courtesy of the folks at Adobe, simply by entering images you’ve taken in May over at the LDP Flickr thread. Limit two images per person, but there’s still room for many more entries (no limit on the number of PEOPLE that can participate!) just join the group for free and post your images. Good luck to all and may the best photo win! (Final results will be posted in June – I’l send my top ten picks back to Tom Hogarty for final judging when he’ll pick the winner!)
That’s it for today – I should have the podcast up tomorrow, but as always, no promises as my schedule has been fluctuating at work lately. Happy shooting, and I will be back with more news, information, insights, tips and tricks tomorrow, whether in written or audio form. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
And from the Bag of Tricks…
Wow – it’s been a crazy couple of weeks:
- Interview of Tom Hogarty over at Adobe, to the generous donation of a copy of Photoshop Lightroom for a contest (only two days left!)
- A 3 minute clip on The Tech Guy Radio Talk show with Leo Laporte
- Invitation to go on a photo shoot with Scott Kelby, followed up by dinner with the crew
- Front row seat at Lightroom Seminar
- A very kind and thoughtful mention on Scott’s blog only yesterday
- And now…
Well, I don’t want to jinx it, so I am going to have to leave one of my tricks still in the bag until things get firmed up. Suffice to say, if it comes to pass (and I am still not holding my breath)… this will be a very cool thing for the readers of the blog, listeners of the podcast, feeders of the…well, all of it!
So, for the time being, here’s a few other photo tips to help you improve your composition when out shooting:
- Keep a quart sized resealableplastic bag with you. Fill with sand or dirt on location for a quick and dirty beanbag support for the camera. Empty when done and toss it back in your bag!
- Got a monopod with you? Attach your camera, set the timer and hold it out facing down (or up, to the right or left) for a new and interesting angle.
- Need a quick gauge on how much time until sundown? Hold your hand out at arm length and count the number of fists between the horizon and the sun – each fist = 1 hour!
- Carry a small sample of sticky putty with you to immobilize objects for capture – great because you can use it over and over again and it won’t leave marks on gear or portrait subjects in tabletop environments.
- Wear cargo pants – that way you can walk with one lens on your camera, another in a leg pocket, and other accessories in the other side (media, spare batteries, business cards, etc) for easy on-the-go access to your two favorite lenses. This works for lenses up to the 200mm range, depending on your height and the cargo pocket size), thus keeping your hands free to shoot and interact, while also not being saddled with a heavy backpack or slingback (you can now carry a Camelbak to keep hydrated!)
Got your own tips and tricks to help photographers on the go? Share them in the comments or with me via email. Remember, the Adobe Lightroom Contest Giveaway only has three days left including today, so get your photos in over at the Flickr group here!
Exporting Lightroom slideshows to the web
After yesterday’s post to Youtube of my photo walk with Scott Kelby, and the fact that I mentioned that it was created first in Lightroom – I’ve gotten many emails asking me how I created it. The answer was quite simple – if you own a Mac. Here’s how you can export Lightroom slideshows to the web is less than twenty steps:
- Create your slideshow as you normally do in Lightroom.
- Export the show to jpg files in a folder of your choosing.
- Close Lightrooom
- Open Garage Band
- Mix a track of audio music that will fit the theme of your slideshow
- Export that audio track to the folder with the pictures.
- Close Garage Band
- Open Photoshop CS3 (or your favorite pixel based image editor)
- Create an intro and closing image for your slideshow and save as jpgs to the folder
*Hint* Make sure you keep the dimensions consistent with your previous images so you don’t get pixelation - Close Photoshop
- Open iPhoto
- Import the photos from the folder you created earlier with the jpgs to a new album
- Create a slide show from said album
- Rehearse timings and check for image/audio quality
- Export to desktop (it will export as a Quicktime movie file by default)
- Take said movie file and upload to YouTube
- Add titles, descriptions as needed…
- Voila!
The key to this is iPhoto. You don’t necessarily need Garage Band to make a legal audio track. Many open sourced audio files are available for use, though a lot of that content is classical. iPhoto has the built in ability to export slideshows as a movie than other applications like Lightroom, Powerpoint, Photoshop, and others. Lightroom is also rather key too though as the backgrounds and text effects for the titles and everything were done in there.
On Windows, it’s a whole different story – you can do the Lightroom thing, but then you have to go out and buy a slideshow program to accomplish this for you. While there are many options, and at varying levels of price entry, the ones that I’ve used that are good are Proshow Gold and Camtasia, from Photodex and Techsmith respectively. The former prices out at $80 while the latter runs for a pricey $299 but allows you to also do screen captures, and lots of other stuff. Either way, shelling out additional money to do something that is native on the Mac gives just another reason to consider the bundled functionality that Apple brings to the table with it’s computer lines. (And this is coming from someone who has worked in Windows almost exclusively for the better part of ten years… as I tell people these days though, I work in Windows and play on my Mac!)
Finally, as we head into the weekend, there’s a couple fellow photographer/blogger types that are hosting contests and seminars in the upcoming weeks and months. So, if you’re interested in improving your craft, there’s no better way than to either participate in a seminar and learn something new, or submit to a juried contest…and that’s just what Rob Jones of Towner Jones Photography is doing and Scott Eccleston, of Weekly Photo Tips! Rob is hosting an impressive summer photo contest, and Scott is runing a Maine Photography Workshop that is sure to ignite the creative energies. Act soon on Scott’s as registration is almost over! Make sure you take these guys into consideration when planning out your summer activities!
That’s it for this week – I am off Monday for the holiday, so there may not be a blog post then. Next week is the last week for the Lightroom giveaway contest though, so be sure you are getting your entries in to the Flickr page to win your own free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – a $300 value! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here on either Monday or Tuesday!
Say Cheese?
Ever wonder why we’ve heard photographers say that when taking your picture? Think about what happens when you do – your facial features open up, your mouth opens slightly, and you get a little upward curvature in the corners of your lips. (Unless of course you concentrate on specifically not doing that.) Whoever thought this up eons ago was well ahead of the curve, because knowing how to take good portraiture encompasses entire volumes of books on the subject.
Volumes exist on what lenses to use, how to light, depth of fieldand much much more, but perhaps the most valuable information on how to take great portraits comes not just from technical awareness, but from personal interactions, and how to get people to act natural yet emotive and to let that come through in your work. While no blog post could entirely exhaust the subject, here are ten quick tips on taking better portraits:
- Establish a connection – portraiture is about connecting with someone through the image. If you don’t connect with them through the camera, then there will be no connection in the print. Make sure you connect with your subjects in some way. Get to know about them, because that knowledge can transform your vision into really beautiful works of art.
- Relax the subject – Connecting with your subject means they feel comfortable around you – now the key is to get them to feel comfortable in front of the camera. Many times this is much easier said than done, but when you do get them to relax, the poses will come more fluidly, and you’ll get better results. One way I do this is to just start taking pictures of things around us as we talk and connect. The whole idea of hearing the shutter can be scary to some people, so by hearing it almost to excess and know it’s not on them can mitigate the “scary” factor.
- Choose a background – if you are in a studio environment, this is fairly easy, but if you are on location, keep your eyes out for backgrounds that provide contrast to the subject. Are they wearing light clothes? Look for a dark background. What about props to give a little more meaning. Are they sports fans? Have them hold a football, or stand by a basketball hoop. Backgrounds can help give more definition to your subject.
- Have a purpose – try to think of reasons why you are taking the picture. Is it to record an event, or is it for a model? What about a head shot for a business executive? If you think of why you are taking the picture in the first place, that can help give you ideas for how to compose it. For the event, it’s about the moment, while the portrait it’s about just the person, so give some thought to how to enhance their best qualities and minimize flaws.
- Create separation – this is crucial to giving definition to your subject while minimizing distractions. In the on-location areas, look out for things like power lines, nearby light sources and other objects that may detract from the subject. Here it also helps to keep a wider aperture so that any distractions can be effectively blurred out of focus to minimize their impact.
- All about the angles – Some people have great profiles. Striking features can be accented from certain angles and can give greater impact and meaning. Shooting from below can suggest power and strength (for the business executive), while shooting from above can minimize a body style that is more robust. Even profile shots can be stunning if done right (hint: try shadows there).
- Lights, lights, lights – photography is all about painting with light, so portraiture is no exception. Whether it be modifying existing light with reflectors, diffusers and shoot throughs, or creating your own light with strobes and flashes positioned off to the side or from above, lighting can create a wide variety of moods and bring images to life, especially in portraiture!
- Watch the eyes – for any subject, whether human or animals, we like to have the eyes in focus. It’s just the nature of people to look at the eyes in a subject, so make sure the eyes of yours are tack sharp. Seeing a persons eyes have often been said to be a mirror to their soul. You can get playful eyes, soulful eyes, sad eyes, sparkling eyes, weepy eyes, tear-stained eyes, angry eyes, hungry eyes, passionate eyes… (you get the eye-dea!)
- Clean that skin tone – this means make sure that you are keeping the tones in check. If the skin is too orange or too blue, add or remove some flash or ambient light. Here the key is in white balancing your images. Take along a grey card (even something as small as a 3×5 card can work) and you can set your white balance off that – your skin tones will be spot on if you do – and save you tons of post processing time.
- Less is not always more – let’s all just admit it, it’s a digital world. Those pictures are really just data packets and with data being as cheap as it is, we can afford to take more shots. This can help with blinkers, and if you want to try several poses or wardrobe changes, or lighting changes, or location changes, or group changes (think weddings). or weather changes (think sunlight versus rain, versus cloudy), or….I think the gist is clear again here.
So, there’s ten nuggets. I tried to be brief yet have some detail, but you can never have enough time or space to really cover something with so much to talk about in a short blog post. With that in mind, what about your thoughts on portraiture? Add to the pool! Got any ideas, DIY tricks or nuggets that work for you? Share them in the comments or via email.
Before signing out for the day, I’d like to give some special thanks to a few people. First to Derrick Story for the helpful link from his blog post today about the tethered shooting write-up. It’s always nice to get what I like to call “a nod from the Gods”, but not only did he write a post about my write-up, he also submitted it to the Imaging Insider, who subsequently included the write up on their site. Second up, I’d also like to throw some NAPP-Love back to Karen from “Pursuing Photoshop” (a.k.a. Mitzs in the blogosphere, also a member of NAPP) for her link back to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom contest currently running here on the blog – thanks Mitzs!
Oh yeah, and finally, don’t forget the Photoshop Lightroom contest I announced in last week’s podcast – it’s running over in a thread on Flickr, and the images are starting to come in. Some really nice ones so far, but there’s plenty of time left in May to enter! Good luck to everyone! Well, enough content for one day, so happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.
How do you like to sound?
In preparation for the next podcast, due in no small part to a technical difficulty with Garage Band, I’ve set up a dedicated computer and recording space (call it my dedicated recording studio) and the audio quality is off the charts better than anything I’ve done before. Ironically, the new topic for this weeks podcast is also about sound – the sound of shutters and how they can impact the feel of the camera, and how they can effect a moment is significant enough to warrant consideration. Make sure you tune in for this one from the good folks over at Personal Life Media to get all the news, info, and latest from Learning Digital Photography!
Here’s the rest of the show notes:
Here’s the links from news items I talked about:
- Pinhole Camera Day
- Mamiya 33 MP DL33 News
- TipSquirrel
- Wordle
- Terry Reinert
- Christian Science Monitor Article on starting a photography business
- Get the free 0.6 X Wide Angle with Macro conversion lens when you buy a Lensbaby Composer
Listener Questions
- How do you fix the Canon 99 Error?
- What does the term “sync speed” mean?
- What does kerning refer to in typography?
Listen in to the podcast over at Personal Life Media for the answers and full details on all the show segments. In the meantime, what does your shutter sound like? It doesn’t even have to be a Canon camera, listen to your camera whether it’s Canon Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Pentax, Panasonic, Leica, Hasselblad, etc! Find out why in the podcast up now over at Personal Life Media! Thanks for stopping by the blog, and for all your kind words during the flu bug bout. Enjoy the podcast, then go out and do y’all some shootin’! See you back here tomorrow!
Tuesday Tricks
- Orange
Jason Moore has his bi-monthly Photographic Compostion posted today, so be sure to stop over there and see the others (I am sure they were more creative than the one I came up with at the last minute yesterday…)
Rather than record a tip or trick for this Tuesday, I thought I’d share a few ideas and suggestions I’ve picked up from various magazines, forums, and photo communities for managing and handling your gear in the field. These things have become almost second nature to me now and I can’t tell you how helpful these tips and tricks have become in helping me keep everything organized. So without further ado, here’s my Tuesday tricks:
- Pack a large plastic ziploc or other sealable bag in with your camera gear. When it’s windy or there’s lots of dust around, you can change your lenses from inside these bags to minimize dust. Additionally, it serves as an additional layer of protection should mother nature decide to dump a deluge of water on you with little warning. (I keep several sandwich bags in my pack for protecting things like CF cards, wide angle lenses, TC’s and other items.
- If you must change lenses in the field, keep the body of the camera pointed down so as to prevent dust from falling into the opening (dust won’t wall up…).
- Keep a notepad and pen in your pack, in case you find a location that you want to remember, meet someone and want an email or phone number, or to get an address to send prints or perhaps a resume to! On the same note, having some business cards and model releases handy for handing out and in case you have a willing model…
- Turn your CF cards around backwards when full, so you always know which ones are used versus unused.
- Buy a car converter for AC to DC. This way you can charge your batteries while en route to a shoot. They’re only like $20 at Wal-Mart or Radio Shack and can add a certain peace of mind that you are going into your shoot with as much of a charge on your portables as you can get. (Just make sure you add the battery chargers to your packing list…)
- Speaking of packing lists – make one! This can help ensure you leave with everything you brought to a shoot. I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s been a while, so bears mentioning again.
- Pack a micro fiber cloth for wiping off lenses in a pinch. (Better a microfiber cloth than your shirt!) These can be begged off any eyeglasses store (try Wal-Mart, they are pretty liberal with handing these things out..)
- Need a better way to store your gear at home? Try shoe boxes. You can get them for a buck a piece from a dolalr store – makes a great way to compartmentalize short lenses from long lenses, accessories, flash equipment, battery chargers, CD media, gray cards, lens cloths, etc. A few labels from a Dymo label maker and everything is neat, and easy to find in your bedroom closet!
- Dress in layers – weather can change, especially if you are shooting at sunrise or sunet. It can change from cool to warm or warm to cool very quickly and having a layer to take off (or put on) can extend your shoot time before you start getting uncomfortably warm (or cold).
- Take a bottle of water and a granola bar in your pack! You’d be surprised how quickly you can dehydrate and how hungry you can get while shooting. I’ve been on shoots where there is so much creativity and so many shooting opportunities, I can often forget to eat or drink. When things finally end you can be very hungry and or dehydrated where even a bottle of water or a granola bar (or both) can give you the needed boost until you can get to Starbucks or the house for more healthy refreshments!
So, that’s my ten tips/tricks for the day. Got any of your own to share? Sound off in the comments – I’d love to hear what others have to say about shooting preparations. In the meantime, happy shooting, watch those apertures and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for the Week 13 episode of “What’s This?”
Eureka! Tutorial Tuesdays Triumphant Return!
For those that have been visiting the blog, you know that Podpress, my plugin of choice for putting out podcasts has been broken for some time as the developer has not released an update that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.6 Well, since it has been several months now, I am officially parting ways with it as my method for publishing.
Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger. So, in the interests of getting the content posted to iTunes and to those feeds that had not been updated from web references, I am going to spend the next few days providing some video content updates. The expanding ease of the .mov format not only in this interface, but also for portability purposes also seems to suggest that I am going to stick to that format exclusively for the foreseeable future.
For those that had been coming to the blog for their content, you will already have seen this video, but for those who have been waiting on the feed for new multimedia, this will be new material. Today, I am re-publishing the tutorial on reducing noise in your images. Enjoy! For the rest of you, see if you can tell the differences between some clouds shot with and without a circular polarizer. Share your thoughts in the comments on which one is with and which is without.
Image A:
Image B:
