Tips Archives - Page 2 of 21

Brand New Camera? Take a hike

Thousands of people around the world are beginning to understand that getting a new camera does nothing to make their pictures any better. Many are being struck with the realization that even with a brand new camera they’re still stuck with the same old bad pictures.

It’s really not all that hard to understand. The number of features and selection options on new cameras is bewildering. Over the holidays my mom asked me to help get her Canon point-and-shoot menu settings back to normal and it took me 10 minutes of fiddling with the controls and scrolling the menus to figure it out.

Reading the cameras manual, which I highly recommend, will tell you where the menu options can be located and what they do, but that won’t help you take better pictures because it doesn’t tell you when to apply the settings. It won’t help you figure out when it’s okay to shoot with the camera on auto and when to seize control and how much control to exercise in a given shooting situation.

Monkey takes photos on camera — A monkey takes self-portraits

Anyone can point a camera and push the button, even a monkey can get decent photos. Owning a camera doesn’t make you a photographer any more than owning car makes you Mario Andretti. It take practice and a lot of bad photos in order to learn the ropes. The late French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism once said “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst”.

Step one toward being a better photographer will be learning the basics about composition and framing. Then brush up on exposure and color.

One of the best thing you’ll be able to do to improve your photography is as simple as taking a walk. Find a local photowalk in your area and sign up. Photowalks are sponsored by photo clubs, local professionals, professional photography associations, art schools, nature clubs and photography institutes. Most of them are free, a few charge a small fee depending on the venue. There are also guided photowalks where you pay a local photographer to take you around.

Don’t scoff at shelling out a few bucks to take you on a guided photowalk. If you’re in an unfamiliar area, they can be a great resource for finding the most photogenic spots.

It’s really not anything fancy, just a group of photographers getting together and walking around taking pictures. Really, that’s it. Most are fairly loosely organized. You might start out as a big group, but most end up with photographers filtering back in small groups or on their own. Some walks have models that volunteer in return for portfolio images, most are just wandering around taking pictures on a lazy afternoon.

And yet you’ll find many local professionals go on photowalks themselves. I use them to network with local pros and advanced hobbyists on a regular basis. The last one I went on had about 20 shooters, maybe half of them pros, I came back with cards full of shots and a handful of business cards. I’ve worked with some of the pros I met there on other projects.

So when it comes to learning how to get the most from your new camera, if someone tells you to take a hike, that’s probably good advice.

Tips For Shooting Dramatic Silhouettes

silhouette example — Exposing for the daylight beyond the door got the look I wanted in this photo

A silhouette can add dramatic flair to an otherwise average shot by providing a bold subject and sharp contrast. A silhouette turns a solid thing with depth into a flat, two-dimensional cut out that brings back memories of shadow puppets.

Modern digital cameras make shooting silhouettes a lot easier and what the camera can’t do for you, you can always touch up in post processing.

Find The Scene

A silhouette is basically an underexposed subject framed by a brightly lit background. Look for situations where you’re shooting from the shadows toward the light, like the photo of the man and his son sweeping out the garage.

Another trick with silhouettes is to get low and in close to the subject and shoot at a slight upward angle. Shooting slightly upward lengthens the lines and makes the contrast bolder.

Any bright background will do. Daylight, stained glass windows, bright lights, or a sunset sky are all great backdrops for a silhouette.

Turn Off The Flash

5171111438_7fc4fb0b6f_b — Munich in Silhouette by Werner Kunz from flickr

This is one time you want to be in a shooting mode that gives you at least some manual control and in auto mode your camera is going to try and fire that fill flash. I’d shoot the scene both ways: One as a silhouette, the other with the fill flash, and see which one you like better.

Expose For The Background

There are a number of ways to do this. Many cameras will let you point the camera at the brighter part of the picture, then press the shutter release button half-way down to lock the exposure and reframe the picture before pushing the button all the way down. Other cameras, like the Nikon D5100, have a special exposure lock button.

There’s also the old fashioned way of using your camera to meter the brighter part of the photo, then dial the exposure in manually.

bird silhouette — A fairly average looking shot is improved greatly by taking the detail out of the foreground subject

Focus For The Subject

The only problem for some cameras when it comes to using the half-way press on the shutter button is that it also freezes the auto-focus. Not so much with modern cameras, like my Canon 7D, which will adjust the focus even if the exposure is locked. Just be aware you may have to tweak the focus manually on some older cameras.

Clean It Up In Post

silhouette Beach — photo by Brenden Sherratt, used with permission

If the exposure isn’t perfect in the camera don’t sweat it, a silhouette is fairly easy to clean up in post. Since you’re not trying to preserve any detail in the subject, you can usually make the adjustments with just the brightness/contrast tools, which almost every image program on the planet offers.

Worst case you have to use the selection tools to outline the silhouette and selectively drop the brightness.

Silhouettes are a good exercise to get familiar with your camera’s exposure compensation features and you’ll end up with some great shots as well. Happy shooting.

Shooting In Direct Sun

sun flare — The sun shoots a giant X class solar flare at us - by NASA

It would be great if we could schedule every shoot for golden hour or other times when the lighting is most dramatic, but the demands of scheduling don’t always cooperate with our desires as photographers. Sometimes you have to go when conditions are less than optimum and shoot with the helium ion key located 96 million miles from the subject and filtered through a 100 mile water vapor diffuser just where it is in all it’s harsh, sharp-shadowed glory.

No need to be distressed, there are always alternatives if you’re prepared.

Shade

It seems obvious but is often overlooked. The best shade for photography shades the subject while still leaving most of the background in daylight. Then you can use a fill flash to evenly bring out the subject, yielding the best of both worlds.

A beach umbrella also works well as portable shade when there are no natural sources.

The idea is to get your subject to lose the sunglasses so they don’t look like a mob boss and not have to squint.

Scrims

Also called “rags” if you’ve been in the business a long time. The film business is famous for using rows of giant scrims, sometimes called “scrim the planet”.

For photography the standard sizes are 6×6, 8×8 and 12×12 and come in a wide variety of colors, weaves and patterns. Scrim cloth can act as a diffuser or you can get different material and use them like a giant reflector. Most often a scrim will be positioned overhead to diffuse sunlight. Scrims can cover the entire scene, or just part of it and there are even gradient scrims available.

One word of caution when using scrims outside, particularly at the beach, a 12×12 piece of fabric on frame is also called a “sail” in nautical terms and that’s just what you’ll be doing after a gust of wind. Clamp them down tight and weigh the c-stands with sandbags or free weights, even if it’s calm.

Neutral Density Filters

This is one of those things anyone using their DSLRs for video will have in the bag but not every photographer carries.

For photography, I find an ND 0.9 is generally enough to bring full daylight into line. Again, you might need a fill flash and you also might want to add a warm up filter or set your camera’s white balance to “cloudy”.

I use an HD ND filter that has warm up built into it. I know just where I must have dropped it a couple weeks ago, so if you’re walking on the beach in South Florida and find a 72mm ND filter with a warm tint, I’d appreciate getting it back. Thanks!

Organize Your Photos In 2012

get organized — Get your images organized with a backup drive and a copy of Lightroom

It’s the beginning of a new year and while you’re promising to lose weight or stop smoking, add another item to your agenda: Organize your photos and update your backups!

While flooding in Thailand has driven up the price of hard drives, they’re still incredibly cheap by historical standards. So don’t use drive prices as an excuse not to keep your backups up to date.

You can still get storage like this Buffalo 1 TB USB storage device for less than $150. For that price you can get two of them and keep one off site somewhere. You don’t even have to plug these into the wall, they draw their power from the USB port. It doesn’t get much easier or less technical than that.

A terabyte is a huge amount of storage. The Fantom Drives G-Force MegaDisk has multiple interface options that include USB and firewire for $129.00.

Online storage is also a possibility but I wouldn’t trust the cloud as my only solution. I use Photobucket albums for my proof size customer images, but never for production images.

While online storage is a better deal than it used to be, there are still too many potential pitfalls in end user agreements. TwitPics users are sometimes surprised to discover that their images can be sold to media companies and used in ways they may have never imagined.

The legal question of image ownership if one of the big photo sharing sites ends up in bankruptcy court also has yet to be determined. If you’re a professional, that’s worth thinking about.

The online storage I am more comfortable using are the ones that allow you to store your own encrypted containers. That way if the ownership of my files comes into question during bankruptcy or government seizure, it’s no problem as long as I have local backups.

For organizing the local copies of your images it’s hard to beat Lightroom. If you’re lucky enough to be a savvy tech user you can get a huge amount of functionality in Digikam. Unlike commercial software, which seems to feel compelled to change direction periodically, Digikam just gets better and better over time.

The only guaranteed way of insuring your photos will still be around 100 years from now is to print them out on either metal plates or paper embedded with metallic inks. But with good backup discipline and regular maintenance, you can at least expect your digital image library to last through your lifetime.

Take Better Pictures Today

Take better holiday photos this year straight out of the box - By Nina from Australia

Many of you will be receiving or have asked for digital cameras for Christmas. Or maybe you got your new camera before the holidays so you could take pictures on the way.

This year I want to help you get better pictures right out of the box. No more blundering around with shots containing massive foreground and family photos that look more like suspect line up from an episode of CSI. This year things are going to be different. Follow these tips for getting great shots from day one with your new camera.

Read The Manual

I realize some of you think manuals are totally retro. This little paper book written by people determined to make you as miserable as they apparently are in their little, unhappy cubicles by making the manual as dry, boring and devoid of joy as humanly possible.

Really, when you break it down, you can read through most camera manuals in about an hour. You don’t have to memorize it, just know where to find things if you want to look something up.

Most digital cameras today have an amazing array of built-in functionality that never gets utilized because owners don’t realize it’s in there.

Get In Close

The biggest rookie mistake with a new camera is inevitably focusing on the subject in the center of the picture and leaving way too much foreground and background.

Get in close and, when you think you’re plenty close enough, take another step in. Get in so close all of your subject can’t fit in the frame.

Warm It Up

Most digital cameras have an automatic white balance setting called “cloudy”. That’s for use on overcast days when lighting is heavy on the blue side. But, as it turns out, even on sunny days your pictures can look a little on the blue side, so don’t be afraid to try the “cloudy” setting, even in bright sun. You may the like warmer colors you get as a result.

Gorilla Pod or UltraPod

On thing you’ll regret later in life as the photographer is not having more pictures of you doing things. Being the family scribe is a great thing, but use one of these clever supports and the self-timer to get in the shots yourself.

Get High On Resolution

Crank your cameras picture resolution up as high as it will go. You’ll thank me later. Photos may seem huge by today’s standards but, in a few years, they may seem laughably tiny. Shoot the biggest photos your camera will take.

There are more tips to come, but these should get you over the most common mistakes people make. Just remember to read that manual!