First, I used Gimp. If you’re not familiar, Gimp is to Photoshop what OpenOffice is to Microsoft Office. Pretty much everything Photoshop does, Gimp copies and incorporates. For free. All of it. Okay, there’s not nearly as much third-party suport for Gimp, and I’m sure there’re loads of things that PS is much more equipped to handle, but if you’re on my level (somewhere right below beginner…not kidding!), then Gimp is magical.

And if you’re wondering what the catch is. There’s no catch. Gimp was originally created for Linux that couldn’t run PS, and since about everything on Linux is free, so was Gimp. Eventually they started making it for Mac and PC.

Okay, the rest of this post is going to be split into two section, before and after the photo.

Before.

It’s very important on an image like this that everything lines up and has even light. To line it all up, just use a tripod. But before I began setting up my light, I decided to use an f/8 aperture. This was to keep both Kristins sharp.

Now for the lighting. I just used one flash, bounced into the ceiling via the ole shoe stand. By doing this I converting the ceiling into a huge light source, which provided a bunch of even, soft light on my scene. If i had used a direct light I would have had a bunch of touch-up because the light fall-off on the background would have made it splotchy.

The only other lighting thing I did was to put a 1/4 CTO gel on to warm it up a little. I was completely overpowering the indoor ambient (shooting at f/8), so I didn’t have to worry about matching light temperatures, I just wanted to do as little in post as possible.

After this, I took a few snaps, and I was ready to start merging.

Merging was easy once I figure out how to do it (with the help of a quick call to my brother). If you install Gimp and follow the four instructions below, it should take you about 2 minutes to do this.

1) Open the first image in Gimp (defaults title is “Background”)

2) Open the second image, copy it to the clipboard and “paste as…new layer” (default title is “clipboard”)

3) Add a layer mask “as white (full opacity)” on the clipboard image

4) Select the paintbrush tool on the “clipboard” image and paint over the area where you want the background image to show through.

And that’s it.

Because my exposures were not 100% consistent, I used the smudge tool to blend where my images met (so it didn’t look like a cut-out).

Also, notice in the original images below, the Kristins don’t overlap or touch. That makes the entire merging process very easy.

50/50

The first is by one of my favorite photographers, Bert Stephani. Bert is a Belgian photographer, whom I’ve been following since I started photography, and he’s just now breaking into the I-do-workshops level. And very well, might I add.

A few months ago he started a project called 50/50. For fifty consecutive days he was going to shoot only his 50mm lens. Just like the old days. Okay, I don’t know anything about the old days, but I’ve read. Anyway. Every week or so he’d post a collection of the images from each day. He just posted the final installment; here it is:

If you watch each day, you’ll see some are just regular days and some are really cool days. But the common denominator between them all is that he was able to get great pictures even on his ‘regular’ days, because he had his camera out. The key here is “he had his camera out.”

If you like his work, jump over to his blog and website and checkout the rest!

Running From Camera

My brother recently came across this next project. Basically, Muggezifter, who is from the Netherlands, sets his camera on a tripod with a two-second delay, hits the button, and runs as fast as he can. And he’s been doing this for the last three and a half years. As you can imagine, it’s kind of a predictable blog, but for him it’s about finding a new location to run from the camera. If you’re thinking your project is kind of lame or too weird. It’s not. See Muggezifter. The point is, it’s the project itself that forces your brain into that creative range.

Try it out!

Editors Note: Photo is from the Running from Camera blog by Muggezifter.

Catchlights

If you’re not familiar, catchlights are the little white reflections in the eyes of your subject.  Often you get these from off-camera lighting with softboxes or umbrellas.  They’re good because they add a pleasing, three-dimensional quality to the eyes, the focal point of the image.

In the below image, you can see how I got the nice, square, softboxish catchlights.  We were standing in the entrance to the Howling Wolf which has three openings–the one out of the frame to camera-left is giving us the catchlight.  This set-up also provided a nice fill light and back light, but more of that in the next section.

Backlighting & Fill Lighting

One of my go-to scenarios for shooting outside is to put the Sun behind my subject.  This allows for three things: 1) my subject isn’t blinded by the Sun, 2) I have an even amount of light (ambient) around my subjects face, as opposed to the harsh shaddows the Sun will give, and 3) it creates a rim-light around my subject, separating them from the background.  All three of these are studio-quality techniques typically done with off-camera lighting, but as you can see, with the right circumstances, all you need is the Sun (it was about 10:30 on a clear–and very freezing–January morning).

Fill lighting is designed to lessen the shadow of the key (main) light  NOTE: In the last section, I have no fill light.  Notice how the dark the shadow is. In the above example, our Key was the Sun coming from behind.  The fill came from putting Brandon about four feet away from a huge white-painted building.  This acted as a large, soft reflector from the Sun adding light to right side (camera left).  I exposed for his face and let the rest take care of itself.

Modifying the Ambient

We found these cool, green doors framed with orange brick and though they’d make a good shot.  As soon as Brandon sat down the Sun was straight in his eyes.  Knowing any shadows from this would produce some harsh results, I flipped up one of the lids from the row of trashcans setting beside him.  We got lucky and it was the right height and stayed propped up on it’s own.  Sweet.  The result was a nice, if not a little smelly, gobo (a form of light modifier that breaks up the key light: it goes between).  At this point, I exposed for his face and the rest was history.

the Zen of One-Light

Okay, he wasn’t really zenning out or anything.  I think I just caught him blinking.  Or something.

For this, we were in a small warehouse, about 5000 square feet, with most of the front (camera right) open to the daylight.  As well, there were some holes in the roof that helped keep the dark end from becoming a black hole.  Of the techniques discussed here, this is probably the simplest.  What makes this work is the angle the light is coming from: 45/45. That is 45 degrees from both the horizontal and vertical axis.

Also, the reason why this works with such dark shadows where the same effect in direct sunlight looks harsh is because by the time the light reaches Brandon it’s been bouncing around.  This give it a soft, diffused quality.

Do a project!  Coming tomorrow.

“That depends on what your definition of ‘IS’ is”

Canon’s has coined the term Image Stabilization or IS (Nikon uses Vibration Reduction, VR) for the set of tiny motors built into certain lenses.  These operate on both a vertical and horizontal plane to reduce any motion-blur from shooting while handholding.  Canon claims IS can give you up to three stops, and I’ve found it to be accurate in most cases.  What that means is when you would normally have to shoot 1/80 @ 80mm, you can now shoot 1/20 @ 80mm and still get a clear shot.  I’ve been very pleased with IS, and since I shoot almost exclusively hand-held, I almost always have it turned on.

Now, here’s when you don’t need IS:

When you’re tripoding.  The tiny motors actually add vibrations when on a tripod, so if you find yourself tripoding a lot, you might not need IS in your lens.

When shooting motion in low-light.  For example: people at a party at night or indoors.  You might be able to clearly shoot still life at 1/20, but people moving around are going to blur in your shot.

Megapixels: when and how you use them.

Even though I talked about megapixels in my last post, I don’t like to spend much time on them.  It’s relatively simple, but there seems to always be a lot of hype around them. A lot of megapixels come in handy when producing commercial images that are going to be printed high-rez or delivered to a client.  You can do this with smaller sensor sizes, but typically the client will require something larger (a 35mm or greater).

A high megapixel count can also help in a practical sense, if not for a commercial client.  By having a large sensor, you can hide some of the noise that comes with using a high ISO.  It’s more of an illusion that anything else.  For instance, if you have a 10 megapixel image and a 21 megapixel image, both with taken with a high ISO, and you look at them on the same resolution monitor, the larger megapixel image is going to look clearer for the simple fact that there are more ‘dots’ in the same amount of space.  More dots equal more detail.

This is all true, but before you sell your first born to upgrade, here’s what you give up.  Larger images take up more space in both your camera’s internal memory and your computers hard drive.  A 21 megapixel RAW file can be up to 25 mb big and once you begin to edit it in post-production it can grow exponentially. And that’s not before you buy those huge memory cards–at this rate a 2GB memory card holds the equivalent of about two 36 exposure rolls of film.

This might not seem like a big deal compared to the value of having the extra megapixels, and if that’s the case, they might be for you.  On the other hand, it’s important to know the trade-offs, because this is what will help you fulfill your goal: photography.

The power of Prime

When I first became interested in photography, I was aware of prime lenses, but I couldn’t see any benefit.  They didn’t zoom (what if I miss the shot because of my perspective?); how do I know which focal lengths to invest in (seems my bag would be full of different primes, and I’d spend all my time switching between lenses)?  All that hassel, why not just use a zoom?

Well, let’s start with what a zoom doesn’t have:

An overall sharp image.  Many zooms have a sweet spot, but one of the principle arguments for zooms is their versatility.  If this is the case, their versatility can be reduced to their sweet spot, which might not cover much more than a prime!

A huge aperture.  A high-quality, fast zoom will have a maximum aperture of f/2.8.  But it’s not uncommon to get a prime, one or even two stops faster.  Primes always have the ability, because of their construction, to be faster.  And faster ultimately means sharper.

Now, to address my original misgivings:  ”I’ll miss the shot.”  Presumably because the composition won’t be right.  But one of the first things I learned when I started shooting with primes is that instead of missing ‘the shot’ I began getting the shot.  That is, using a prime forced me into a creative region that a zoom would have never allowed.  I had to learn (which happens quickly, by the way) to compose my shot with the focal length that I have.  The result was quite encouraging, and I wholeheartedly recommend it!

Like the above, my misgivings were again disproved on the point of knowing which prime to have when.  Originally I thought I would need to have ten different prime lenses in my bag to cover what my one zoom did.  Instead, I learned that you do everything you need to do with just two or three.  I even work with one sometimes.  In my case, when I’m shooting only primes, I carry a 35mm and a 50mm because I prefer wide-angle over telephoto.

In closing, think of primes as the next step of your photographic education.  Like a graduate degree that forces you to apply what you’ve learned in a generative mannor, primes help better define what kind of photographer you are.  If you think I’m stretching it, try a prime exclusively for a while.  As I said before, I can’t recommend them enough!

Megapixels

They’re not really that important.  There’s an industry term for this; it’s called hype.  Anything bigger than 6MP will give you a good quality print out.  My advice here it to not let this not be a selling point.  This might lead into the question of why cameras with a crazy amount of megapixels, some in excess of a hundred, exist.  There are reasons, but they will cost you more than your car to find out.  I chose to keep my car, so I can’t tell you.

I will have another post coming soon which is a continuation of this aimed at intermediate photographers who have been shooting for a while.  In this coming post I’ll discuss some advantages and disadvantages of megapixel count.

Your Photography Style (or Vision)

This is the only part of this review that is not technical, and, as a result, not something I can directly advise you on; however, I mention it because knowing your style (or vision, that is, end objective) will better help you understand what camera best fits your needs.  First you need to define what you want to shoot: people (portraits/events), nature (flora/fauna), or landscapes. There are others, but these cover the basics.  Next, you’ll need to explore how you want to shoot: hobbyist (just for fun, whenever), journalistic, documentary, commercial (ie: a product), or editorial (think: magazine).

If all this is starting to make your head hurt, that means you’re doing it right.  But if you’re not ready to tediously define all these aspects of your photographic soul, that’s okay, too.  Just take pictures of what you like.  That’s usually a big indication of where you fit in.

By finding your vision, you’ll know what kind of gear you need.  For instance, if you shoot documentary-street photography, you won’t need to buy one of those $20,000 rigs that a sports shooter uses.  Not only will it be cumbersome and leave you with one less kidney, but anyone you try to photograph will see you coming a mile away.  Maybe two.  I’m not sure.

To SLR or not to SLR

SLR or DSLR stands for [Digital] Single Lens Reflex.  In other words, that’s the one where the lens comes off.  Here’s how an SLR (or DSLR) works.  You look through the viewfinder (or in LiveView mode, the LCD on the back) which, with the help of a mirror, shows you exactly what the lens sees.  When you take a picture, the mirror flies up, the shutters opens and closes, and the mirror falls back down, all in a fraction of a second.  The mirror is what gives an SLR it’s cool sound.  This is what originally made me want to become a photographer.

Not kidding.

So why do you need an SLR when a point-and-shoot can fit in your pocket and cost, at most, half of an entry level SLR?  In short, because they’re fast and sharp.

In 2 seconds flat you can power-on, focus, and take 3 pictures with an entry level SLR where a point-and-shoot would still be showing you the welcome screen while it automatically starts extending and retracting it’s built-in lens (why do they always do that?).  That might seem like overkill, but if you have kids or like to photograph nature or sports, it’s just about a necessity to catch those perfect moments.

The “fast” I mentioned comes into play with the lens.  If you look look at the end of the lens on your point-and-shoot or SLR, you’ll see something that looks like 1:3.5-5.6 or 1:2.8.  Without getting technical the closer the second number in the ratio is to 1, the more light the lens lets in.  The more light mean the faster shutter speed.  Hence, faster.

But why does the lens need to come off?  The reason for this is because there are many different options when it comes to lenses: telephoto (narrow, close field of view; often isolates your subject from the background and surrounding elements), wide-angle (alternate to a telephoto; shows a very wide field of view), zoom (able to change the focal length), and prime (fixed focal length: the type of zoom you operate with your feet.  aka: walking.).  Nature and candid photographers (and often portrait photographers) use telephoto (zoom or prime) lenses.  Journalists tend to use wide-angle lenses to capture many aspects in one picture (good for story-telling).  Zooms are moderately fast, but save you the trouble of having to move to get the shot.  Primes have fixed focal lengths (always the same field of view), and tend to be much faster and sharper than zooms.  If you find yourself taking pictures inside where the light is low but don’t want to use a flash, primes are a good option.  Those huge-mongus lenses you see sports photographers using are also (telephoto) primes.

“Faster” also refers to focusing.  SLRs do it faster.

Price

“You paid what?!”  In the end, you get what you pay for.  But before you pay for what you get, you need to know what you’re really getting.  What.  yeah.  Keep reading.

When shopping for a camera, you’ll get the best deal when you do the 3 following things:

•  Know your style.  A salesman can’t talk you into something you know isn’t for you.  Don’t be afraid to look around–especially in today’s economy, nothing is flying off of anyone’s shelves.

•  Make sure the camera feels comfortable in your hands.  If it doesn’t you probably won’t use it.

•  Taking pictures is about making memories.  If you feel offloading an obscene amount of cash makes a difference (you know, where you give yourself the “good investment” speech), there are better charities than camera stores and credit cards that can help you here.

I posted about them a few days ago.

Happy New Years Eve!

That’s me.  And I’m probably not too far off in assuming that’s you, too.  But it’s not the case for everyone.  For many people, it’s just another day of surviving and waiting for tomorrow because it might be better than today.

Recently I worked for Missionary Expediters, a logistics company that specializes in shipping cargo for humanitarian aid organizations.  In doing so I had the great pleasure to meet and work alongside many selfless people.  People who would often work long hours.  Although the paychecks might be small, their reward is in the hearty smiles and eager anticipation of people they serve.

I plan to write more in a later post about the individual agencies and what they do, but in the meantime, here are a few you can check out:

Because of our exchange rate in the US, you can sponsor a child from as little as $35 a month.  If you smoke or routinely pick-up a daily pre-work coffee, that’s like sponsoring two kids a month!  Really, it’s not a lot at all.  I’ve been doing it for almost two years now and am constantly rewarded from the knowledge that this is probably the best $35 I spend each month.  And everyone I’ve talked to who does this tells me the same thing.

This is aimed at those who have a hard time slowing down.  Who often get stuck at 100.  So, stop looking at my blog, eat more food, and come back tomorrow for more pictures!

]]> http://www.ahhhitsmyblog.com/2009/11/26/a-thoughtful-thanksgiving/feed/ 0 http://www.ahhhitsmyblog.com/2009/11/19/look-ma-no-photoshop/ http://www.ahhhitsmyblog.com/2009/11/19/look-ma-no-photoshop/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:42:53 +0000 jOe http://www.ahhhitsmyblog.com/?p=1586
Being the newly handicapped Joe that I am, I’ve not been prone to aimlessly wondering the streets of New Orleans taking pictures as I often am.  Sad times.  But a week or two ago I did a shoot in Jackson Square.  I was playing around with some of my outtakes and decided to show you some before-and-afters: as they come out of my camera and after they’ve been edited.

Quick note on photography-speak, “editing” can refer to two things.   The first is the process of rating all of your images as either keepers, throw-aways, runner-ups, maybes, and so on.  The second is where you actually change details of an individual file–like what I talked about in my November 11th post about taking pictures.  The latter is also sometimes referred to as post-production.

Here are some of the outtakes I mentioned above.  The after and before, the what I was thinking when I took it, and the what I was thinking when I edited it:

I liked the statue, and wanted to make it my subject, although, it alone was kind of boring.  Knowing the Sun was going to set in an hour or so, I walked around it until I found an angle where the Sun could shine through the trees and compositionally offset the statue.  The main edits I did on this were to increase the contrast (making the blacks blacker), added a tiny bit of warm by adjusting the white balance, and finished with the usual sharpening.

Here I was trying to get a shot of the park worker’s legs propped up on his desk inside his castle-hut, while the shadows quickly enveloped the rest of his body.  You can kind of see that in the original image, but the exposure inside the hut was just too dark.  So, I applied Monochrome Mixer (which is a more powerful version of removing all saturation, the normal way you change to black and white), increased the contrast, brought the “light” curve of Levels inward to brighten up the lighter hues only, and sharpened it all up.  Plus straighten & crop, forgot to mention that.

Because the image was slightly out of focus, I went heavier on contrast than I sometimes do to give it a film-feel.

P.S.  The title of this post refers to Photoshop, but I don’t actually use it on my images.  I do all of my editing in Aperture.

However, if this doesn’t leave you satisfied and you’re convinced there are much easier ways, there are tonnes of self-help and instant-success books available hungrily waiting to swallow your money.  They keep many of them at this little place I like to call AMAZON.  It’s really quite amazing, too.

Now on to the magic.

The first is light.  All photography is principally a collection of light on your (digital) camera’s sensor. But realistically, life doesn’t give us great light whenever we need it.  At least not great light our camera can comprehend.  That’s called dynamic range.  A much debated topic which hosts a great number of pointless forums.

So, back in the earlier days of photography, Ancil Adams or somebody like that invented the FLASH to help us with our lighting needs.

Long story short, if you’re using an “on camera” or “on axis” flash your pictures will always look like you’re using an on camera flash.  And that’s instantly separating your pictures from those of the pros (unless by “pro” you mean the DMV workers, because there is a distinctive similarity between brash on camera flash and driver’s license photos.  You know what I’m talking about).  But granted, sometimes, you just have to use it to get the shot.  After all, it’s better than trying to remember what the scene looked like, right?

So, what does one do if they don’t want to use their on camera flash?  Step one: go into your camera’s menu and turn it off.  Really.  If you don’t, it’ll just keep coming back every time.  Trust me, I know this stuff.  Step two: locate your camera’s ISO and get used to setting it manually.  The ISO is the sensors sensitivity.  Way to sound redundant, huh?  When you find your ISO, you’ll probably have choices between 100 – 1600, or somewhere around there.  The higher the number, the better your camera will work in low-light scenarios.  But, it’s not all gain.  The higher ISOs create what’s called “noise” or “grain” in your picture.  It’s a trade-off, so, try it out.  Take a few pictures like this and figure out how much ISO you find acceptable and when you need to bring back the ole’ flash.

Next up is Composition. Whether you look through a viewfinder or at the LCD on the back of your camera, there is a box that represents the borders of your picture.  Composition is all about what to put where in that box.  Painters and Photographers alike utilize the Rule of Thirds.  Without going into much detail, there are two evenly spaced vertical lines and two perpendicular evenly spaced horizontal lines.  That divides the picture into thirds up-and-down and thirds side-to-side.  Nine squares total.  Still with me?

Take a look at this picture of the city at night.  Notice how the horizon is on the top horizontal axis line.

Below is Jeff.  He is on the left vertical axis line.  Notice how I purposely did not center him.  And to give even “weight” to the picture, he is being balanced by the line of shops on his left (our right), which occupy the right vertical axis line.

Lastly, I’ve done a combination of the above two by putting my horizon on the bottom axis and my two subjects on each vertical axis.

After the light’s right and the subjects are framed, you push the button to take the picture.  Now, if you’re like most people, you’ll probably “store” it on your camera’s memory card, or perhaps you’re a member of the elite group that transfer them all to your computer and organize them in well named folders (and kudos to you, by the way!).  That’s great, but there’s a little bit more to do.  Remember that CD that came with your camera?  If it was lucky enough to not be thrown out it’s probably still in your camera’s box, perfectly untouched.  It will usually include some basic, image editing software (also called post-production).  However, if it doesn’t or if you ‘lost’ it, do not fear.  There is plenty of free options online, such as Picasa, to name one.  Editing software will allow you to crop (to change your composition after the picture has been taken), straighten, enhance colors, increase contrast, change to black and white, and much more creative, fun things.  If you don’t quite see the relevance at first, that’s okay.  Play around with it and in a few short seconds, you’ll see exactly what I mean.

It’s important to remember that with all rules, you need to learn and understand them before you can break them.  In the end, they’re really only rules of thumb.  But who wants to live with out thumbs?!  Am I right or am I right.