Best Photo Repair

Portrait Photography Tips continued . . .

2018-03-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

Simple garments with clean lines photograph best.

Turtle necks and V necks are flattering provided that neither is too exaggerated in style. Avoid wide or particularly deep V neck garments as well as bulky cowl neck sweaters that completely hide the neck.

Long sleeves are best for teens and adults, as bare limbs tend to call attention to themselves and overpower the face.

Women photographed in full length should usually wear longer skirts, pants, or dark stockings to keep the viewer's eye from being directed toward the lower extremities and away from the face.

If feet are to show in the portrait, make certain shoes and stockings are in keeping with the visual intent of the portrait. Don't be afraid to kick off those shoes and go bare footed.

Men should ususally wait at least a week after a haircut before being photographed. Women should be photographed whenever they are happiest with their hair in relation to the time it is styled.

About Posing

Photography is actually painting and creating with light, and the position and quality of that light is the difference between an uninteresting shot and great, memorable shot.

Additionally, the proper use of the basics, equipment, props, environment, and composition either adds or takes away from a photograph.

One of the first goals of any photographer should be to get the subjects as relaxed as possible, both before and during shooting session or snapshot, especially children. Even though your subjects are posed, the pose should never look obvious in the final portrait.

Expressions must be spontaneous even though they are in response to a grand design. A trained actor can certainly simulate genuine expressions of emotion, but the untrained subject cannot, therefore you must make it happen, and be ready to catch those fleeting rmoments. A good photographer knows how to create a situation and atmosphere that will evoke natural expressions.

Perhaps the most common and successful method is to craft what playwrights call business. When actors are on stage but have little or no dialogue, they must do something. If they were to stand like a statue, they would ruin the illusion of reality on which the play depends. So the scriptwriter creates some small actions or business to keep the actors occupied. This same illusion of reality in a still photograph can be maintained in the same way. By giving your subject something to do, it gives the photograph meaning, a reason for being, and it tells a story.

On the stage, business is created with the aid of stage props. In photography, the same concept holds true. Give your subject something to work with, and you will likely create a memorable photograph or portrait. A prop may be anything from a stuffed animal for a child or single sunflower for a young lady, providing it is in keeping with the character of your subject. An athlete senior would certainly look more natural holding a football than a bouquet of roses. Even when photographing extreme close-ups, it is good practice to provide the subject with something to engross their attention. Whether the prop shows or not, it serves the purpose of creating a natural and easy expressions.

Additional Posing Tips

Setup your camera and lighting before you introduce your subjects.

Focus on your subjects eyes as they are the reflection of true emotion, not to mention windows to the soul.

Take command of every situation. Your subjects will surely be looking to you for instruction.

Look for natural and easy expressions.

If you position your subjects at a 45 degree angle, they'll thank you for it later, as this angle is the most flattering and slimming. Weight on the front foot will create a more slimming appearance as well.

Senior Portraits

What do you wear?

Well, variety is certainly the key. When choosing your clothing, be aware that the most important thing is that you feel comfortable in the outfits. Most seniors select some casual clothing for a more laid back look, as well as some dressy outfits for the more formal look. Usually sleeveless or very short sleeves are not recommended, however it doesn't hurt to toss in a few fun shots of seniors in tank tops or t shirt.

Guys

For a classic look that is sure to satisfy your parents, bring a well fitting suit or sport coat and tie. Medium to dark sweaters also photograph well. For casual and outdoor photos, comfort is the main rule, so consider jeans, long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, sweaters, and perhaps some shorts and sweatshirts.

Gals

Select the colors and outfits you feel and look best in. Dresses or formal, sweaters and lace for a more traditional look. Casual clothes include bright colors, skirts, jeans, a long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirts, cut off jeans, shorts. All White is good for the high key effect. Blonde or light hair looks great with white clothing and white backgrounds.

Shoes

More often than not shoes will not show, but make sure that you have a couple of pair to go with some outfits just in case. Many prefer barefoot poses.

Hair

Try to have your haircut or perm at least one week before the session to let it fill in a little. Don't try a radically different haircut style and don't cut your hair until after you have seen your previews.

Additional Senior Tips

Props are great, so consider using your favorite hat, musical instrument, pet, sunglasses, letter jacket, car, uniform, sports activity like ski out fits and ski's, or ANYTHING else you feel will enhance the portrait and reveal your character.

Express yourself. The point of a senior photo is to capture your youth and personality, so think fun, and grand. Take a boyfriend or girlfriend to join you in some pictures! Have a horse? Use it.

Do not let skin blemishes dampen your spirits. Photos are easier now than ever to retouch.

General Tips and Suggestions

Basic Positioning Tips

Position torso and head facing different directions.

Masculine pose, try tilting the top of the head toward far shoulder.

Feminine pose, tilt the top of head toward near shoulder.

Please Note, Women can easily pull off either of these two poses.

Shooting Groups of People

As a rule, the image should express a tone that all in the group are unified,
either touching each other physically, or visually overlapping.

Clothing Choices

Everyone should have the same toned clothing, either warm or cold.

Brightly clothed individuals should be placed in the middle.

Posing Tips

Make men a little taller than women.

Stagger head heights.

Pose groups one person at a time, in relation to each other.

Pose men to the right of the frame, women to the left.

Open Poses are defined as images with physical or visual space between
people.

Closed Poses are defined as images where individuals overlap each other,
with no visual space between them. Note, Mixing Open and Closed Poses
works well for large groups.

Posing Couples

Front to Front Pose, fronts of both people facing, or touching the other.

Fronts facing forward, fronts of both people facing forward, possibly at an
angle, one front to the other's back.

Avoid space between heads to create intimacy.

Use lots of negative space around couples in the frame.

Suggestions for Lighting

Match the mood of image to lighting.

High key often relates a happy emotion

Low key often relates a dramatic emotion

Kevin Winkler

Photography Tips for Beginners

2018-02-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

As a new photographer, these are some of the ideas that have helped get me going.

1. Don’t go crazy buying the most expensive equipment right away.

It’s possible to get very nice photos with an inexpensive point and shoot. See these examples on Flickr. The more photos you take, the more you’ll know about what kind of camera to get when it’s time to upgrade.

2. Consider a tripod.

On the other hand, an inexpensive tripod is worth getting, especially if you have shaky hands like mine. When I got a tripod, my satisfaction with my shots skyrocketed. For even more stability, use your camera’s timer function with a tripod (read our introduction to tripods).

3. Keep your camera with you all the time.

Photo ops often come when you least expect it. If you can keep your equipment relatively simple – just a small camera bag and a tripod – you might be able to take advantage of some of those unexpected opportunities. Or, if your phone has a camera, use it to take “notes” on scenes you’d like to return to with your regular camera.

4. Make a list of shots you’d like to get.

For those times you can’t carry your camera around, keep a small notebook to jot down places you’d like to come back and photograph. Make sure to note any important details, like the lighting, so you can come back at the same time of day or when the weather’s right. If you don’t want to carry a notebook, send yourself an email using your cell phone with Jott.com.

5. Don’t overlook mundane subjects for photography.

You might not see anything interesting to photograph in your living room or your backyard, but try looking at familiar surroundings with fresh eyes. You might catch an interesting trick of the light or find some unexpected wildflowers in your yard. Often a simple subject makes the best shot.

6. Enjoy the learning process.

The best part of having a hobby like photography is never running out of things to learn. Inspiration is all around you. Look at everything with the eyes of a photographer and you’ll see opportunities you never noticed before.

7. Take advantage of free resources to learn.

Browse through Flickr or websites like the Digital Photography School Forum for inspiration and tips. Also, your local library probably has a wealth of books on all types of photography. If you’re interested in learning about post-processing, give free software like the GIMP a try.

8. Experiment with your camera’s settings.

Your point and shoot may be more flexible and powerful than you know. Read the manual for help deciphering all those little symbols. As you explore, try shooting your subjects with multiple settings to learn what effects you like. When you’re looking at your photos on a computer, you can check the EXIF data (usually in the file’s properties) to recall the settings you used.

9. Learn the basic rules.

The amount of information about photography online can be overwhelming. Start with a few articles on composition. Be open to what more experienced photographers have to say about technique. You have to know the rules before you can break them.

10. Take photos regularly.

Try to photograph something every day. If you can’t do that, make sure you take time to practice regularly, so you don’t forget what you’ve learned. An excellent way to motivate yourself is by doing the weekly assignments in the DPS Forum.

11. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

If you’re using a digital camera, the cost of errors is free. Go crazy – you might end up with something you like. You’ll certainly learn a lot in the process.

Source

How to find a photographer

2018-02-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

First we'll start with wedding photography.

There are many important factors that must be considered when selecting a photographer for your wedding.

Be sure to . . .

1) Compare and interview photographers.

One of the most important factors when making your decision should be whether the photographer is a member of PPA ( Professional Photographers of America) or some other professional organization. Most organizations require their members to operate thier businesses according to a certain set of standards, and if a prospective photographer is not a member of one of those organizations, chances are there's a reason. Don't be afraid to ask.

2) It's important that a prospective photographer is able to show you more than one COMPLETE wedding and not just a few of the best photographs taken from a variety of weddings.

The above fact is VERY important and may be hard to come by, but you should NOT settle for anything less! Just about anyone can snap hundreds if not thousands of pictures during a day long event like a wedding and be fairly certain that a small percentage of those photographs will be good. But that's not good enough. Ask your prospective photographer to see ALL of the photos from more than one wedding, not just a selection of his best work, which is what some photographers will attempt to provide. If you look at ALL of the images from 4 or 5 different weddings and you are impressed by what you see, then you can be certain that he or she is a professional wedding photographer and not just a part timer that got lucky on a few shots here and there. This is the true test of an exceptional professional photographer! You’ll be spending a lot of money on your wedding photography, so make sure you KNOW what you’re buying!

3) Make sure you feel comfortable with your photographer.

It's not enough to just like your photographer or his or her work, it's important that you really click with him or her and feel good about the person you have chosen to capture your most intimate moments, afterall you and your guests will be dealing with him throughout your entire wedding day and for months beyond! In addition, if the photographer makes you feel uncomfortable, you will be less likely to feel comfortable posing for photographs, which defeats the purpose of hiring a photographer in the first place.

4) If possible, try to avoid photography studios that contract their work out to other photographers. In other words, make certain that the delightful, talented photographer you spoke to prior to the big day will be the photographer who is actually photographing your big day.

At A Glance: Important Questions to Ask.

5) If I hire you to photograph my wedding day, can you guarantee me that you will be the photographer photographing my wedding?

6) If yes, do you have a back up plan in the event you are unable to photograph my wedding?

7) Do you offer retouching?

8) If so, do you charge extra for that service?

9) Do you do all the retouching in house?

10) Is there an additional fee for special finishes such as black and white and sepia?

11) Do you offer special services, such as handcoloring?

12) Do you offer packages?

13) What is included in your packages?

14) Are you willing to arrive early to photograph us (bride and groom) before the ceremony, if we decide to do that?

15) Do you arrive early to get the getting dressed shots?

16) Do your packages include one or two photographers?

17) Do you charge extra for a second photographer?

18) Do you work with an assistant?

19) Do you have backup equipment, in the event something fails or breaks?

20) Are you a film based studio? Digital? Or both?

21) If you are a digital studio, do you provide online proofing of my wedding day images?

22) Do you provide a CD of my wedding day images?

23) How do you present and deliver the proofs? (very important for out of town brides)

24) Do you charge an additional fee if the wedding service and reception are in two different locations?

25) Do you charge extra if we want to go to a third location for pictures?

26) Do you charge a travel fee?

27) Do you offer only traditional albums or do you offer a variety of options to choose from, like Storybook albums and coffee table style books?

28) Do you design the special albums yourself?

29) Do you work with a videographer?

30) How many photos do you take during a typical wedding?

31) Do you sell the negatives?

32) Do you offer parent albums?

33) Do your packages include photographing the rehearsal dinner?

As you can see from the above, it's very important to ask lots of questions when selecting your wedding photographer, as it will help you avoid any unwanted surprises on your special day!

Kevin Winkler

The Most Important Photography Tip

2018-02-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

There are many composition tips recommended by photographers, books, courses, workshops, blogs, etc. Everyone talks about them and they are certainly important and basic to create images that are not boring and that have a WOW factor. We also mention them in our blog and in our Photo-Tip-of-the-Day simply because they are important and secondly because the more you hear about them you will eventually learn how to apply them.

Composition rules are basic guides that tell you how an image will go from dull to exciting. Rules are also meant to be broken, but you have to learn why and when to do so. Some of the composition rules are even difficult to understand, you need a scientific mind to do so and I will not go into those. For me photography is an art so why complicate it even more.

Photographers already have to deal with color, light, contrast, detail, depth-of-field, modes and many other technicalities. At the end of the day you might be able to learn and apply all the tips and techniques but your images might still not be the ones that win photo contests, that get published, that get exhibit or that simply make you sigh.

The most important tip that hardly anyone talks about is ‘Train Your Eye’. The eye of a photographer is his or her most important tool. Train your eyes to see light and you are on your way to creating awesome images. Train your eyes to differentiate 2D from 3D and your pictures will suddenly have volume. Teach them what is contrast and they will identify detail. You will create amazing images as long as your eyes make decisions on what to include in your photograph and what to eliminate, the choice of angles and light.

First tip to training your eyes – look at a scene, close your eyes and open them again. Does the scene cause the same effect as when you first saw it, in other words, did you sigh after re-opening your eyes. If you did maybe you have a great shot in hand. Go for walks and practice framing in your mind different scenes, open and close your eyes. When you are able to look at a scene and continue to be amazed you will have trained your eyes to actually see great shots.

Our eyes see the world in 3-D, photos are a piece of paper in 2-D. What sometimes feels like an excellent shot when printed it turns out to be a photo without interest. Train your eye, go for walks, frame your scene and then close one of your eyes. If the composition looses spark and now looks chaotic, then you do not have a good image, if you still sigh, see detail and perspective then you have a great shot.
Now squint with the open eye, suddenly contrast and detail will seem more obvious and things will pop out. If they do, you still have a great shot if they don’t then you are missing shadows and details. The more you exercise your eyes the more you will train them to see a great image.

Cameras have certain advantages and certain disadvantages compared to your eyes. Use them. Cameras can focus and see details that your naked eye will not see, so train your eyes by closing and squinting. Your camera will frame your subject and block the rest, your eyes won’t, train them to do so. Your camera only sees with one eye and your camera cannot read the balance between highlights and shadows. Train your eyes to see changes and different light angles. Walk again early morning and late afternoon and see how light goes through the leafs of the trees, how it reflects on water and on windows, move around, go up, go down and train your eye to see how light changes as you move around.

Train your eye to frame as your camera does. Take another walk but know with a frame made out of carton and pick your scenes. Soon your eye will be trained as your camera to see what the frame allows you too and block the rest. Practice a lot using this simple and cheap tool. Your frame can be a small 1″ x 1/5″ cut on a 5 x 7 photo paper or as large as a 4″ x 6″ on an 8 x 10 photo paper, as long as you can see your composition and block the rest.

Train your eyes to see color. Walk around pick a color and focus on it. Walk some more and you will see that color popping out. Continue walking and focus on a different color, suddenly you will now see this other color. Practice makes perfect.

Train your eye and capture amazing breathtaking images.

Each ‘Photography Project’ is a new challenge for The Duenitas Digital World, which we meet with great motivation and enthusiasm! We are technically proficient under any conditions and work in an unobtrusive respectful way. The Duenitas Digital World is flexible and reacts well to unplanned happenings; capturing the perfect image as we go.

The Duenitas Digital World is based in Miami, Florida and covers South Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. We specialize in the following Photography Topics: Weddings, Resort, Real Estate, Product, Family & Event and Commercial Photography.

Source

Object removal . . .

2016-09-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

Each day in my business of restoring old photographs at www.BestPhotoRepair.com , I encounter all kinds of photo manipulation requests, from simple digital retouching to more complex restoration work. But my favorite type of request is object removal.

I guess I enjoy it, because I really get to use my imagination. When you remove an object, especially an object in the foreground of a photograph, you must replace it with something, otherwise you are left with an unsightly blank space.

And that's where real imagination and creativity come in, because it is usually left up to the restoration artist to determine "what's missing", once an object as been removed from an image.

Although there are a lot of different ways to remove an object from an image, I decided to focus on the "Patch Aware Fill" method.

Below you will find a quick step by step guide on how to best fill that blank space, leaving a flawless image behind.

STEP ONE:

Open an image with an object you need to remove, like this sign posts in the image above.

If you're working with a single-layered document, duplicate it by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J).

If you have multiple layers, activate the topmost layer and create a copy of all visible layers by pressing Shift-Alt-Ctrl-E (on a PC). Double-click the duplicated layer's name and rename it.

STEP TWO:

Select the Patch tool. Once you've selected the patch tool, make sure you selected "source" from the menu at the top.

STEP THREE:

Click-and-drag to "paint" a selection onto the object you wish to remove from the image.

STEP FOUR:

Once you have the object selected, move the selection over an area in the image that looks very similar to the area from which you are removing the object.

(For example, if you are removing an object from in front of a bush, select a similar looking area of the bush to fill in the space over the object you are removing.)

The patch tool will give you an idea of what you are capturing in the selection.

Once you find an area of the image you want to "paste" over the object, drop the selection. I say drop, because I use a Wacom table and pen, so all I need to do is release the selection over the new area and the patch tool will take that area and blend it into the area you are filling, or in this case, it will blend it over the object you are removing.

Obviously this method does not work on every image nor every object, but it's a great place to get started.

Hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial.

Kevin

Tips for scanning your images to be restored . . .

2016-03-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Do you have old faded or torn photos that you'd like to give a facelift? Have you been meaning to take that box of old photos from Grandma and scan them onto a CD? Learning to create and edit digital photos is fairly easy and very worthwhile. Digitally restored photos can be used to create digital scrapbooks, posted to Web sites, shared through email, and printed for gift-giving or display.

You don't have to be a technology whiz or a graphic designer to become proficient at photo restoration, but you will need a computer, a scanner, and a good (not necessarily expensive) graphics program.

Scanning Tips for Digital Photos

1) Check your photos for dirt, lint, or smudges. Gently remove surface dust and dirt with a soft brush or lint-free photowipe. Canned air, available at most office supply stores, helps to blast away dust and lint from photographic slides, but is not recommended for heirloom print photos.

2) Check the scanner glass for lint, hair, fingerprints, or smudges. Use a lint-free pad or wipe to thoroughly clean the glass (basically anything which is sold as safe for cleaning camera lenses will also work for your scanner). Household glass cleaner can be used to clean your scanner glass, as long as you're careful to spray it directly on the cloth before wiping, not directly on the glass surface. When using your scanner or handling photographs, it is best to wear clean white cotton gloves (available from photo stores and hardware stores) to avoid leaving skin oils on your scanner or photos.

3) Specify the type of scan. If you're scanning photos, you have a basic choice of color photo vs. black and white. When scanning family photos, it is usually best to scan in color, even if the source photo is black & white. You'll have more manipulation options, and you can change a color photo to black & white (greyscale), but not the other way around.

4) Determine the best scan resolution to assure the quality and usefulness of your digital photos. The optimal resolution depends on how the image will be printed, saved, or displayed. A good rule of thumb is to scan your photos at a minimum of 300dpi (Dots Per Inch) to assure decent quality for enhancement and restoration techniques. 600dpi or greater is even better if you plan to eventually store these photos on CD or DVD, and have the space on your computer harddrive to handle such large images short-term.

5) Carefully position your photo on the scanner face down on the glass, just like on a photocopy machine. Then hit "prescan" or "preview." The scanner will take a quick pass of the image and display a rough version on your screen. Check to see that it's straight, that no part of the photo has been cut off, and that the photo appears free of dust and lint.

6) Crop the previewed image to include only the original photo. For archival purposes you should not crop only a portion of the photo at this point (you can do that later if you want a cropped photo for a specific purpose), but you should make sure that all you are scanning is the actual photograph. Some scanners and software will do this step for you automatically.

7) Avoid corrections while scanning. After scanning, you'll be able to edit the image in a graphics software program which offers much more control. The order should be: 1. Scan a basic image, 2. Save it, 3. Play with it.

8) Check your file size to make sure that the resolution you have chosen isn't going to create a photo that is so large that it's going to crash your computer. Some computers have enough free memory to handle 34MB photo files, and some don't. If the file size is going to be larger than you thought, then adjust the scan resolution accordingly before making the file scan.

9) Scan the original image. This shouldn't take too long, but could take a few minutes if you're scanning at a very high resolution. Take a quick bathroom break, or get your next photo ready for scanning.

Source

How to make people look slimmer in photographs . . .

2016-02-01T05:42:00.000-08:00

It is the comment I get most often when I am taking pictures of women. "Make me look skinnier, OK?" Everybody wants to look their thinnest in their photographs and with a few simple tips, and it often seems that the camera does add 10 pounds, but, following a few simple rules can lose those camera pounds and make your subjects look their best.

1. Watch heads. People tend to do one of two things when you are shooting straight on, they either bring their heads up, exposing a lot of neck, or they bring them down too much giving themselves a double chin. Try to level their heads to look at you straight on.

2. Suggest to your subject that they wear dark clothing. It is true, black is slimming. This is an especially good suggestion to make to brand new moms when you are shooting newborn photos. Their black shirt makes a great back drop to have them hold the baby against and it will make them look and feel thinner.

3. Shoot from above. Get above your subjects and shoot looking down at them. This is one of the things you have the most control over and is very effective.

4. Twist. Having your subject twist sideways instead of facing the camera straight on will make them look thinner every time.

Using just a couple of these tips, you can make your subjects look their best and give them photographs you'll both love!

Housewife Eclectic

Portrait Photography Tips and Tricks

2015-11-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

Take Better Pictures With These Simple Portrait Tips and Suggestions

Memorable portraits, and even quality family snapshots, often take careful, thoughtful planning, and the clothing you choose is one of the most important aspects of the photography if you want to insure the success of your final images.

To help you avoid future retouching or restoration costs, we'd like to offer a few tips for making the most of your portrait sessions and family photos.

About Clothing

The primary goal of any fine portrait is to direct the viewer's attention to the face or faces in the photograph. Simple, long sleeved garments in medium to dark tones of brown, rust, burgundy, green, or blue are pleasing choices when photographed against darker backgrounds.

Proper clothing allows the all important face to dominate the portrait. All other elements of the photograph should be secondary. Bold stripes, plaids, checks, prints, floral patterns, and ill fitting clothes are confusing and do not photograph well. Especially bright, bold colors, such as red, purple and orange, completely overpower the face and ruin an otherwise beautiful portrait.

Light colored clothing calls attention to itself and away from the face. Try to avoid light shades of color similar to flesh tones such as beige, tan, peach, pink, white, and yellow. Darker hues are more flattering, not to mention slimming.

Light colors are appropriate against a white or pastel background, or with a dark background when an interpretive pictorial study is planned.

Couples and small groups should choose simple garments within the same tonal ranges. Light and dark tones together create visual confusion, as one subject comes forward and the other recedes.

In a family group, proper clothing coordination is crucial to a fine portait. When decorating a home, a major concern is to coordinate the colors and tones of the carpets, walls, window treatments, and furniture. This kind of coordination is also necessary when selecting clothing for a group portrait.

Choose clothing in the same materials and tonal ranges so that no single member of the group dominates the photograph because the clothing is too light or bright as compared to the rest of the subjects in the group.

Clothing that blends harmoniously creates timeless portraiture because the viewer's eyes are drawn directly to the faces.

Clothing in medium shades complement portraits made in outdoor environments.

More portrait tips coming soon.

Kevin

Need help finding a photo restoration artist?

2015-09-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some "insider tips" into the business so that you can make an informed decision and avoid disappointment and costly mistakes.

Quality restoration artists will provide samples of their work, "before and after" pictures if you will. Study those photos carefully (do not be fooled by the quality of the actual image as most webmasters will upload low resolution files so that the website will load quickly for viewers). Ask yourself, do the subjects in the "after photos" look like real people or do they look like cartoon characters?

Unfortunately, many photo restorers simply do not have the required skills or artistry to repair photos without distorting the photo so completely that the subjects become cartoon-like characters. Unless you want Grandpa to look like Homer Simpson, move on to the next website.

Avoid the "don't pay until you receive the photo" restorers.

It may be tempting to send your cherished photo to four different restoration artists who do not require payment upfront and then pick the best restored photo and pay only that "artist". But we strongly advise against that method of choosing a restoration artist.

Why?

There are many reasons. First of all, it's simply an unfair practice. Performing quality restoration work is an art that requires a lot of time and tedious work. It's simply unfair to ask four artists to devote their precious time to your photo when you have absolutely no intention of paying three of them for their efforts. More importantly, if you use the above method of selecting a restorer, you will essentially be selecting the "best" restored photograph from four mediocre restored photographs. Simply put, a true artist values his or her time and talent and will not give it away freely.

Contrary to popular belief, photo restoration and repair is not about computer magic; it's about art, experience, knowledge, passion, and hard work. Chances are, if an artist does not require payment upfront, he does not value his art, nor will he devote much time to your cherished photograph. If the artist places no value on his work or time, do you honestly believe you will be getting the very best results?

Selecting an artist who offers a money-back guarantee is much wiser than selecting an "artist" who places no value on his work and therefore requires no payment upfront.

Still not convinced? Let me just say this, 25% of our past clients attempted the above method of selecting a restoration artist. They sent their photos to various companies only to be disappointed by each and every final result. After wasting precious time and energy, they eventually sent their photos to us to be restored properly, and happily paid in advance.

In all our years of restoration work, we have only been asked for a refund three times.

Avoid restoration artists or companies that promise, or even guarantee, extremely fast turnaround times, especially for photos that require a lot of restoration work.

"Offering" fast turnaround times is not the same as promising, or guaranteeing, fast turnaround times. It stands to reason that if a company guarantees a fast turnaround time, they may not be devoting as much time to your photograph as it deserves.

Best Photo Repair always offer fast turnaround times, when possible, but our first priority is quality work not QUICK results.

Photo processing (This subject is so important, we probably should have listed it first)

Does your restoration artist print your photos on a home printer? Does he take them to the local drugstore for processing? If so, you will probably receive a substandard final print and not even realize it until it's much too late.

Like photo restoration, photo processing is an art form. Only professional, highly trained technicians can provide truly beautiful, long lasting prints. And those professional, highly trained technicians can only be found at professional photo processing labs; labs that do not service the public but instead service only equally highly trained professionals in the industry.

Do not be afraid to ask if a prospective restorer uses a professional lab. And if they don't, continue the search until you find one that does.

Making an online purchase can be a little frightening sometimes, but if you do your reasearch and use common sense, chances are you will find a restoration artist that you can depend on for years to come, like many of our own clients have.

Kevin Winkler

The Art of Photo Restoration

2015-08-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, it can be very disappointing when your favorite photo of a loved one is marred by red eye or poor exposure, or when a cherished photograph from your past fades and cracks.

Luckily, with today's superb technology, along with a lot of hard work and talent, repairing just about any photograph, film or digital, is possible, whether restoring that which has been lost, fixing incorrect exposures, erasing dust and scratches, or even recreating reality.

But, as many of us know, not all restoration artists are alike. To restore an image properly, one must have an eye for photography, the technical savvy to solve any given problem, and, most importantly, artistic skill.

Because there are thousands of books and websites dedicated to the technical aspect of photo restoration, I'm going to concentrate on the artistry of the craft and offer restoration tips that will help you transform a nice yet damaged photo into a cherished heirloom.

THE EYES HAVE IT

When was the last time you felt the urge to repair an old photo of your swimming pool? Or your TV? Or your stereo?

If you're like most people, probably not very often. Most people want to repair images of their loved ones, that special baby picture that was damaged in a house fire, Grandma's old wedding photos that faded and turned yellow, those wonderful pictures of Grandpa in his military uniform that Fido got a hold of. We want to restore those familiar faces, those special moments, those souls. And the most important aspect of the face is the eyes. Eyes captivate us. They run in the family. They tell a story.

Unfortunately, many restoration artists tend to neglect the eyes. They work diligently on the background, they sharpen the fingers, they patch the clothing, they correct the color, and they neglect the very thing that the reveals character of the subject.

Don't let that happen to you. When restoring a photo, pay close attention to the eyes. Ask yourself these questions, Are they soft and out of focus? Do they appear flat and one dimensional? Do they reflect true color? Or do they only reflect the yellow associated with an aging photograph? Study the eyes in quality photographs. Notice how the curve of the eye almost always captures points of light. Notice how most eyes are multicolored and have specks and streaks in them. Then return to your old photo and ask yourself how you can incorporate those characteristics into the eyes of your subject.

Mona Lisa Smiles

After the eyes, the second most important aspect of a portrait is the mouth. Is your subject smiling? If so, pay close attention to the teeth, the gum line, the tiny creases at the corner of the lips. Like eyes, the mouth, lips, gums are composed of many shades of color and all reflect light. Make sure your portrait, or more specifically, your subject's mouth, captures and reflects those subtle shifts in tones and light.

More restoration tip coming soon!

Kevin Winkler

Pros and cons of becoming a wedding photographer . . .

2015-03-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

Should you become a professional wedding photographer? What are the good and bad things to consider?

By Hunter McRae

As a child, I took disposable cameras everywhere, documenting every important moment with family and friends. When I dropped a camera off to be developed, I couldn’t wait to get the pictures back a few days later. It was always a treat to see what I had captured — I kept scrapbooks and boxes with images of every person in my life. Photography was my passion.

When it came time to find a career, my initial priority was financial stability, doing something I loved and cared about. But it never crossed my mind that photography was an option.
I tried marine biology — nope! I tried marketing — nope!

It wasn’t until I took my first photojournalism class at UNC-Chapel Hill that I was hooked and never looked back. My professor helped me to see photography as a way to make a difference in the world while doing something that I loved. Somehow, the financial aspect wasn’t as important as it used to be. In fact, studies proved (and these were definitely pointed out to me!) that the odds were against me, especially as a woman. But I knew I was a hard worker, and I felt that I was supposed to follow this path.

Since college, my photography career has led me to adventures around the world for online documentaries, to an esteemed internship in NYC with National Geographic Adventure magazine, to several fabulous newspapers in Colorado and Georgia, and to where I am now: working for myself as a business owner.

The flipside to that? I am ultimately responsible for the happiness of my clients. That’s a big responsibility — especially on somebody’s wedding day!

If you’re thinking of going pro with your passion, carefully consider the positives and negatives.

8 Pros

Here are eight aspects of the job that will make you smile every day:

You get to be creative. Your clients will choose you based on your own personal style of photography, so don’t try to be like anyone else. Trust who you are and your ability to produce great work that others will relate to and connect with.
You will meet and interact with interesting people that you otherwise may have never come across. Each door that opens leads to another, and your horizons are expanded with each new client.
You will never be bored and will constantly multi-task. Whether you’re learning how to adapt to and please a new personality type or you’re faced with where to shoot in the rain, expect to face new challenges on a daily basis.
As an industry professional, you will likely rent or purchase the most up-to-date gear, assuring that your images — best professional and hobbyist — will be the best that they can possibly be. Plus, your gear expenses become a tax write-off.
If you enjoy traveling, you can seek out shoots and gigs in far-flung locales. Photography is a very portable profession!
You will constantly be learning, from adapting to new technologies and styles to improving your own ‘eye.’
If you are self-employed, you get to choose your own clients. When your business takes off, rather than taking every gig or assignment that comes your way, you will need to be choosey about what you accept so that you save time for editing and free time. Remember, you are interviewing your potential clients as much as they are interviewing you. You also get to choose your own work days. You have the power to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a potential shoot, depending on your schedule.
On most days, you’ll be working with happy people. If you’re shooting weddings and portraits, you will be surrounded by people who are in good moods, who want you around and are very appreciative of your talent

7 Cons

It’s said that when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. That is true to some degree, but taking pictures is actually a pretty small percentage of what makes my business tick. It’s the business end of things that feels like work.

Here are seven of the little daily struggles that come with being a professional photographer:

Gear is expensive. You may need to save up for the right equipment or take out a loan that you feel confident your business will be able to pay back.
It’s a high pressure job. If you’re photographing weddings, you only have one chance to get it right. The weight of the world is on your shoulders and yours alone.
Post processing takes a lot of time. Most photographers don’t realize this before getting into the business, and what’s worse is that your clients won’t either. You’ll need to educate your anxious clients on why their images aren’t ready immediately. You’ll spend hours upon hours in front of the computer culling, toning and perfecting the images. The longer the shoot, the more images to edit and the more time spent in front of the screen.
It can be confusing to figure out taxes and the business end of things. I hire professional bookkeepers for the peace of mind that I’m doing everything correctly, and to allow me more time to do what I’m best at: taking pictures.
You won’t always be perfect. Once in a while, you’ll disappoint someone or have to deal with a client who isn’t happy. That is never fun and will usually hurt your feelings because you care so much. Be strong, trust that you’ve done the best you can possibly do for your client and work hard to find a solution to restore their faith in your ability.
Not everything you shoot will be happy. If you’re a photojournalist, you’ll be faced with difficult situations and decisions. You’ll need to document the negative realities of life to educate the world. That can be hard on the soul.
Your work and vision is no longer just “yours.” A lot of people get into photography because it’s their passion or hobby, but once you become a professional, your job is to satisfy the person paying you. You may have to prioritize your client’s wishes over your own artistic eye.

Summary

It’s up to you whether you should turn your passion for photography into profit. Hopefully my pros and cons can help you with your decision. Most importantly, even if you go pro, don’t give up hobby photography. Keep shooting and maintain your love for the art!

Original Source

Ten Tips for Great Animal Photos

2015-03-03T05:42:00.000-08:00

Stephen Oachs has composed 10 tips for taking great animal photos. Very good tips if you’re new to wildlife photography, or just want to improve your shots taken at your local zoo;

Jaguar by Onrie (Profile)
Tip 1: Miss the eyes and you’ve missed the shot. Getting the eyes in focus is key to capturing a photo of an animal. It’s human nature to look at the eyes. It’s how we determine emotion and how we connect. When I was in Homer, Alaska, I came across a moose on the move. Given it was early morning and the light was low I knew getting a fast shutter speed to freeze his movement would be tough, so I quickly adjusted my camera to lock the focus on his eyes, and took the shot. The majority of the picture was a bit blurry, but because the eyes are in focus, the shot was saved.

Tip 2: Use a telephoto lens. Getting closer to the action, yet staying a safe distance, is the key to photographing wildlife. By keeping your distance you allow the animal to be in their comfort zone and are more likely to get natural behavior. Safety is also a factor when photographing in the wild. Always keep at least 100 yards distance from wildlife, for your safety and for the well being of the animals. Another good use for a telephoto lens is a trick not many people know, which comes in very handy when photographing animals in the zoo that are behind fencing. If you move close to the fence (keep a safe distance) and use at least 100mm of your telephoto lens, focusing beyond the fence, with a wide aperture, you can “focus out” the fencing and take a photo of the subject with no wires! Now, there are some exceptions, such as, if the fencing is black you’ll have a much better chance of pulling this off. Regular chain link fence is gray and semi-reflective, which in the sunlight can cause a glare and is often too bright to focus out. I’ve also had some successes at trying different angles, so experiment for your best results. I often shoot with a Canon 100-400mm IS USM and a Canon 28-300mm IS USM. If you’re new to telephoto lenses, on a budget and not sure what to get, I suggest the Tamron 28-300mm or a Sigma 70-300mm. I’ve also had great results with the Sigma 50-500 which, as of this writing, I consider to be the best bang for the buck. These lenses all work with teleconverters of 1.4x and 2.0x so you can easily extend your reach even further, often while keeping auto-focus (with Canon L lenses, a minimum aperture of 4.0 or less will support auto-focus. Above that a manual focus is your only option.)

Tip 3: Shoot with two eyes. This is a tip I’m sharing here, but often have a hard time remembering myself. I can’t tell you how many shots I’ve missed because I didn’t see the action coming. By keeping both eyes open you’ll see the subject in the viewfinder and you’ll also see what’s going to happen next.

Tip 4: Adjust your shutter speed to stop/show the action. When animals are on the move you need to decide quickly on the type of shot you want to take. If you want to freeze the action, you’ll need to shoot at 1/500 or faster and depending on light, that can be tricky. One option, if you’re shooting digital, is to adjust up your ISO, which will make your sensor more sensitive to light and give you that needed boost in shutter speed. Now, if you want to give a sense of motion to your image, try shooting with a shutter speed of 1/4 to 1/8 and pan your camera with the animal. Pan steady and remember, keep the eye in focus if you can! For best results, pick backgrounds that are uncluttered and simple, as this will make the subject standout in the image.

Tip 5: Anticipate behavior. This tip goes well with Tip 3, shoot with both eyes, because anticipating behavior is often key to capturing a rare moment, action and unique situations. Panning the camera to follow an animal can be a tiring process, so often I’ll study the animal’s behaviors watching for a pattern and then use some anticipatory shooting, and a little luck, to hopefully capture that perfect moment.

Tip 6: Use a tripod. Using a tripod is one of the best things you can do to improve your photography, and wildlife is no different. By mounting your camera to a tripod you reduce camera shake, which is usually the cause of blurry photos. To take this a step further, I use a shutter release cable, which eliminates the need to touch the camera while snapping shots and thus removes almost all potential for camera shake.

Tip 7: Composition – Framing your shots. Some simple framing advise can go a long way toward improving an image, and for those who are computer savvy, a little trick called cropping (software technique to cut a photo) can help improve composition that wasn’t quite right at the time the photo was taken. The best way to think about composition is to picture a tic-tac-toe grid in the view finder of your camera (I’ve seen some new cameras that come with this as a feature you can turn on!) and use that grid to organize your shots. There is no hard rule, but the general theory behind good composition is that your subject lies in one of the crosshairs of the grid. Setting up your shot to lead the eye is also a good example of composition.

Tip 8: Use a wide aperture. Learning the effects of adjusting your camera’s aperture will go a long way toward improving your photographs, especially in portrait style shooting. In a photo of a grazing elk I shot in Yellowstone, I chose a very wide aperture to blur out a potentially busy background and bring attention to the subject instead. As you learn to control your camera you’ll also find that adjusting your aperture will have a direct effect on your shutter speed. This will prove especially helpful when shooting in the early mornings and late evenings, when animals are typically most active and the light is warm and muted.

Tip 9: Plan for the best light. There’s nothing like a cloudy day to provide soft, even light for wildlife photography. Clouds act like a giant diffuser to the sun, spreading the light out evenly and taking away harsh shadows that are created by a bright, sunny day. Of course, a cloudy day has its challenges as well, such as lower light, which will force you to adjust ISO and shutter speed settings for stopping action and getting sharp, in focus images.

Tip 10: Use a flash to fill in shadows. It may sound odd, but using a flash outside on a bright sunny day actually makes a lot of sense. In this situation, you’re not using the flash to illuminate the subject, as you would in a dark setting, but rather to fill in the shadows and provide detail where harsh shadows would otherwise be heavy and dark. It’s important to use flash wisely and here are a couple of other suggestions:

1. Be conscious of the animal and whether flash will scare them and,

2. There are times where your only shoot is through glass — using a flash behind glass will ruin your shot. The glass will reflect the light back at the camera and you shouldn’t be surprised if all you get is a big white picture!

Bonus Tip: Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. This tip is a no-brainer for those of us who shoot digital. Shooting digital is cheap — technology is advancing so quickly that, as of this writing, a 4 gigabyte memory card is selling for less than $100 and you can get A LOT of photos on a 4 gig memory card. The bottom line of this tip is take photos….a lot of photos. Don’t be shy. I often take multiple photos of the same scene or subject and then later choose the best from the group. This is also a great way to learn; by adjusting your camera between shots you can experiment and see the results of different settings of your camera. And, don’t sweat the details of trying to remember which photo had which settings…another great thing about shooting digital is something called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format). EXIF data is written to every photo so that later, upon review, you can see every setting your camera used to take that image.

About the author
Stephen Oachs spends every chance he gets looking through the viewfinder of his cameras. He is an accomplished nature photographer with an impressive gallery of stunning wildlife shots. Visit his photo journal at http://www.stephenoachs.com/. Read more about him at his blog, stephenoachsphotography.blogspot.com. When not taking photographs, Stephen’s day job is spent as technical director of VisiStat.com, a leading next generation Web Analytics service that specializes in real-time Website Performance Management.

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How to Photograph Christmas Lights . . .

2014-12-16T06:29:00.003-08:00

Christmas lights are beautiful to behold, and it's not every day of the year that you get to see them.

But how do you capture their beauty in photos?

Dim light, flickering lights and various backgrounds can all make photographing Christmas lights a little tricky.

Nevertheless, you can overcome these obstacles with a little preparation.

Step by Step Instructions

Preserving the past . . .

2014-06-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Winkler

Human beings are visual creatures and restoring old or damaged photographs is a great way to help the past have more meaning to younger generations. It's a way to preserve the past time for the future, to show the world to come that these people, things, animals, were real, that they had meaning, that they were valued and loved by others.

Old photos provide a history lesson. When the photo was taken, the subject meant something to someone. Perhaps the event was something grand, like a wedding; or maybe it was simply a snapshot of a beloved pet. Regardless, that photo tells a story and, when possible, the story must be preserved.

We invite you to let us help you bring those memories back to life. We invite you to let us use our extensive education, professional software, technical knowledge and creativity to capture those fading memories and bring them back to their full glory, so they can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Visit us today for details about our services and a free, no obligation quote.

Best Photo Repair

Scanning . . .

2014-03-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

by Kevin Winkler

Somewhere in your home, there’s probably a box of old photographs you want to have restored. However, unless you know how to use your scanner correctly, the final quality of the digital image can be poor, which will cause a lot of frustration when attempting to have the images brought back to life by a professional.

If you want to reclaim your memories, then it’s worth taking the time to scan them correctly, before attempting to have them restored.

Scanners all work in essentially the same way; they convert photos into a digital format.

You don't need to buy the most expensive, top-of-the-line scanner; an inexpensive flatbed scanner will do the job nicely.

Please note:

Don't try to fix your photos before you scan them; attempts to scrub them clean will only make the damage worse. Just wipe off the dust with a soft brush. Once scanned, a restoration artist can clean up all the scratches and other blemishes in a photo editing program. Don't cut your photos, either. They can be cropped digitally once they're scanned and restored.

If using a flatbed scanner, you place the picture face down on a glass surface and a scanning head moves across the photo, capturing the image, which is then sent to your computer. Be sure to use the scanning software to "highlight" or "select" just the image, otherwise the entire bed of the scanner will be included in the final digital image.

Most scanners come with automatic settings, which are a nice shortcut. These settings allow the picture to be scanned at the highest resolution. Of course, the highest resolution might not be necessary, so customizing the settings becomes more important.

If your goal is just to preserve your photos, a minimum of 300 dpi should be fine, although I recommend higher settings if you want a small image restored and enlarged. For example, if you want an old wallet-sized image restored and enlarged to an 8 x 10, you will need a higher resolution to create a more professional looking portrait. For enlargements, you will want to scan images up to 600 or higher dpi.

If the photo is in black and white, I recommend scanning in color. The color scan option will give the restoration artist a greater ability to manipulate the image. If you scan in greyscale, some important information can be lost during the scanning process and limit the "richness" of the final, restored image.

Now that you've got your scanner set and your photos ready, the next logical step is to do the actual scanning.

Place the image face down on the glass. (You can hit the "preview" button to check that your photo is clean and positioned correctly before scanning and saving the image)

After you've scanned a photo, save it as a TIFF or JPEG file. A TIFF is higher quality image, but a JPEG will make it easier to e-mail the photos. When you save, do not compress the photo. You'll sacrifice image quality for file size, and the final results will look soft and lacking detail.

Now it's time to clean up those photos. You can find a lot of photo restoration artists online, but, of course, we are the best . . . and our services start at just 15.99.

Feel free to visit us today for a free quote.

Best Photo Repair

The Cost of Photo Restoration . . .

2013-09-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Winkler

Contrary to popular belief, digital photo restoration and repair is not about computer magic; it's about art, experience, knowledge, hard work, and, dare I say, love.

Working from an original photo or print, we recreate your photo in digital format (or use your digital file) and then transform the portrait back to its original state . . . or as close as it can possibly get to its original state.

Or, if you prefer, we can manipulate your image until it's something entirely different.

Either way, we use state-of-the-art computer software as our tools - our "oil, brush, and canvas" - to perform the task of restoring, enhancing, manipulating, or repairing your cherished photo.

In short, there is no computer magic involved, just artistry, using a computer as the artist's tools.

Is the company you are interested in undercutting everyone else?

True restoration artists value their education, experience, skills and time . . . and charge a fee for their services accordingly.

Chances are, if a "company" is dramatically undercutting everyone else, alarm bells should be sounding.

Perhaps they are charging less than their competitors because they are failing as a business and are desperate to get the work. If that's the case, ask yourself this . . .

1) Are they failing because they lack the skills that others possess?

2) Will they be around long enough to finish the job?

3) Are they going to spend as much time on my image as necessary to get the job done right? Or are they going to take short-cuts, resulting in inferior results?

4) Could I get better results elsewhere by paying a little more?

Another possibility for the undercutting is that they are outsourcing the work . . . and your precious portrait . . . to countries where labor is cheap.

That's ok, I guess, if you are unconcerned about keeping your dollars in your own country. And if you like the restoration style in that part of the world, which is often over-airbrushed and soft, with exaggerated colors and smoothed over skin, so much so it looks like porcelain.

Also, if the work is outsources to others, contact with the company for things like quotes and minimal adjustments to the restored photo will most likely to be slower, given the third party element of the transaction and the various time zone involved.

If you are concerned about these issues, don't be afraid to ask!

Sticking with local artists in your country, who do not outsource the work to other countries, will not only boost your economy, it will most likely insure better craftsmanship and faster turnaround times.

And don't be afraid to pay a little more. You are not only paying to restore a photo; you are also paying to restore a memory. Chances are, it will be worth the extra money.

Our web site

10 Sites to Capture with Your Point and Shoot Camera

2013-08-13T07:50:00.001-07:00

By Nicole Tripp

Some of the best vacations are the ones close to home. Sure, an escape to the Ishinca mountain peak of Peru would be amazing. However, the good ol’ United States has several great destinations that will wow your senses without needing a TSA pat down.

While New York never sleeps, Disney is the Happiest Place on Earth and D.C. has enough history and science museums to increase your IQ by 7 percent, there are many places to visit that are a little less popular. They are located all over the country, so it's easy to find one close to you. Pack a lunch, grab your point and shoot camera and enjoy a fun and unique day trip that will be just as impressive as toasting locals in Morocco with unpasteurized camel's milk. Here are 10 lesser-known sites to check out and explore.

10. Cadillac Ranch – Amarillo, TX
Located on a cattle ranch in the middle of Texas, the Cadillac Ranch is a commemorative art piece first created in 1974. Each Cadillac, made between 1949 and 1963, was planted nose first into the ground to show the evolution of the cars' defining tailfins. Although on private property, the Cadillac Ranch is open to the public. You are also welcome to bring along your spray paint and leave your colorful mark. It won't stay long, because so many people come through to see the Cadillac Ranch each day. This means you will have to make this a traditional stop on your way through Amarillo, Texas. Don’t forget to snap a pic with your digital camera so you can see how the artwork changes each time you stop.

9. The Start of the Mississippi – Bemidji, Minnesota
Mark Twain used Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to enshrine the Mississippi River as a mesmerizing U.S. tourist staple, making it synonymous with steamboats and river rafting. Most people meet up with the Mississippi River in the middle, in the states of Mississippi and Missouri. However, the start of the Mississippi is in the little town of Bemidji, Minnesota. Not only is the river crystal clear here, but Bemidji is also a great place to learn about Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Both have a commemorative statue that has been on display in Bemidji since 1937. Paul Bunyan stands over 18 feet high, while Babe easily reaches his shoulder. It may take a moment to play with different angles, but you should be able to snap a pic of your kids with both statues in one shot.

8. Mystery Castle – Phoenix, AZ
Knowing he only had a short time to live, Boyce Luther Gulley built the Mystery Castle in 1930 for his little girl. The Mystery Castle is made from recycled materials Gulley found in the town dump. Stone, automobile parts, rail tracks and telephone poles are held together with a mortar rumored to be made from cement, calcium and goat milk. The Castle has 18 bedrooms, 13 fireplaces, a chapel, a cantina and a dungeon. Plumbing and electricity weren't added until 1992. Gulley eventually died from tuberculosis in 1945. His daughter, Mary Lou, turned the Mystery Castle into a museum and lived there until her death in 2010. The Mystery Castle is still open for public tours and photography is allowed, so don’t forget to bring along your digital camera.

7. Devil's Gulch – Garretson, South Dakota
Jesse James is one of the most romanticized villain in U.S. history. He was notorious for getting out of tough situations, and the great escape in Garretson, South Dakota, is no exception. The story is told that James was being heavily pursued by a large posse after robbing a bank in Missouri. James came to a rock chasm with a rushing river far below. With the posse bearing down, James' only choice was to jump the gorge. Without much hesitation, Jesse James reared his horse and jumped, landing unscathed on the other side and safely riding to freedom. The infamous jumping place is now known as Devil's Gulch, and a bridge has been built for visitors to easily cross the West River. The easy-to-hike trails lead to beautiful scenic spots, perfect as natural backdrops to your photos. Commemorative plaques and a visitor center will give you more details about the heart-beating escape of James all those years ago.

6. Museum of American Speed – Lincoln, Nebraska
This three-story museum is dedicated to everything in racing and automotive history. Founded by Speedy Bill Smith in 1992, the museum has engines, cars, toys, racing memorabilia and much more. You can see amazing, fully intact cars – from a 1886 Benz Paten Motor-Wagon and a 1932 Boothill Express, to Kasey Kahne’s #9 NASCAR Sprint Cup Car. Other collections include soap box derby cars, pedal cars, hood ornaments and every car engine imaginable. There is an admission fee in order to get in and daily tours are offered, though you are free to explore on your own, too.

5. Mt. Rushmore Celebrity Heads – Branson, Missouri
The Hollywood Wax Museum in Branson, Missouri, created a replica of Mount Rushmore outside its building as a way to attract potential tourists. Instead of presidents, this Rushmore dons the faces of four celebrities: John Wayne, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Oliver Hardy. Since the Mount is located outside, it doesn't cost anything to drive up and snap a photo. If you want to meet more celebrities, it doesn't cost much to go inside the museum and take even more impressive pictures standing next to you favorite Hollywood icon. A portion of your admissions proceeds will be donated to the local Generation Rescue chapter, a non-profit organization devoted to autism research.

4. Goblin Valley – Green River, Utah
Hundreds of wind carved goblins cover the valley, making it look like something from Mars rather than the desert of Utah. In fact, several sci-fi movies, including Galaxy Quest, have filmed their Martian scenes in Goblin Valley. Open year-round and with camping facilities right inside the park, Goblin Valley is a beautiful place to explore and imagine. Even young tourists enjoy playing hide-and-go-seek among the sandstone figures and exploring nooks and crannies. Wildlife is abundant in the valley, and the weather is beautiful all year long. No two goblins are the same, so be sure to pack an extra battery for your digital camera, so you can keep exploring and capturing those images without having to stop.

3. Atlanta's Underground – Atlanta, Georgia
Stepping into Atlanta’s Underground is like stepping back in time with much of the original marble, decorative brickwork, and gas street lamps still visible. Atlanta’s Underground City has been a popular retail and entertainment hub for over 50 years. Several of the storefronts were built following the Civil War, during the Reconstruction era. Over the years, shop keepers started moving higher up to be at the same level as Atlanta’s railroad, and the original shops were buried and streets paved over them. In the 1960s, the shops were rediscovered and were converted into an underground shopping plaza. Today you can still see much of the old, original décor from the 1800s while enjoying modern music, food and shopping.

2. Myles Standish Burial Ground – Duxbury, Massachusetts
The Myles Standish Burial Ground is the oldest known cemetery in the United States. One of the signers of the Mayflower Compact, Myles Standish was hired to be the military leader of the Pilgrims after they landed in Plymouth. He devoted most of his life to protecting the new colonists from rogue and dangerous Native Americans before retiring in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a colony he helped found. Standish died at the age of 72 and was buried in the Duxbury cemetery. Along with Standish, there are 130 marked gravesites in the cemetery, including the well-known pilgrims Capt. Jonathan Alden and his wife Priscilla, as well as Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans of the War of 1812.

1. The Fremont Troll – Seattle, Washington
The Fremont Troll was built under the Aurora Bridge in an attempt to make better use of the empty space. Encouraged by the local folklore of trolls that live under bridges and terrorize children and luminous women, the Fremont Arts Council held a national contest to find the most creative design for a troll monument. In 1990, the 18-foot monument was built using more than two tons of concrete, rebar and wire – oh, and a 1960s Volkswagen Beetle. Over the last couple of decades, shops and local entertainment have developed around the Troll, including Troll-a-ween and the performance of Shakespeare at the Troll. At one time, the Elvis time capsule was imbedded inside. There is enough room under the bridge to pull over and snap a photo or two, so don’t forget to bring along your camera.

There are hundreds more quaint places to visit and unusual sites to see all over the United States. Regardless of where your travels take you, make sure you take your digital camera along and capture the memories to relive over and over again in the years to come.

Original Source

A Simple Exercise to Train your Photographic Eye

2013-07-03T13:01:00.002-07:00

by Valerie Jardin

Here is a simple exercise you can do anywhere that will help develop your photographic eye. Take your camera with just one lens and go for a walk (of course any point and shoot camera will do the trick too).

While walking down the street, at the park or even in the wilderness, make a point to stop randomly and find something to photograph within 10 or 15 feet (3 to 5 m) from where you are standing.

Better yet, if you are walking with a non photographer, ask him or her to tell you when to stop. Look up and down, look all around you and take your time to find something interesting to photograph. It can be a scene in the street happening just in front of you, an architectural detail, the manhole cover on which you are standing or an insect on a flower.

If you are using a DSLR limit yourself to one lens but experiment with a different lens each time to make the exercise more interesting. The point is to learn to make the ordinary look extraordinary. Try different angles, a shallow depth of field, etc. Or try some magic in the digital darkroom later!

Another idea is to get children involved in this exercise. A perfect way to get them to walk and introduce them to photography at the same time. Their discoveries might surprise you! This exercise can also be helpful if you are planning to start a 365 day project.

Here are a few examples of pictures taken during this simple exercise. I like details, in architecture or in nature and I also like to shoot with a very shallow depth of field. The goal of this exercise is not to produce fine art photographs. Consider it as a photo assignment with no pressure and see what happens.

The possibilities are endless, just remember to have fun

Original Source

Looking Perfect, One Pixel at a Time

2013-06-05T08:52:00.001-07:00

By PETER WAYNER

December may be more than seven months away, but that is barely enough time for purists to lose 20 pounds, grow out bad haircuts, clean up those blemishes, and get the photos to the printer in time to mail out holiday cards.

Slackers, though, can relax because a burgeoning cottage industry in photo retouching is making it easier to clean up all of those problems with a few clicks of a mouse.
Professional photographers have relied on clever hands and sophisticated software to turn a good picture into something that stands out. Now, Web sites are selling professional retouching services. For $20 to $200 or more, anyone can get a tighter stomach, smoother skin and brighter teeth — at least in an image. In addition, a wide variety of programs make it possible for the average computer user to fix basic problems.

The marketplace is not dominated by human vanity, though, and many retouching outfits specialize in solving other problems, like fixing poorly preserved historical photographs, removing dust marks or simply balancing the colors. Emy Craciunescu, the co-owner of Phojoe.com, says 50 percent of his work is age progression, a photo alteration process to show people at different times in their lives.
“We do a lot for work for police agencies, missing people, someone who’s been divorced and the mom took the kids to California,” he said. “It’s part science, part art and a little bit intuition.”

When the problems are simple, most of the free software packages delivered with digital cameras or computers offer tools that can help. Apple’s iPhoto, for instance, comes with a tool for fixing red eye. Kodak’s EasyShare package includes a tools for tweaking the brightness, the contrast and the colors.
Many problems, though, demand more dexterity, more sophisticated software and a deeper understanding of how a computer represents an image.

Removing the wrinkles from under the eyes requires outlining the area and using a blending filter that eliminates the ripples by replacing each pixel with an average of the surrounding pixel. While the averaging is done automatically, it takes a deft hand to outline the area and choose the correct amount of blending.

Many professionals turn to Adobe’s flagship product, Photoshop, and the aftermarket offering a range of plug-in enhancements. The newest version of the product, CS3, was just released and sells for around $700. The plug-ins are sold independently. Free software packages like GIMP (available at www.gimp.org) are also popular.

Boris Kobrin runs the site Touch of Glamour, with his wife, Natalya, an artist who trained in painting natural scenes on porcelain in St. Petersburg. They specialize in “glamorization,” a process that includes standard effects like cleaning up the skin or trimming a few inches from the waist, as well as less obvious effects like reshaping parts of the face. They will enlarge lips, straighten teeth, rebuild eyelashes, whiten eyes and fix the shape of eyebrows.

Mr. Kobrin offers various levels of retouching, from light to extreme. “The customer chooses it depending on the area of use: family photo, Web site presentation, pageant photogenic competition, magazine illustration” and so on.

They provide a quote for each picture that varies according to the number of people, the complexity of the background and the quality of the image. Straightening a nose and removing a blemish on a portrait would cost $45, he estimated.

Some companies are trying to automate the process. Among them is Anthropics Technology, which makes a software program called PortraitProfessional (selling for $39.95) that gives the user about 80 ways to increase the “beauty” of a subject with algorithms that automatically shift and reshape the parts of a face.

“If they’re looking a bit tubby, you can reduce their jawline,” said Andrew Berend, the chief executive of Anthropics. “You can make their lips larger and their eyes wider, which is always a way of making them more attractive.”

But with such a program, he said, “its power to subtly alter appearance also raises some interesting moral questions.” He has received e-mail messages that pointedly asked, “Who made you the gods of beauty?”

Mr. Berend says that his researchers used numerous surveys to tweak the parameters used by their algorithms, a process he calls “democratizing.” His team tested the algorithms by posting some before-and-after shots to the ranking site HotOrNot.com, and found that they could turn some pictures rated 2 out of 10 into 8 out of 10.

Retouchers who specialize in restoring damaged photographs use many of the same basic techniques and software, but apply them with a different approach.

“I try to focus on what I do best, which is bring old or damaged photos back to life,” said Kevin Winkler, who markets his work at bestphotorepair.com. “My specialty is the hand-coloring of those photos after they’ve been restored. Colorizing, or hand coloring, truly is an art in and of itself, given you must have a feel for what the colors in an old photo might have been during that particular time period.”

Mr. Winkler’s prices start at $9.99 and rise to $49.99 for detailed restoration. Other effects like hand coloring of a black-and-white photo begin at $12.99. As with most retouching, his prices cover a digital copy of the fixed image. He also subcontracts high-quality prints on canvas at prices beginning at $40.

There are limits, though, to what can be restored. Justin Langley, president of FixUpPix.com, says he was recently asked to enhance a surveillance camera picture of someone stealing a bike.

“It was a night shot, from what must have been 50 feet away,” he said. “I think he was under the impression that we would be able to take a very small image, blow it up, and press the magic button on the keyboard where it automatically enhances every little detail and brings out the faces of the bad guys, just like they do on TV shows like ‘C.S.I.’ ”

All of the restoration artists say it is crucial for users to provide as much detail as they can by scanning images at the highest possible resolution.

The restoration artists are also able to edit people in to and out of photographs. Many customers ask the services to edit former husbands or wives out of cherished family photos. One bride who came to FixUpPix.com (which charges $29.99 for any type of photo repair) was happy with her appearance only in the one picture in which her husband’s eyes were closed.

This technique can lead to ethical questions. “A boyfriend wanted to get back at an ex-girlfriend, and he wanted us to put her head on a nude body,” Mr. Craciunescu said. “We won’t do things like that.”
Reputable news organizations have strict rules forbidding photographers or editors from using such tools to alter images.

But when it comes to family matters or simple vanity, the ethical equation is different.
“Most pictures are about memories,” Mr. Berend said. “They’re to be looked at years later. When you show your kids your wedding picture, it’s nice that they’re nice. Harsh reality is not always what people want.”

Original Source

Choosing a photo restoration artist

2013-04-13T07:32:00.002-07:00

Confused about choosing the right photo restoration artist?

Here’s an overview of what you need to consider when determining which photo restoration artist fits your needs.

First, you must understand just what a quality of restoration is.

When visiting various web sites, check for the following:

• Look for multiple examples of photo restorations, with varying degrees of difficulty.

• Compare ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos. The quality and detail of the image should be prominent in the ‘After’ image. Things to look for are skin tone, color and hair. Skin tone should be deep, rich with naturalistic variation. Enlarged photo samples give a clear picture of the restoration work done than a smaller one.

• Find out if the restoration services own their own professional restoration studio . . . or whether they outsource their work to others. Although cheaper, outsourcing has many obvious disadvantages, like loss of jobs in the USA, communication problems between the company you order from and the company actually providing the service, other problems can arise, like missed deadlines, privacy issues, and inferior results.

Once you are done with quality checks, look for cost benefits, mode of payment etc.

• Most service providers charge according to the severity of the damage, starting from $30. Some also offer instant quote on receiving the original image or free estimate depending on the nature of restoration.

• It is wiser to opt for money back guarantee if they offer one.

• Check if they provide any reworks free of charge.

• Confirm if the cost includes print and shipment or just the digital image only. Most consumers now prefer to take a restore image to a "local" lab and save money on costly prints and shipping from a restoration service.

• Look for any bonus or discount system being offered, such as discounts for multiple restoration orders.

Next to Quality and Cost, do not ignore Personalized Customer Service and Customer satisfaction and of course Confidentiality.

• Check for easy uploading process and site navigation.

• Check whether they ask for your print options like size and matt effect.

• Check if they have any restored image – approval process.

• Do not forget to check references or testimonials on the type of services offered.

Initially you can restore one image to check the quality of restoration, their service, and cost. In this way you can save money and even avoid disappointments. With the advent of latest digital technology for photo restoration, combined with a professional photo restoration expert nothing seems complicated. So, Happy Photo Restoration with the best photo restoration artist.

2013-03-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

A Guide to Perfect Portrait Posing and More

As an aspiring-to-go-pro photographer or a casual shooter, it’s important to understand the basics of portrait photography, whether your posing a spouse, child, friend or a bona fide model. Not only will your images seem more professional and polished, your model will look more attractive.

Introduction

By taking care in not only how your model is posed, but also paying attention to the background, you will minimize your postprocessing workflow. For example, it is much easier and faster to take a minute or two to clean up and remove the offending clutter, lint, or errant strand of hair before shooting than spending an hour cloning it out in dozens of individual pictures.
There are hundreds of different poses, and this tutorial will cover only a few of the common ones along with some suggestions such as the camera angle, composition and poses. A caveat: there is no one-size-fits-all technique when it comes to working with your model. A body position or camera angle that works for one person may not for the next.
Let’s start with a quick overview of composition in portrait photography.

The Rule of Thirds: know it. And when you know it, you can break it. The better you understand why this rule of thirds is so effective, the better you understand when to break it.
Centering: avoid centering your subject; instead frame the model slightly off to the side. This has been proven to be more aesthetically pleasing. It has to do with what’s called the “golden ratio.” Observe television shows and movies; you’ll notice that the actors are often shot off center for this very reason. This is obviously related to the rule of thirds as well.
Amputation: when framing the portrait, avoid cropping your subject at their joints. This has the illusion of amputating a limb and is generally undesirable.
Eyes: Focus on the eyes. It can look strange if your model’s ear or hair is in focus, but not her face.
Camera angle: If you’re shooting an image in which your model’s face fills most of the frame, make sure the camera is a few inches above her nose. Nostrils are not attractive. And this compels your subject to look up at the lens, which is more pleasing. The angle will help thin out their face slightly. If you’re photographing a woman that is bottom heavy, aka “pear-shaped” or heavy-weight, avoid shooting from below. Shooting from extreme low or high above will exaggerate people’s proportions; photographing low to the ground makes the hips seem overly large and the head small. And the opposite is (usually) true if shooting your subject from above may help make a heavyset person seem slimmer.

Photo by capture the uncapturable

Distance: some photographers are wary of getting too close to their subject. This has the end result in which the main subject – the model- is just a speck, too small to have any real impact. Practice filling the frame.

Posing

This site has a great posing guide created by Lynn Herrick to help you get started. It depicts over 200 different poses that you can use as a reference.

“Football Shoulders”:

Hunched up shoulders are never attractive. It makes your model seem like they have no neck. Ask your model to sit or stand up straight and lower their shoulders.

Photo by ifraud

A common pose an amateur model may adopt is a three-quarter turn with the shoulder raised, hiding the neck and chin or jaws. While this may feel coquettish in your subject’s mind, all it accomplishes is hiding the model’s neck and makes the shoulder nearest the camera seem overly large and rounded. Have them drop the near-shoulder downward instead.

Photo by dreamglowpumpkincat210

If you choose to have your model laying down on the floor looking at the camera, remind them to support themselves to avoid hunched up shoulders.

Slouching

Similarly to the “football shoulders,” slouching simply isn’t attractive, not even if they’re a model on the ANTM show. Tell your model to straighten up! This also has the effect of helping your subject appear slimmer, taller and more poised.

Photo by Anthony van Dyck

Head tilt

Up, down, side…experiment with the different possibilities to see what’s most flattering for your model.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

If your model protests taking many pictures with slightly different head and shoulder poses, point out that actors and actresses often practice their poses for the red carpet, and then know which pose to strike that will be the most flattering.

Chin

Some people have double-chins or may be tucking their chin subconsciously. Make them aware of this. If excess skin is still visible, change your camera and lighting angle to slightly above to minimize it.

Photo by jcoterhais

Standing

If your subject is squared off with the camera, this has the effect of making them look broader. This may work well for a male subject; however, for a female, this usually is not a desirable stance; a slight angle will be more slimming and attractive. Place all the weight on the leg furthest from the camera and the other leg bent or extended.

Photo by Lauren Nelson

Environment

The surrounding in which you take the picture of your model is equally important. If you’re shooting indoor, ie. at home, be sure to take a moment and declutter. A neat, tidy room is far more attractive than a room full of magazines, papers, toys and books. By cleaning (or temporarily relocating) the mess, you will ensure that the focus of your audience remains where it belongs: on your subject.
If you’re shooting outdoor, the background is still important – the last thing you want is a pole or tree growing out of your subject’s head. Oftentimes just moving either the camera or your subject a couple feet to the left or right will fix the errant-growth issue.

Clothing

Black Vs Color

Many photographers recommend dark, solid clothing articles because it’s perceived as more slimming. In contrast, I recommend bright, well-fitting clothes. Most casual or beginner photographers lack the studio lighting to adequately light a subject clad in black/dark clothing and the details of both their clothes and body are lost in the shadows.

Photo by Alaskan Dude

As you can see in the above image, the green shirt shows a lot of detail, where a white or black shirt may may have look flat.
While clothes do not need to be solid, patterns and prints are perfectly fine, the subtler the print, the better. If your model has a polka-dot shirt and the environment is cluttered/busy, the overall look can be chaotic and may appear more like a typical snapshot than a well thought out portrait. On the other hand, a polka-dot shirt, a coordinating, solid-colored pants and a well-chosen background can be a stellar combination.

Sleeves

Another suggestion is to request your model to wear tops with sleeves. Unless your subject is fit and toned, a tank or sleeveless top will just make your model’s arms seem larger. Having them hold the arms slightly away from the body (do take care that this seems natural) will also help them appear slimmer as well.

Creative

Portraits don’t need to always be a standard headshot or body shot. Get creative with how you frame your model. Focus on one body part. Make use of props.

Sometimes less is more. Use a prop and frame carefully to obscure most of your model.

Have fun!

The most important part of making portraits is your. While very occasionally, you’ll find a model having a really bad day, 99% of the time your in control of the situation and the model is feeding off your energy. If you’re asking your model to smile for 30 minutes straight, you better be smiling, too. Show a lot of energy. Talk about things that reflect of the mood of your shoot. Most importantly, talk. Engage your subject. And finally, keep in mind, you are not performing a root canal. It’s photography, it’s supposed to be fun, so have a great time while you’re shooting.

Source . . .

Make your portraits pop . . .

2013-02-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

This tutorial with photoshop techniques for making your images ‘pop’ has been submitted by Elise Hennen from 28 Studios. Read more about Elise below.

Get more tutorials like this via with our free weekly newsletter.

In this tutorial I will be demonstrating some quick, easy methods for adding drama and/or interest to your shots. As always, talk to me in the Post Processing Section of the Forums with any questions or comments. As far as I know, these methods should work for both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

#1: blur/overlay

Duplicate your picture layer by dragging the layer to the ‘new’ icon in the layers palette (ctrl+j).

Apply a gaussian blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur…). Blur it enough that the detail disappears but the shapes mostly keep their form.

In the layers palette, change the blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Overlay.’

If you look at the before and after, you can see that this method makes the light tones lighter and the dark tones darker while softening it a touch. Basically, it softly boosts the contrast. If you want a more dramatic effect, try changing the blending mode to ‘Vivid Light’ instead of ‘Overlay.’
Try it on all kinds of shots: portraits, nature shots, you name it. I use this method ALL the time. It works so well with everything!

#2: filter the background

This one can be fun… With a picture open, duplicate the layer (as always). Use your lasso tool to roughly select the subject of your image.

Feather the selection by going to Select > Feather (ctrl+alt+d). We want a pretty large feather, so what you input depends on your picture. Try 50 pixels. Go to Layer > New > Layer via copy. You should end up with just your subject on a new layer with a nice feather to it (fades at the edges).
Select the layer copy below your subject layer. Start trying out filters. I used Filter > Brush Strokes > Dark Strokes for this example. Most of the Brush Stroke filters work well with this effect. Using blurs tends to look a little funny. When you’ve got it all done, your layers palette should look a little like this:

That’s it. Try this out with lots of different filters. If you want to tone down the effect, change the opacity of the effect layer. If you want to get more advanced with your subject selection, you can duplicate the layer, mask it out, and use a large soft white brush to paint the subject back in.

#3: neon glow

Have you ever played with neon glow and wondered when the heck you were ever going to use it? Well, it’s time to give it another shot. This can add a touch of color and drama to your shot.

Duplicate your layer, then pull up Filter > Artistic > Neon Glow. Pick a color that you think will complement your shot. In mine, the cat is lit with sunlight, so I went with a yellow to exaggerate that. Start with a glow size of 4 and a glow brightness of 18, then tweak it to suit your shot. This is what I ended up with:

I’ll bet you can guess what’s next. You got it — change the blending mode to ‘Overlay.’ Also cycle through those modes: soft light, hard light, vivid light, and linear light. I prefer overlay and vivid light with this effect.

#4 easy blur

This one nearly passed me by… it’s a wonderfully easy effect to soften a picture. Try it on portraits.

Duplicate your layer and apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) so that the details start to go, but not too much.

Set the opacity of the layer to 50%. This is a great, super-simple way to soften a picture. It can give it almost a dreamy look. Play with opacities until you find something that works really well with your shot.

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/4-easy-photoshop-techniques-to-make-your-pictures-pop#ixzz22yKDEPum

Good? Or Great?

2013-01-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

I found this great article on the web and wanted to share it with my readers.

Introduction

This is the most important article on this website.

More important than the thousands of others, I will attempt to explain the elements that make up a great photograph.

These fundamentals are mandatory knowledge to all artists.

Photography makes it easy for anyone to create images without needing any artistic ability or training: just set AUTO and go.

You can't paint unless you study and practice. In studying painting, you are always taught image structure.

Anyone can take pictures. Formal courses of photographic study rarely, if ever, cover the basics of image structure. All they teach is technical mumbo-jumbo, which is a waste because cameras do all of the technical stuff for us today anyway.

Even professional photographers are rarely taught about the basics of image structure, which is why so many photographs are so awful.

The lack of structure is why so many photographs don't make it.

This article is critical because I hope to explain the basic structures that are so crucial to making strong images. Images that get the basics right always get people to go ooooh and ahhhhh, and those without their fundamentals in order are boring.

Armed with this information, hopefully you'll start recognizing the elements which make images that make people's jaws drop, win top honors at photo contests, and are the first images an editor picks when buying images.

Once you learn these simple basics, you'll be able to take awesome, award-winning shots with any camera. Once you can do this, you'll no longer need to waste so much money on camera gear or haul so much of it around with you. You'll just take great pictures.

The Basics

Every image needs a basic structure. Without an underlying structure, it is just another boring photo.

Every image needs strong underlying compositional order so that it grabs the eye from a hundred feet away.

If it can't grab the eye from a distance, it will never be an interesting photo, regardless of how many fine details it might have. Details don't matter if there's no story behind it.

The reason my image above has won so many awards in so many countries and is picked continually as one of my best images is because of its strong structure.

What is this structure? It is the broad underlying colors, shapes and contrasts between light and dark upon whose structure all the other far less important details lie.

In this image, we have a big red diamond in the middle. It is surrounded by blue-gray. The big red rectangle is the obvious, positive space. The blue-gray around it is called negative space.

Red jumps out at you, especially when put in front of blue. Red does that.

I used an ultra-wide lens. Ultra-wide lenses get darker in the corners, an effect called falloff. This makes the center relatively brighter, adding emphasis. This central emphasis, in addition to being red, is what grabs your eye and pulls you in from a mile away.

This is what makes this shot a winner. Nothing else matters much compared to the way the big red diamond grabs you.

Only after its caught your eye does anything else matter.

This is crucial: if this image didn't catch your eye like this, it wouldn't mean much.

Once a photo has caught your attention, it needs to have details to keep the eyes interested. This is easy. Every photo has details. The problem is how few photos have any sort of underlying structure to catch your eye in the first place.

In this case, the less important details are the yellow peeking out from behind the red, the clouds swooping out from the center, the crud on the concrete at your feet and the reinforcing mesh seen peeking out of the top of the red wall, at least when printed at gallery size.

This photo, like all good photos, is about shapes, colors and balances. It has nothing to do with the fact that the actual subject was an abandoned, burnt-out bathhouse with no roof.

It's nice that I shot this on 4x5" film so that viewers can see every detail on every dead bug on every paint chip on the ground, but if the strong structure didn't grab the eyes in the first place, the viewer would just move on to the next image on the wall of the gallery.

Most photographers snap photos, paying attention only to the details, but ignoring the far, far more important fundamentals. Most photographers don't even know that there are fundamentals!

These fundamentals are the largest, obvious elements of light and dark, colors and shapes.

You have to get this underlying structure right, otherwise the photograph has no basis on which to stand.

If I had made this shot in black-and-white, there would be little to no contrast between the red wall and the blue. The blue is often lighter than the red in this photo, so even using a red filter in B&W would not have gotten me what I needed to catch your eye. In color, the color red takes charge and makes this shot successful.

You should be able to defocus your eyes and look at your image from a hundred feet away, and the basic organization of elements within your frame should still be obvious.

If your image goes away as a thumbnail-sized image, it has no structure. It sucks. If it doesn't jump out at you as a thumbnail, you've made a boring image, regardless of how big or detailed you print it.

The shot above still grabs people, even as a thumbnail. As a thumbnail, people want to click it and see what's going on. It's not just another gray square.

If it doesn't sing as a thumbnail, no amount of Photoshop, HDR or gigapan stitching will give it any more structure. It will still suck as hard, no matter how much time you waste on your computer. You have to get it right in your camera.

The one thing you can do later is to burn and dodge. This means lightening and darkening different parts of the image to emphasize what's important, and deemphasize what's not.

Photographs without the basics are boring. An image, be it a photograph, painting, sketch or gigapan, is meaningless unless its basics are right.

The reason so many photos are so bad is because there is no underlying structure. Bad photos may be loaded with details, but forget to get the big, broad basics of composition, light and color correct.

Sadly, most photographers are blind to the basics, and only by chance when the basics come together do they get a good shot.

More sadly, since so few photographers are paying any attention to the basics, even when they do get a good shot, they don't know why it looks good, so they can't reproduce it.

When you learn to look for the basics first, and can get the basics of composition down, you'll be able to shoot anything, anywhere, with any sort of cell-phone camera, and walk away with the images everyone else covets.

People who are blind to the basics are the great majority of people who keep throwing more money at more cameras, and never get any better pictures.

It's the basic underlying composition that makes or breaks an image.

It's not about the subject

Here's another secret: in photographic art, it's never about the subject.

It's always about the underlying compositional structure. Subjects that may be there are chosen because they support or create a structure, not the other way around.

What a subject does in real life is irrelevant. In a good photo, subjects are chosen to provide the shapes or colors we want to lay down the basic design of an image.

What might look like a door is really only used because it's a rectangle, or two squares. If we shoot it at an angle, now it's a trapezoid, or a truncated triangle.

An ocean liner? If you use the whole thing in a successful photo, its because it's used as a shape that works with whatever else is in the frame.

This is why I'm known as a toilet photographer. I don't care what my subject might be in real life. When I look for photos, I'm looking for shapes and colors. It just tends to happen that bathrooms and garbage cans tend to get lit up in great light at the end of the day, so if they're in good light, I shoot them.

The actual subject is meaningless because you're mind's subconscious eye can't even recognize it from a hundred feet away.

Your photograph must have a strong enough structure so that structure is obvious to the subconscious That's how you grab people to get the ooohs and aaahs.

The actual subject doesn't matter. Your choice of a subject should be made to give a strong underlying design to the image. What that subject is or does consciously is irrelevant. As far as photographers are concerned, photos subjects are used purely as big colors and shapes, exactly as you'd cut these colors and shapes out of construction paper to make a composition.

Composition

When composing, ignore details.

Be sure to exclude everything not directly contributing to the image.

As you compose, only look at the boldest, broadest and most basic lines and shapes in your image in the most overall and general sort of way.

I often look away from my finder to see the finder out of the corner of my eye. This lets my brain ignore details and what the conscious subject might be, and hopefully see the image's far more important underlying structure more clearly.

The only thing that matters are the bold, broad strokes. It's a photograph, not a painting, so duh, the details will take care of themselves.

The broad strokes won't. You, and you alone, have to force them exactly where you want them before you take the picture.

Nothing in an image is what it seems. Even though viewers might say "that thing in the corner is a rain boot," when composing, it's a yellow shape you are using for no reason other than as a color blob in your image.

When composing, forget the subject. You are using every item in the image as a compositional element, exactly as you'd arrange pieces of cut-out construction paper to make an interesting composition.

Move the camera forward or back to fit your elements as you want them.

Move left or right, and especially use the forgotten dimension of moving up and down, to re-arrange items in your frame as you want them.

How to find a photo restoration artist - revisited

2012-09-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

Finding the right photo restoration artist online can be a little intimidating, so we decided to revisit the issue today.

Here’s a quick overview of what you need to consider when searching for the best photo restoration artist.

The first thing you want to consider is quality - the final results.

To check for the quality, you want to find an artist or company that offers several examples of restorations of varying degrees. The more the better.

Here's why . . .

No two images are alike . . . just as no two images have exactly the same type of damage. Photos can be damaged by fading or fire or flooding. They can have scratches or chips or even missing pieces. You want an artist who is cable of restoring many types of damage, and you can only determine that by reviewing many "before and after" images.

With that said . . .

Compare ‘Before’ and ‘After’ photos carefully.

The quality and detail of the "after" image should be apparent to you.

Do the colors look natural? How about the skin tone? The facial expressions? The hair?

In most cases, the colors should be deep and rich with naturalistic variations. Skin should have varying degrees of tone and texture. Facial expressions should look natural.

If the details and quality are not apparent, move on to the next web site.

Next, find out if the restoration artist or company is the one who will actually be working on your image or if they outsource their work to others. Although cheaper, outsourcing has many disadvantages, like communication problems, missed deadlines, or perhaps sub par work, not to mention the problem of sending our jobs overseas.

Once you are done with quality checks, look for costs, methods of payment, etc., to make sure you have a good fit.

Most service providers charge according to the severity of the damage, however some charge by the hour. Both are okay, but those charging by the hour might be costlier and may not offer a precise quote, nor does it mean the results will be better than those artists charging a flat fee based on severity of the damage.

A few final tips . . .

All companies should offer free estimates, with no hidden fees.

      •Work with an artist or company that offers a money-back guarantee.

      • Check to make sure they provide minor adjustments free of charge.

      • Confirm if the cost includes a print and shipping . . . or just the digital image only. Most people can now easily order prints themselves, either online or via a local lab, so why pay a service provider extra for prints and shipping costs if you can do it yourself for less?

Get your photography noticed online . . .

2012-03-21T06:36:00.004-07:00

It’s the Greatest, Easiest, Most Profitable Way To Talk About Your Photography … So Why Aren’t You Doing It?

You’re standing in the checkout line, with several people in front of you. You glance over and start reading the titles of the magazines in front of you. And for some reason they just pull you in.
Do you really care who had an alien baby, or how you can create 365 looks that will make you look more sexy? Maybe … Maybe not.

Yet there is just something about those titles that make you want to pick up the magazine and start reading.

It isn’t a coincidence that the titles are that tantalizing. In fact I’m willing to bet more time is spent on creating those titles and cover layouts then they do writing the stories theselves.

What sells is the title – the sizzle – not the meat of the story. Yes, the story itself has to be good and give you exactly what the title promises. Yet the story satisfies your hunger for whatever information you were promised. You won’t move forward and take action once you’ve read the story.

Because editors know the only way they will stay in business is to get you to buy the magazine, they spend their time on what matters most. The titles.

Now lets convert that over into what you potentially do every week. If you blog, every week you sit down and come up with topics to write about. Yet how much time do you spend coming up with your titles? I know for a lot of you, the answer is “just a few seconds” – and that may even be pushing it.
I see post titles every day that are worded something like this:

Randy and Laurel’s Engagement

Elizabeth’s First Birthday

Jason and Kim’s Wedding Day

Yet what does this do for your business?

When your clients come over and visit your blog, they are a captive audience. They love what you do and chances are they are looking for their own images. I’m sure in the above example Randy and Laurel are thrilled to see their engagement images online, and are passing around the URL to all of their friends and family.

Yet how many people will ultimately see that page? Randy and Laurel – that’s two. Family and friends – we’ll add in another 20. And other clients that may come to the site and decide to look through their images – we’ll add another 50 for long term exposure. That’s 72 in total.

Yet what do these 72 people have in common? Not one of them found any excitement and desire to click on the title from any other method outside of the fact they knew Randy and Laurel. Or had a vested interest in looking at the images.

If you saw Randy and Laurel’s Engagement in Google, would you really click on it?

And more importantly, would you ever look in Google for Randy and Laurel’s Engagement in the first place?

Which means if you are trying to attract new clients, people that have never heard of you yet might want to find you, you have to start thinking like a magazine in the checkout lane. You have to pay attention to your titles and give people the things they are looking for.

How do you know what they are looking for?

The easiest way is head over to Google and use their keyword tool to do a little research.

Let’s get started by typing in the word “photography” just to see what comes up.

When you type in photography, you’ll get many different results. This will show you what people typed directly into Google last month using the keyword you’ve selected. It isn’t a comprehensive list, but should be a great starting point. It will show you search terms as well as worldwide and local results.

From there, you can further refine what keywords you wish to look at. For this example, lets choose the term “wedding photography”.

When you add those words to the search function, your results will come up based on the key phrase instead of one word. In this case everything will be centered around the phrase “wedding photography”. At this point, we’ll further refine our search and look up the term “beach wedding photography”.

After letting the results come up using this phrase, you can see a wide variety of options.

If you are in California, or have the desire to photograph weddings in California, you’ll notice 720 searches were made for “long beach wedding photography” and 390 searches were made for “newport beach wedding photography”.

So if you were showcasing “Jason and Kim’s Wedding” as a blog post title, you may attract a few dozen family and friends to the blog post.

But if you created a blog post title “How Jason and Kim Had Fun With Their Newport Beach

Wedding Photography”, do you think you could attract more attention from a variety of sources … including Google?

If you write hundreds of posts every year, you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) use the same titles over and over again just to attract Google’s attention. But if you think about it first and find a way to make it attractive to both Google and your readers, your posts could quickly help you build up the traffic to your site – and the profits to your business.

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